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Troppo

Thanks Deano. I've finally managed to rebuild the site. So far, so good. As this isn't something likely to happen to anyone else, I won't spell out how or what, but it seems a 3rd party module wasn't working properly and when I changed the privacy settings they got screwed up. I had to go through every post and reset the privacy levels.

Thanks Deano. It's too late for me to touch this tonight, but I'm thinking it may be something to do with the Privacy prefixes I mentioned about two weeks ago. That got too difficult and I asked Modzzz for assistance. As we all know, Modzzz has his mind on other stuff, but he emailed me a couple of weeks ago to say he was working on it. It's possible I stuffed something up without realising it. As some of the "Private" stuff does involve Modzzz modules, it's possible I didn't fix what I abandoned. As I've deleted those modules, the prefixes are now probably wrong.

I'll let you know and thanks for your help.

You can check the 4 privacy tables. Below are screen shots of the default settings of each.

sys_privacy_actions

This table may vary depending on what modules are installed. This screen shot only shows the default modules that come with cheetah.

sys_privacy_defaults

Table should be empty.

 

sys_privacy_groups

 

sys_privacy_members

This table should also be empty.

 

 

I keep the cache's pretty clean, but I hadn't done a manual clean for some time. I did so as you suggested, but no good. The browser cache is the one that causes me most grief. I also cleared the cookies. No help there.

I can see photos, but not some groups etc. One I tested is set as:

but when a member tries to access it, they can't.

I really don't want to rebuild this site. Do you know where the privacy settings that may be blocking things are located in the database?

This is all I can find in Profiles:

 

 

Only suggestion i can think of at the moment is to manually clear the cache, cache_public and tmp folders with the exception of the .htaccess files in those folders.

I'm almost out of the woods. I was able to download a full database using a .gz file, so I could replace the damaged site with the test site. Anyone using Admirer to copy a database should check to see if the full database has been downloaded.

Everything looked fine until I used another members credentials to log in. I wasn't able to see much because I either received this message:

Information availability is limited by member privacy

or notices to say the videos, photos etc are private.

This could be caused by a third party module I downloaded, or it could be a setting I triggered some time ago.

I've checked in dozens of places on the site and in Admin and everything says Members can view the data.

There's a tonne of stuff on the Boonex forum about this, but nothing helped.

Any suggestions?

 

You right. Admins should not be able to delete themselves. I'll note it for a future fix.

As for profile edits, admins should be able to do that. But perhaps it would be safer to only allow it from the members area in the admin panel instead of from the profile page. I could also make it a option in the settings which may be best as i believe there will be many admins that would not want that removed.

I'm writing this because fools are born every minute.

I live in the tropics and they have a word here called "Troppo". It means the heat has got to you.  It's midnight, the temperature is 84, but that's cool compared to the 100 degree temperatures in my office during the day, even with a small aircon running.  Okay, that's my excuse.

I have two versions of the same site, the main site and a test site. I do things on the test site and when they work, I move them to the main site. I also create database backups using Admirer, but more on that later.

When I thought I was on the test site, I did something very stupid. Instead of logging in as the test user, or using "Logon as Me", I used a little trick which allows admins to update a user's profile simply by going to Members and clicking edit.

Deano, I've decided this is actually dangerous and unnecessary. Can it be removed in future updates?

So I spent ten minutes playing with the profile and completely forgot that I was still logged in as Admin. Having finished with the profile and the user, I deleted it. NOPE! I actually deleted myself! I got a lovely white screen with the horror message - Error, Admin has been notified.

Well, that's what I think I did. I swear I had logged in as the member via the Actions panel, so maybe it's not a good idea to delete members that way anyway.

So I thought it would be easily fixed. I reinstalled the database, but all the photos I'd posted throughout the site were gone. That's okay, I just replaced them only to find that a certain third party module didn't want to show them any more.

Hey, I'm smart. I've got a backup, so all I have to do is replace the script and the database. Well, that's the theory. 

I quickly discovered that Admirer, which is a fantastic program and highly recommended by our old friend Geek_Girl, has a limit to the number of records it can copy. Yep, all my backups are truncated about 2/3 of the way through. It can easily handle Cheetah, but when you add a few of Modzzz modules, Admirer is no longer to be admired.

So in trying to be even more clever, I copied and downloaded the database in two parts, joined them on my computer and sent them back to the server as one unit. Well guess what? A third party module I had converted on the Cheetah site and worked perfectly on the test site, is now throwing up database errors on the main site. 

Okay, "What next?", you ask. Well first off, I'm about to ask Deano if he can make it impossible for admins to delete their own profile. it's something Boonex obviously overlooked, yet everything needs to be failsafe.

I'm about to copy the test site and try to delete the offending third party module. I'm a little worried because something that works here, should also work there. Some modules don't like being deleted and leave artefacts all over the place. Some really do a good job.  I have my fingers crossed.

I'll report back, because these are things that can happen to you, even if the temperature is minus 30. But at least you now know the meaning of being "Troppo".