UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums Resources and Customizing How Do I? Changing path of our UBB

IT Director here...

With changing our website from static HTML for the main part of the site (which UBB is integrated into) to Drupal being the "front door", I was thinking to totally change the install directory and stop using the former directory completely.

To test the concept on one of our test subdomains, I copied all of the UBB files to the new directory path at that sumdomain. Several files would not copy, they are as follows:


:~/sites/domain.org/www/members/forums > cp -r * ~/sites/d1.domain.org/www/ubb/
cp: cannot open `images/groups/index.html' for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/images/bkg2.png': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/images/grad-02.png': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/images/grad-02-sans.png': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/images/nbkg-l.png': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/images/quote.gif': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/images/brushed.gif': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/images/dark_brushed.gif': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/images/header_grad.gif': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/images/header_grad2.gif': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/images/drop_shadow_wrapper': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/images/ubbthreads': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/StyleExamples/4.jpg': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/StyleExamples/3.jpg': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/StyleExamples/2.jpg': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/StyleExamples/1.jpg': Permission denied
cp: cannot stat `styles/StyleExamples/5.jpg': Permission denied

I continued onward.

Next I edited the MySQL backup file making the following changes:

Was: Changed to:
/members/forum/ /ubb/
http://domain.org/ http://d1.domain.org/
https://domain.org/ http://d1.domain.org/

Created a new DB and restored the backup to the new DB.

Lastly I modified the /ubb/includes/config.inc.php updating the paths and the DB connection info.

Tested it and it seemed to take right off! Woo hoo!

*** I took time to clear the cache. ***

However, looking through the Drupal logs, I was seeing 404's mentioning the old install path. I went looking and found various files on disk referring to the old path.

One bunch which I do not know if it was from before I cleared the cache or not... referring to the former install path:

warning page not found 01/04/2010 - 13:04 members/forums/gallery/54/thumbs/549.jpg Anonymous
warning page not found 01/04/2010 - 13:04 members/forums/gallery/54/thumbs/540.jpg Anonymous
warning page not found 01/04/2010 - 13:04 members/forums/gallery/54/thumbs/542.jpg Anonymous
warning page not found 01/04/2010 - 13:04 members/forums/gallery/54/thumbs/539.jpg Anonymous
warning page not found 01/04/2010 - 13:04 members/forums/gallery/54/thumbs/544.jpg Anonymous
warning page not found 01/04/2010 - 13:02 members/forums/gallery/54/thumbs/544.jpg Anonymous
warning page not found 01/04/2010 - 13:02 members/forums/gallery/54/thumbs/542.jpg Anonymous
warning page not found 01/04/2010 - 13:02 members/forums/gallery/54/thumbs/540.jpg Anonymous
warning page not found 01/04/2010 - 13:02 members/forums/gallery/54/thumbs/549.jpg Anonymous
warning page not found 01/04/2010 - 13:02 members/forums/gallery/54/thumbs/539.jpg Anonymous


/cache/rss##.xml files. Am I fine with deleting all files in this directory since it is called "cache"?

cache_builders/custom/portal_box_1.php which I suspect means that URL's are hard coded into islands, so I will check into those myself.

Several files like this one:
styles/ubbcentral_1256923774.css:background: #FFFFFF url('http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/ubbthreads/header_grad.gif');

Odd that our URL would be hard coded into CSS files. I am thinking to simplify such references and have it be relative to the current server.

So, open to feedback at this point. I am thinking to pause work on this front for a little while.

Yes, you can delete all of the files except for the index.html file in the cache/ directory. Then you can go into the control panel and rebuild the cache so they are regenerated with the proper urls.

The styles, yes you can change those so the domain isn't hardcoded.

The gallery errors could be if you have the side islands present with gallery images. Clearing the cache and rebuilding should fix those.

Oh, I had such a laundry list, I forgot the first "old path" I found, even the wrong server name (not the d1. ubdomain). With the cache emptied, I refreshed the page at /ubb/ and still some graphics on that page refer to the old install path.

http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/ubbthreads/header_grad.gif
http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/drop_shadow_wrapper/top_left.gif
http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/drop_shadow_wrapper/top_middle.gif
http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/drop_shadow_wrapper/top_middle.gif
http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/drop_shadow_wrapper/top_right.gif
http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/drop_shadow_wrapper/left_side.gif
http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/drop_shadow_wrapper/left_side.gif
http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/ubbthreads/dark_brushed.gif
http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/drop_shadow_wrapper/right_side.gif
http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/drop_shadow_wrapper/right_side.gif
http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/drop_shadow_wrapper/bottom_left.gif
http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/drop_shadow_wrapper/bottom_middle.gif
http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/drop_shadow_wrapper/bottom_middle.gif
http://domain.org/members/forums/styles/images/drop_shadow_wrapper/bottom_right.gif

You'll want to go through your CSS settings including the wrappers and make sure there is no hard coded domain. That appears to coming from one of the style wrappers.

i always try to use ../styles/images/.... in any URLs for css images...

then it is portable..

OK, back to this topic again...

We picked out several new themes from the ubbskins site. I installed one new one and purged all of the legacy themes.

I am seeing now 404'ing graphic with the new skin name in the URL. URL's like:

/ubb/images/general/koniro/toggle_open.gif
/ubb/images/general/koniro/toggle_closed.gif
/ubb/images/general/koniro/nonewposts.gif
/ubb/images/general/koniro/newposts.gif
/ubb/images/general/koniro/newimages.gif

Thus confused how files are being looked for, with the theme name in the URL, that did not come with the theme.

when you go to the styles editor in Admin cpanel, you can also select what directory to load the general images from.. if you dn't have 'koniro' directory, you might edit the theme to point to 'default' for now...

with a lot of my themes, i add a directory, so as to not use 'default' and 'default_dark'...

this might be your case..

(A puzzled look is on the IT Director's face)

I followed the instructions inside of the koniro theme file exactly. That theme wants its own directory inside of /styles/images/ called koniro.

When themes are installed, is there a step that I need to create a directory in /images/general ??? Can I simply place a symlink of the name of the theme pointed at the /images/general/default directory? (Symlinks do work on our server.)

Some of them require that extra step if they have their own images that come along with it, and most all should have that in their instructions if they do. If it doesn't have an image directory, then you can just edit the skin in the control panel, and set it so it uses either the default or default_dark for all of it's images.

To be honest some of the extra styles I found it was easier to just duplicate some of the question files to the location they are pointed to.
Also I think there are a few flavors of Koniro hanging around.
Between here and ubbskins.
Each version has a slightly different graphic location structure.

Thanks, I will check and see how I can adjust custom skins to use the already present graphics.