UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads 7 Version 7 Support Post Island No Longer Displays?

For a couple of years now we've displayed either Recent Posts, or New Topics in a box in either the left or right column of our piano forums.

I notice a couple of days ago that the box had dissapeared.

I presumed I might have inadvertently chosen to hide it in the layout, so I went in and assigned it an open position in the right column. But it didn't show up, and when I checked the layout again, it no longer had a position number assigned.

I realize the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome, but I tried anyway :-)

Nothing I do works, the control panel message says layouts have been updated, but nothing changes and the New Topics island never shows up.

Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

Frank Baxter
Piano World
www.PianoWorld.com/forum

Since duplicate place holders result in an error. And you have none.
Also it is not saving the placeholder.
I can only suspect two items.
1. File/folder permissions are incorrect.
2. cache_builders folder is corrupted. This where the script creates the default islands in the cache folder.
3. if this is a post island the same applies but it is created in the cache_builders/custom folder.

If you have the mysql logs enabled in UBB that might also give you a clue.

Delete everything out of the cache and templates/compile directories then rebuild the cache from within the control panel

I am experiencing a reduction in the number of posts shown in the Recent Posts box from 10 to 3, even though 10 is set in the control panel. There have been no changes made to UBB 7.5.6p1 or my web host (PHP 5.6.27, MySQL 5.7.15) in many months.

Here is the forum link: http://j30.us/ubbthreads/ - the posts island is on the right side

I have confirmed the following settings on the posts island in the control panel:
Cache Time: 5 minutes
Always Build: unchecked (I do not use external islands, only in UBB)
Island Type: Recent Posts
Number of Topics/Posts to display: 10
Source Forums: I have the desired forums selected here with plenty of content

I deleted the cache and files in templates/compile directories (via cPanel) then using UBB control panel rebuilt all the content. Still no change - I just see 3 posts listed.

Anyone have ideas on how I get this back to display the 10 posts it used to have?

If you followed Gizmo's suggestion correctly.
Then as I recall there is a hard coded value that only looks back "x" number of days.
So if you don't have a active forum , as it appears you don't, then after 11/30 your posts are to old to show.
What you could do as a test is make some test posts in the forums.
If they show then what I said is true.
That said, to get them out of the posts island you will need to follow Gizmo's directions to clear them out after you delete them.

Thanks Ruben - that's it. Any idea which file limits the age of posts shown? I can modify that if I know which file it is.

The Content Island scripts are in the cache_builders folder, the Post Island script would be cache_builders/post_island.php
Likewise, the Content Island templates are located in the templates/default/ folder, which for the Post Island script would be templates/default/post_island.tpl

You'll be looking for is as follows; I'd advise not increasing it too high though.

Example:

Please note that once you've modified these files, we can no longer provide support for that feature; we can only provide support for stock coding (though modification support is generally available at UBBDev).

These vars really need to make it into the CP config versus being hard coded, at some point.

Gizmo - Thanks very much. The mod has been made and works fine. I have many other mods on my installation so don't expect help for the stuff I modified. It was only the number of posts behavior that I noticed, and didn't see any setting in the control panel that would impact it. I concur on the change making it into the CP in the future!