UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads Version 7/8 Support OP can't edit his original post

But he can edit every reply he's made in the thread he started. I became the member and verified that there is no edit selection for his original post, but there is for every reply he's made.

Is this normal? Or do I have something weird going on? This is the first time I've ever seen this, but frankly I've never looked for it.

Can you become another member who is a topic creator and see if you experience the same behavior?

Also, what is the Edit Time Limit for that forum?

Yes, that's what I did. I became him and then looked at the topic. Every reply he had made had the edit selection, but the original post did not. I don't have any time limit set on edits for our members, so it's not a case of time limit.

I had another member complain about this the other day, but he was a new member, and they do have a time limit. I set the board up so the members have to post four times before they become users. They can't PM, create signatures, use UBB or HTML or view other members' information. His case was strange too, because the time limit hadn't expired, but I edited the post for him.

I more meant, become any random user who has created a new thread in that forum and check if they have the ability to edit their initial post (that created their thread)

Oh, let me go do that and I'll report back.

OK. I became a different user. The thread was 24 replies long, and he had several. The original post and his first reply didn't have the edit selection. The rest of his replies did. Very odd.

That is weird that users are unable to edit the original post, yet are able to edit their replies; I don't know of any permission that would affect that.

The only "edit" permission is the "Edit post time limit", but you insist that the groups the user(s) belong to have ample edit time (in minutes).

You're on a fully stock version of UBB.threads, without any major changes to the program or database, correct?

Yes, correct. Some minor changes (commented out sections) to remove text from emails, but nothing major. I'm going to check a few more users to see if this is a consistent problem or user related.

IIRC, you made several posts in the past in regards to accessing and modifying the database through PHPMyAdmin and not directly through the forum; it's entirely possible that management of the data through anything other that UBB.threads (as each linked portion of data is managed at once via the built in routines) could be causing your issues (as 7.5.9 was simply minor fixes, and the last time the scripts where actually added to where 7.5.7 in 2012) as I haven't witnessed this behavior at all before, nor should the original post have different permissions than the other posts (edit post time perm is the only one that should count in this case).

Previous posts:
How to Automate Pruning Topics
Orphaned Post
How to Merge Two Databases

The only other things I could recommend is having you check other forums for similar behavior, or check if any of their other groups have permissions which would override the target groups settings (possibly a -1 somewhere in the permission settings).

If you have modified data in the database directly (outside of UBB.threads) as the above posts suggest, the only real thing I can recommend is to compare any "messed up" table data (which could really be anywhere; forum permissions, forum data, user permissions, post data, etc.) to table data that you're 100% certain has only been managed through the built in options in UBB.threads.

You could try advanced support through the support desk here, but at this point there aren't many things we'd be able to check with user to user support.

Checking other users, it's not consistent across all of them. I'll have to do some more research.

I don't use phpmyadmin. I use the database interface built in to the app to make modifications. Here are the types of things I've done.
Modify a username when the user added a space after the name and didn't realize it.
Used update to set perms globally (e.g. set all FORUM_PERMISSIONS>EDIT_POSTS to 1 rather than 0 when they were randomly scattered between the two) for certain groups (including users)
Plenty of searches for things in the db

I never ended up writing a pruning script. Too complicated.
I did remove the orphaned Topic.
I don't recall for certain now, but I'm pretty sure I never merged the two databases.

I fail to see how what I have done would affect different users differently. There's something else going on.

Question. I created the Members group and set the group to require 4 posts to be approved before you become a member. The Users group is moderated on every post. During that time they have a time limit on editing posts. They get added to the Members group where they have full permissions after they've posted four times and been approved. Which permissions does a person get if they are a member of both groups?

Is this in a single forum or is this happening in every forum?

Every forum but only for certain users.

Look at the group permissions that those users are in as Gizmo has mentioned. Also look in your forum permissions for those groups / forum and also the permissions under forum. There has to be a conflict between them.

I guess I need to understand these perms better. So please confirm that my understanding is correct (or correct me if I"m wrong.) 0 disables the edit post time limit. 1 enables it. A number, such as 60000 sets a specific limit? So what does this mean? If you set it to 0, does that means there is no time limit? If you set it to 1, does that mean there is an infinite time limit?

