UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads Version 7/8 Support Enabled robot-friendly URLs; front page now broken

On my BellaOnline forum I enabled the robot friendly URLs and it worked perfectly. No muss, no fuss.

So then on my WineIntro.com forum I decided to do the same thing.

It doesn't work - but it's very odd!

If you go here -

http://www.wineintro.com/wineforum/ubbthreads.php/forum_summary

If you click on any forum in the center, it just refreshes on the same page again. If you choose a link on the left (which uses the old style URLs) those work to navigate through the areas. And then once you get into an area the old way, you can now go "up a level" to see the forum area with the new style URL. But you can't go to that URL directly.

Any ideas?

Sounds like "Accept Path Info" isn't enabled for wineintro.com, which would make it work how you're describing.

I've never heard of "Accept Path Info". Is that some sort of an Apache thing? I'm running IIS on all my servers, and didn't have to enable anything on the BellaOnline server to get this to work.

Ahh, yeh, Accept Path Info is an apache thing, not sure what the IIS equivalent is...

I'm not finding on the web that there really is an equivalent for IIS. Also, I run IIS on all three servers. I believe they are all set up in the exact same way. So it's confusing to me that the BellaOnline UBB forum did this smoothly while the WineIntro forum is having this issue. Also it's confusing that I can cut and paste the exact same URL into two different browser windows and one works while the other does not work. The one that I first went to via the old style URL works - but the one that I "fresh" try to go to the new style URL will not work. With the exact same URL.

I'm not finding much either. From what I've found so far there may be a way to work around this that I'll try for version 8.

On your comments are you saying the spider friendly will work in one browser and not another?

Well I can't remember how I resolved my Path_Info issues with iis a couple years ago because it was several tries till it worked. But I remember I did edit php.ini and added
cgi.fix_pathinfo provides *real* PATH_INFO/PATH_TRANSLATED support for CGI. PHP's previous behavior was to set PATH_TRANSLATED to SCRIPT_FILENAME, and to not care what PATH_INFO is. For more information on PATH_INFO, see the cgi specifications. Setting this to 1 causes PHP CGI to fix its paths to conform to the specification.
This came from microsoft web site HERE this applies to fast cgi and IIS6.

Also I found that I had a variable called "ORIG_PATH_INFO" that did work and I might of hacked that in the ubb file "ubbthreads.inc.php".
There is a more current post at this site HERE by Rick. That states that it was omitted in error at one time in the script to look for it as a secondary variable.

Thats all I remember doing but...

It finally worked but I have since moved From IIS to Apache

OK I added the cgi.fix_pathinfo line and rebooted the server. It's still behaving in the same way.

I then went into the libs/ubbthreads.inc.php and added to line 1343 (not 1310 in my install, probably due to some of my tweaks) the ORIG_ part as per Rick's other post. It still isn't working.

Here's the behavior.

I go to the wine forums

http://www.wineintro.com/wineforum/ubbthreads.php/forum_summary

I click on the top area - cocktails. It tries to go to

http://www.wineintro.com/wineforum/ubbthreads.php/forums/35/1/Cocktails_Sangrias_Mixed_Drink

It ends up showing the main page again with all the categories.

So then I go to the "old style" URL I have hard coded in the left column. Again, the cocktails link, in the old style URL -

http://www.wineintro.com/wineforum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=35

That works.

I think I was confused about the new URLs working after that. I can't get it to recreate that behavior now (although maybe I 'broke' it with these changes I just made )

So to summarize I can't get spider friendly URLs to work at all on my wine server, which is running IIS. The spider friendly URLs are running perfectly on my BellaOnline server, which is also running IIS. The wine server is Windows 2003 and PHP 5.2.1. I am barely fluent in PHP so all of the PHP installs are very basic.

BTW I just turned OFF Spider friendly URLs until we can resolve this. I'd left it on to try to test but at this point I really need the boards working properly for visitors. I'll reenable the setting if anyone has any other ideas.

I believe another item I tried was AllowPathInfoForScriptMappings.
You can readup on it HERE
Enabling this will disable any asp pages and some say it is a security risk.
You can access it from the IIS console or in my case I think I had my host change it. By default it is off.
This causes the complete path to be passed to path_info value if off.
You might want to peek at the /forums.bella site and see if the setting is different from the wineintro site.
Also in lieu of testing the friendly urls on the board.
You can create a php file say pathinfo.php and place:
in the file.
Assuming you have that variable.
Up load it to your site
Then all you do is type say www.winintro.com/pathinfo.php/bella in a browser
If it is working all you should see displayed is /bella

My sites are all in ASP so it's absolutely critical ASP works. I definitely don't have anything enabled on any of my servers that would interfere with ASP. So that wouldn't be it.

I'm looking again at my notes - I said

2) Make sure spider-friendly URLs are on and you have full URLs SET

I'm not sure I understand my own notes now Now do you set full URLs, is this a control panel item?

