UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads 7 Version 7 Support Access Denied Error for all users

Hey all,

I recently moved the UBB to a new server and all was working great until now. I remember changing some advanced settings to allow html extensions and search engine friendly URLs, then I changed the userID on the superadmin and then changed a forum setting to sort differently. After that last step it logged me out and says Access Denied when trying to log in as any user or register a new one. Any ideas as to what happened or where I should start looking? I already re-imported the users table but that didn't change anything. Any clues would be greatly appreciated.

First is the super admin member default is 2.
If you changed the id then possibly the new member was not a admin to begin with.
But I would think that registration would still work.

First thing i would do is look at /includes/config.inc.php
Check the first several lines.
change the MAIN_ADMIN_ID back to 2
And check if the other top lines for database connection,user and password are correct.

If the file is completely blank,that is your problem.
Just re upload a backup.

Unfortunately that didn't change the behavior. I've checked permissions on the files in the ubb directory, I've run the upgrade script with no change. I'd hate to have to revert the entire install to the one from the old server and start over. Here is the address: http://www.melaniesmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php

If I try to log into the admin control panel directly it tells me I don't have permission and forwards me to the login screen which says access denied even before i attempt a login. I don't understand what if any permissions were changed during the steps I noted above and which files I should be looking at. Thanks again for your help.

Ok, going into config.inc.php and disabling the search friendly urls brings it back in action. I don't understand why it worked for a little while and then decided not to. Weird stuff.

Likely the new server doesn't allow "acceptpathinfo", which is the webserver option that drives the search engine URLs.

more info

Yep, that would break it if pathinfo is not available on your site.
That is why the last item in the note says:

So I would guess that this is a windows server?
Because most linux based servers have this enabled.
And most windows based servers do not.

And probably why it worked for a little while is due to your browser cache.

I've always been on linux servers, and "spider-friendly" has always broken my board. Now that I have moved to Mindraven, maybe I can try again. I have not asked about it.

Well, a lot of the times a host will let you set (via your .htaccess file) to have path_info on; and a lot of the time if you explain why you want it on, they'll turn it on for you.

mindraven runs php as cgi and has pathinfo allowed, so it should be fine

Wow. I tried it; the board slowed to a crawl and seized up IE7 and IE8 on two different computers. I had to kill them via task manager. Then I opened up a new IE8, went into CP directly, and changed the setting back. Everything works again.

I'll let the spiders think I'm not very friendly.

if it was that bad on Mindraven, i'd open a ticket and find out why

Yeah, agreed with SD... The setting simply changes how the URLs are thrown out and interpreted by the forum, it really shouldn't "slow" anything...