I've done some checking. This is some sort of user problem. Some users can edit every post, including the original and all replies. Some users can't edit the original post but can edit all their replies. Other users can't edit the original post or several replies, but can edit other replies. I have no idea how this works. Do permissions get assigned to each post? Or do the posts simply pick up their permissions from group membership?

In the time limit box for editing any number is actual minutes. If you have it set to 0 then they can not edit the post. If you have it set to 1 they have 1 minute to edit the post and so on. So if you have 1440 in that box they have 24 hours from the time of the post to edit that post.

I'm not sure that's correct. The Administrator group is set to 1, and I can edit any post at any time. I'd like Gizmo to respond to this so I'm certain I understand it.

I just came across this: includes (FAIL). Could this be the cause? The odd thing is, I looked at the permissions, and they're exactly the same as other directories that are listed as OK.

I just want to make sure we're talking about the same page -- see attached screenshot

From Control Panel » Group Management [Forums]
http://www. EXAMPLE .com/admin/groupmanage.php

1 = Admin Group
2 = GlobalModerator Group
3 = Moderator Group
4 = User Group

http://www. EXAMPLE .com/forums/admin/group_forumperms.php?edit_group=4

Of that section, when you click to expand it, which file does it say fails?
http://www. EXAMPLE .com/forums/admin/fileperms.php

Is it a single file or is it the "Directory Check" row?

Yes. The Edit Post Time Limit for Admin Group is set to 1.

I did not realize that you could expand that by clicking on it. It's one file - index.html. It's fixed now.

1 = Admin Group
2 = GlobalModerator Group
3 = Moderator Group
4 = User Group

Was referring the the part of the URL, not the field entry

/forums/admin/group_forumperms.php?edit_group=4
/forums/admin/group_forumperms.php?edit_group= >>> 4 <<<

The field entry is looking for a TIME... in MINUTES.

Yes, I understand that. For the Admin Group it's set to 1. So by your description, that should mean admins can only edit posts for 1 minute. But I am an admin, and I can edit any post at any time. So that understanding cannot be correct. Users are set to 60000, but Members (requires a minimum of 4 posts) are set to 1. And most members can edit their posts at any time. That's why I said I assumed that 1 meant an infinite time limit.

The SQL Command section of the control panel should really have a warning; data which is altered via this tool should only be done by a user who is well versed in MySQL, as you can completely hose your forum very easily. Altering the raw data was the intention of my prior posting, including with use of this tool.

As for settings, it is done in minutes, just as the permission editor states:
Edit Post Time Limit: This is a setting in minutes and specifies how long a post can be edited after it was initially created.

Also, being an Admin supersedes all permissions, an Admin should be able to do anything, at any time, because they're the boss. As such, you should be doing any tests with user level accounts and not an elevated account.

Just to make you aware, there are TWO DIFFERENT PAGES.

The one I have linked to and posted screenshots for, is the GROUP PERMISSIONS.
http://www. EXAMPLE .com/admin/groupmanage.php
http://www. EXAMPLE .com/admin/group_forumperms.php?edit_group= ####

The other is the FORUM PERMISSIONS.
http://www. EXAMPLE .com/admin/forummanage.php
http://www. EXAMPLE .com/admin/forumperms.php?edit_forum= ####

My original question was asking you, which permission page you were editing. I wanted to confirm that with you, before moving forward. Nothing else was stated.

I need to fully understand this. What does 0 do in the Edit Post Time Limit field? What does 1 do? What value should I use if I don't want Members to have any time limit at all?

OK. To view permissions, I went to the Group Management page. Then I clicked on the Forum link for the Group I wanted to view permissions for, which takes me to the Forum Permissions for every Forum for that Group. Then I looked at the Edit Post Time Limit permissions for that group in each forum.

Going directly to Forum Permissions means I have to view each forum individually, which is a bit of a PITA when I have 48 forums.

Does that make it clearer?

Each permission has a different value, read the heading under each section for the correct usage. In a TIME BASED permission a 1 would be "1 second" or "1 minute", depending on what the header indicates.

If it's an on/off permission then it's 0/off, 1/on; if it's a time based permission it's 0/off or value length (in either seconds or minutes; again, the editor will tell you which, which is why it's there).

In the hopes of not having to clarify this again (since I've already done it more than once), I'm attaching two images, one of which is a TIME BASED permission, the other is an ON/OFF permission; the header indicates WHICH. In my examples below I am using the "Edit Any Post" permission, this permission gives users a moderator like permission, I would highly advise not allowing your users to have this.

