A mod broke my forum: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 16:17, 7 October 2014

Before you install a modification (mod), you should back up your forum and files. If you forgot to do this, however, and the mod which you installed broke your forum such that you cannot even uninstall it, there may still be a way to fix your forum.

SMF takes a file backup for you. It does this each time you install something, and restoring the files will take them back to the way they were just before your most recent install.

To restore the backup, you need to follow these steps:

Open FTP or whichever file manager that comes with your hosting service.
Look in your forum's "Packages" directory to find another directory named "backups". Suppose that the last mod which you installed was "PM On Registration", and that you did this on 26 Jan 2012. In the aforementioned "backups" directory, you would find the file 2012-01-26_before_PM_On_Registration_1-0-2.tar.gz
Download that file to a convenient directory on your desktop computer and extract it. To extract a "tar.gz" file on a Windows operating system, use a program like winzip.
Upload the files and directories from this file to your forum to overwrite what is there now.

Once complete, your forum files should be exactly as they were before you installed the mod. This procedure does not restore a backup of your database nor touch the database in any way.

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-When you install a modification (mod), you, being a good admin, will backup both your database and your forum.
+Before you install a modification (mod), you should [[Backup|back up]] your forum and files. If you forgot to do this, however, and the mod which you installed broke your forum such that you cannot even uninstall it, there may still be a way to fix your forum.
-Some admins, though, aren't as clever as you are.
+SMF takes a file backup for you. It does this each time you install something, and restoring the files will take them back to the way they were just '''before''' your most recent install.
-So, they install a mod without backing-up, first.
+To restore the backup, you need to follow these steps:
+# Open [[FTP_-_How_do_I_use_FTP|FTP]] or whichever file manager that comes with your hosting service.
+# Look in your forum's "Packages" directory to find another directory named "backups". Suppose that the last mod which you installed was "PM On Registration", and that you did this on 26 Jan 2012. In the aforementioned "backups" directory, you would find the file '''2012-01-26_before_PM_On_Registration_1-0-2.tar.gz'''
+# Download that file to a convenient directory on your desktop computer and extract it. To extract a "tar.gz" file on a Windows operating system, use a program like [http://www.winzip.com winzip].
+# Upload the files and directories from this file to your forum to overwrite what is there now.
-Oh, dear. The forum's dead. I DON'T HAVE A BACKUP!!!
+Once complete, your forum files should be exactly as they were before you installed the mod. This procedure does not restore a backup of your database nor touch the database in any way.
-Well, relax. You MIGHT be lucky.
-SMF, being the helpful system that it is, takes a backup, for you.
-Trouble is, restoring this backup will only work for the very last mod that you installed.
-(You CAN use it to restore older mods, by going through the files in reverse date order, to be honest, but that's a bit involved)
-Anyway... How do we restore the backup?
-Dead easy!
-Using your FTP program, have a look in your forum's "Packages" directory.
-In there, you'll find another directory named, you guessed it, "backups".
-Now, let's assume, for the sake of this tutorial, that the last mod that you installed was "PM On Registration".
-In the afore-mentioned "backups" directory, you'd need the file:
--01-26_before_PM_On_Registration_1-0-2.tar.gz
-The numbers at the front of the filename are the date that the mod was installed, so they'll be different, for you.
-Download that file to your desktop, or somewhere fairly empty of files and dearchive it.
-It's a "gz" file.
-When you dearchive it you'll be left with a "tar" file.
-If you dearchive that, you'll find loads of files and directories.
-Upload those files and directories to your forum, overwriting what's there, now. (It'll take a while).
-When that's done, Voila! Your forum should be exactly as it was, before you installed the mod!
-Next time, backup before installing mods, won't you?  ;)
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A mod broke my forum: Difference between revisions From Online Manual

Latest revision as of 16:17, 7 October 2014