Site down 404 error

[Rosely]

1. vBulletin Version - 5.5.6
2. PHP Version - 7.2.30
3. MySQL Version - Under server variables > version, it says 5.7.28-log
4. Any Addons installed.
5. Does the issue occur in a default style? Yes
6. Does the issue occur using the English language provided? Yes
7. Error message on the screen. Not Found. The requested URL was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
8. Browser and Browser version used. - Safari 13.1.2, also happens the latest version of Chrome
9. Did you clear the browser cache and did the error continue? Yes
10. A list of steps that can be used to recreate the issue... Only our home page is viewable (although with the banner corrupted), clicking on any links will take you to the above error message. Homepage: http://buffyforums.net/forums/

I was on our site this morning around 5.30/6.00am and when I went back on around 9.30/10.00am the site was down and none of the pages accessible as described above.

One of our admins has been in touch with the site host and they said it seems to be working but none of us can access anything other than the home page. We can't get into the Admin CP.

Our admin says she has access to the server through the admin from the host and through SSH. She probably has access to the database too, through PHP my admin. We have a back up from a couple of months ago. She says it feels like there was a root setting changed in the admin panel, but doesn't know how that could suddenly happen. Like there was something changed in the root URL writing.

Do you have any ideas/tips or suggestions of how we could undo it when we don't have access to the panel?

[Wayne Luke]

Did you edit your .htaccess file? It must contain these lines:

  # Main Redirect
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|css)$
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?routestring=$1 [L,QSA]

If you have any extra directories in your /forums/ directory, it can break things if not handled properly.

[Rosely]

Not knowingly myself. I don't know about the other mods/admins but I will pass on your suggestion, thank you.

[Rosely]

Okay our admin has had a look and has said, "No one has edited this to her knowledge and she doesn’t see the .htaccessfile in the directory!"



Should we just create a new .htaccess file?

[Wayne Luke]

Do you have an .htaccess file in the route directory? Does it include rewrites?

If so you should set the RewriteBase value in the provided .htaccess. The instructions are in the file.

[Rosely]

Wayne Luke Thank you for your help with this. You pointed us in the right direction in finding the .htaccess file was the issue and our admin has been able to sort it out now and we're back online again. Really appreciated your guidance.

[Rosely]

Wayne Luke I tried to contact vBulletin sales to see if there are options for expanding our existing vBulletin 5 to include more direct administration and technical help. The confirmation email I received from vBulletin that contained a link to confirm the request failed, it just went to a 404 error page saying the link was outdated! Can you point me to where I can contact someone to see if this is possible?

[Wayne Luke]

The link should work. It is a bug with a recent site update that it preventing that.

You should be able to open a ticket in your member's area or clicking "Contact Us" in the footer below.

[Rosely]

That's great. Thank you.

[Rosely]

The link should work. It is a bug with a recent site update that it preventing that.

You should be able to open a ticket in your member's area or clicking "Contact Us" in the footer below.

This still hasn't worked. I sent the message using 'contact us' and got the same confirmation link that again went to a failed page. I tried to log in to the members area as a registered user with the same details used to log in here and it wouldn't accept the login details (is there a chance this is the site login information rather than our admin/mod registration here?). All I want to do is send an email to sales about increasing support and I can't manage it. I can't understand why this is so hard.

[Wayne Luke]

This still hasn't worked. I sent the message using 'contact us' and got the same confirmation link that again went to a failed page. I tried to log in to the members area as a registered user with the same details used to log in here and it wouldn't accept the login details (is there a chance this is the site login information rather than our admin/mod registration here?). All I want to do is send an email to sales about increasing support and I can't manage it. I can't understand why this is so hard.

Its a bug in the system. It takes time to get fixed, tested, and deployed. Nothing is instant.

If you use the email address on your customer account to start your support request then no link to confirm should be required.

You log into the member's area with your customer ID or email and the password used on the main site. It will not accept your forum credentials. This has always been the case. The main site is a separate entity and runs on separate servers.

[Rosely]

Okay thank you, I'll see if I can track down the details.