Look, I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm trying to understand how the board works so I can run this problem to ground. My Member group has the Edit Post Time Limit value set to 1. According to you that means they have one second to edit a post. After that, the edit capability no longer exists. So, I became a member who posted something on Aug 4. I went to the post as him. He has the ability to edit. So clearly a 1 does not mean 1 second on my board. That's not logical. Either that or something is completely out of whack with my board.

Now, so you understand, I was a computer security professional for 20 years. I wrote scripts in perl and php and small programs in C++ and Java. I created sql scripts and worked extensively with mysql. So I'm not a complete novice at this stuff, and I'm very careful not to screw things up. With that out of the way, here's a snippet of your code:

scripts/editpost.inc.php

So clearly what you are saying is true - UNLESS - something else is overriding it. Since my board works with a value of 1, either something is overriding it or my board is totally borked. That's what I'm trying to figure out.

Just so we're clear, Members EDIT_ANY value is set to 0. select EDIT_ANY from sbf_FORUM_PERMISSIONS where GROUP_ID='7' and EDIT_ANY='1' returns no rows.

Dude, just set the edit post time to be 2629800 (one month).

I'll take that as a [edited language]. Thanks for your help.

Nope, I told you in the majority of my responses in this thread that you needed to update the field in minutes and that a 1 was 1 minute. Finally, I gave you a value, in minutes for a period of 1 month; I couldn't understand how to spell it out any clearer than what I have in the multiple rewording of my response for you to understand. I even went so far as to quote the permission settings header as well as provide screenshots.

But thanks for telling a forum user, on a user to user support forum (I'm in no part employed by UBBSystems, I'm here out of the kindness of my heart because I've been here since the beginning) to eff off, quite directly and literally; however, I'm not going to be mean about it, feel free to come back for support in the future.

No offense, but if it had been clear to me, I wouldn't have kept asking for clarification. So when you blew me off with your last answer, I figured I was on my own from then on. You never did DIRECTLY answer my question what does 0 mean and what does 1 mean. That's why I kept asking.

If you're not employed by UBBSystems, why does it say you're a UBB Developer? I took what you wrote to mean that UBB was no longer going to answer my questions, which I found rather off putting.

Gizmo is one of the individuals involved in the design and writing of the UBB.threadsâ„¢ PHP Forum Software.


You can learn more about this at https://www.ubbdev.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/

Im just going to chime in with a quick answer to your question:

"UBB Developer" != "UBB Employee"
A person can contribute their time, without being on payroll. Think: Hobbyist.
A badge under a user name usually means that someone is being recognized for a skill or an act they have performed / are currently performing.

As for a solution to whatever problem you're having with this software? You've pretty much pissed on everyone that is currently available and was willing to help you. Over the years, you've done that multiple times, in past threads and again in this thread.

Good luck finding help. I do hope you get the help you need.

UBBDev is a 3rd party contractor for UBB.threads, I am the owner of UBBDev; which also owns the documentation project UBBWiki. UBB.threads is wholly owned by UBBSystems.

The only developers in the past who've actually worked for the company who owns UBB.threads would be Rick Baker and Charles Capps, every other developer has been a 3rd party contractor (which is pretty standard in the web development world), this includes SirDude, Ian Spence, Brett Pavioni; there is a whole list of People Involved in the development of UBB.threads, either as a contractor, employee, or a UBBDev member (as features in the past have been cherry picked from UBBDev).

The only "official" support you'll get for threads is from the Support Desk; these forums have always been for user to user/community support.

Also, as JAISP so kindly quoted, your questions where answered, multiple times; it's not my fault that you seem to only read the first sentence of a response and not the entire response for the information you're looking for, because it's all there, in multiple posts, if you take the time to go back and read.

OK. This is what I am not understanding. If you set it to 0, does that mean there is no time limit at all? Or does it mean 0 seconds? Looking at the code, it seems to mean 0 seconds. We didn't want to have a time limit for Members, so it looks like we just have to use a number that corresponds to a ridiculously long time period, such as 10 years.


Obviously I don't know what that means. I thought it meant he was an employee.

You're even quoting it...

This thread is now locked; numerous reworded answers where provided, and this question wholly answered. This thread is now derailing and this topic is over folks.