Ruben had me check the php variables and path_info is currently set to no value. How do I get that to have a value?

I thought I had read on how to enable that somewhere. Will need to see if I can find it. Think it's some type of trick for IIS.

The pages I've read say you'd have to change a variable that creates a security problem for ASP. Since my sites are all ASP, I can't take that route. I think your newest release will let me do the spider friendly URLs without path_info right? So if I update to that tonight I should be set?

Even then I don't think that will work for windows, but you might check. It relies on the PATH_INFO_TRANSLATED value.

In version 8 we're adding a workaround specifically for windows that supposedly will work without any tweaks.

To even get a value to appear in path_info if it is working you need to add something at the end of the url.
Like I stated in the post using the test file above or in your PM I responded to.
When using the control panel for php info you have to add a trailing path to the url like bella/info after phpinfo.php
Example
http://www.mydomain.com/forums/admin/phpinfo.php
path_info will have no value
http://www.mydomain.com/forums/admin/phpinfo.php/bella/info
will have the value bella/info

So in phpinfo search for something that has that value of bella/info
It might be some other Variable besides path_info

I'm glad to see someone read my ranting about path_info :glances at Ruben:

I don't remember any ranting.
I just remember the frustration using IIS and trying to get it to work.
Since the good old boy network here does not use IIS.( meaning the people that really help us all the most)

I did a number of tests, it doesn't help The BellaOnline forums are working fine, those do have spider friendly URLs. It's the LisaShea forums that won't work, which is a different server (also on IIS). So one of my IIS installs is perfect. The other isn't working. I can try to go here

http://www.wineintro.com/forum/admin/phpinfo.php/php/info/

and it's still "no value".

So something must be different between those two servers.

BellaOnline - php 5.2.3. Hey!! It has "no value" even when I use an extended URL.

LisaShea - php 5.2.1. Also has "no value" even with extended URL.

So *both* have "no value" in that field. How come the BellaOnline spider friendly URLs are working?

Hmm, is there a difference in how PHP is installed on the two servers? I know you can install as a CGI or ISAPI. I'd check that on both. I know the procedure is different depending on how PHP is installed.

If I use zzz as a directory I get

_SERVER["HTTP_REFERER"] - http://www.wineintro.com/forum/admin/phpinfo.php/php/zzz/

That's the only variable

Same on the other BellaOnline forum too, they both have http_referer filled in.

Did you look for Orig_Path_Info also, to see if it has a value?
What about IIS versions between the two servers?
Very frustrating I know.

Using an extended URL -

BellaOnline - origpath is /admin/phpinfo_iframe.php
LisaShea - origpath is /forum/admin/phpinfo_iframe.php

BellaOnline - Windows 2003
LisaShea - Windows 2003

That won't work .
Okay windows 2003 is the server. But do you have access to what version of IIS each are using? It would be like version 6 or version 7?

Not sure if this post got overlooked, so reposting

Hmm, is there a difference in how PHP is installed on the two servers? I know you can install as a CGI or ISAPI. I'd check that on both. I know the procedure is different depending on how PHP is installed.

Apparently it's totally tied to the OS. I found this:

If you are running Windows Server 2003, you are running IIS 6.0 / ASP 3.0 (though some people like to call this ASP 4.0).

It doesn't say it anywhere in a "help / about" type of box.

Yeh, it's been years since I've mucked with a windows server; IMO windows isn't really suited resourcewise as a webserver (takes up too much of a tax on the system)

On the lisashea server I have a php entry in the mapping area for php5isapi.dll.

On the bellaonline server the php entry is for php5is~.dll. Browsing to the directory it is in fact the full file name, the same.

Could it be something simple here? Again my notes of how I did this on the other server say

"2) Make sure spider-friendly URLs are on and you have full URLs SET"

What did I mean about the full URLs? I must have done something to the BellaOnline server for that in step 2, maybe that's the step I'm missing here? I know it's my own fault for not writing better notes

Not sure how windows/iis stores the configuration for each site; have you tried comparing the configuration file for both sites to see any notable differences?

I'M SORRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know you guys have poured a ton of time into helping me with this.

It turns out I had an ISAPI rewrite rule that was doing

RewriteRule (.*)/forums/(.*) $1/forum/$2 [I]

I don't remember why I ever added this rule in, at some point in the long distant past I must have decided to change the URL and this helped me get them to redirect. I deleted this rule and POOF all the spider friendly URLs began working.

Of course I may have just broken something fairly serious on my site, I have no idea when I put this in or for what. But for now the forums are working with the social networking!!

Thank you all so much for trying, I'm sorry that it ended up being me.

Well I'm glad you got it figured out

Three cheers to bella for finding the culprit.
I also noticed you upgraded to 7.5.4.2

BTW, Will path_info show a value now?
Just curious.

Nope even on the latest version path_info has no value even with I add directories to the URL.