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YW Guestbook
Frequently Asked Questions
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Questions:
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1) How can I change color / background / font X in Skin Y ?
2) When I try the sign the guestbook a second time I always
get an error message. What´s wrong ?
3) I´ve edited the index.php to set the inclusion constants,
but I always get a parse error now. Have I done something
wrong ?
4) Why are the search function and the private entry login not
working after an inclusion ?
5) Why is my guestbook so slow ?
6) If I try to include the script it doesn´t work. Why ?
7) I´ve modified the Skin, but now the guestbook doesn´t appear
any more. What can I do ?
8) What do I have to translate, so that the guestbook is
completely translated into my language ?
9) Why doesn´t the uploaded pictures appear ?
10) How do I have to set the permissions ?
11) I can login into the administration but why I always get
logged out when I click on a link ?
12) I don´t really know what to enter in the installation page.
Can you help me ?
13) Is there a way to to import the entries from my old
guestbook ?
14) Why I haven't yet received any Emails though I have enabled
the notification mails ?
15) How can I avoid the unnecessary horizontal scrollbars at
the bottom ?
16) You say that Skin X is XHTML conform, but why aren't the
files accepted by the validator ?
17) I get one of the following error messages:
a) Warning: session_start():...
b) Warning: move_uploaded_file...
c) Internal Server Error
d) Missing file: lang/langindex.inc
e) Fatal Error: maximum execution time exceeded...
f) Page cannot be displayed
g) Parse Error on line...
18) Do you take donations ?
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Answers:
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1) That depends on the Skin you want to modify. Since Version
1.21 all new Skins come along with a file called 'style.inc',
which allows an easy management of the guestbook
representation. You can edit this file in the 'Setup' menu in
the administration. In earlier Versions you must search in
the Skin directory if this file is avaible and if not things
get a little more complicated:
Many CSS assignments are located in the file skin.css, others
can be in some of the following files
- if you use the Framemode:
contentFrame.php
menuFrame.php
selectFrame.php
skinMenu.php
skinSelect.php
skinEntry.php
skinStats.php
skinInputmask.php
skinEmpty.php
- if you use the Non-Framemode:
noFrames.php
skinMenu.php
skinSelect.php
skinEntry.php
skinInputmask.php
skinStats.php
skinEmpty.php
Especially if you want to change the background, you should
search for an CSS assigment to the BODY-Tag in the files
noFrames.php, contentFrame.php, menuFrame.php and
selectFrame.php.
2) Nothing, this is just the spam protection. The default time
is set to 5 minutes, you can deactivate the spam protection
by setting it to 0 minutes.
3) Some editors (Dreamweaver for instance) modify the code
without asking you, use another editor if you receive an
Parse Error after uploading the modified script.
4) You´ve entered a wrong 'URL to guestbook', don´t enter the
URL to the index.php of your guestbook, enter the URL that
opens (!) your guestbook (= URL to your MAINSCRIPT with
parameters if required).
5) If you must wait more than 5 seconds until the guestbook
appears, you probably have a problem with the hostname
resolving on your server. You can deactivate the hostname
resolving by changing this line
define ( "HOSTNAMERESOLVING" , "1" );
on the top of index.php, admin.php and screen.php to
define ( "HOSTNAMERESOLVING" , "0" );
The guestbook runs faster if you deactivate these
features:
Badword filter
Search
BBCode
Country
Link activation
Empty lines limiter
browscap.ini
6) Probably you´ve forgotten to change the constants at the top
of index.php. Read 3) in readme.txt.
Please note:
Don't enter a path in MAINSCRIPT, you just have to enter the
filename of the (top-level) script that includes index.php !
SCRIPTPATH is not the absolute path to the index.php of the
guestbook, it is the relative path from the script you´ve
entered as MAINSCRIPT to the index.php !
Use a path to include the index.php and no URL !
7) This happens, if the PHP-Interpreter finds an error in a
Skinfile. Usually this is because of an invalid function call.
Do the following:
Check in the skinfiles you´ve modified last, if all of the
Skin commands have the right syntax:
<?commandname("param1",...,"paramx")?>
Very often you only have forgotten the ) or ?< at the end of
the command or the commandname is wrong.
Another usual mistake is the use of an unescaped quote within
a string. Check all parameters of the Skin commands, if there
is a the same quote within a string that is used to enclose
the string. To avoid this error, replace the quote with the
other quote ' instead of ", or " instead of ', or add a
leading backslash (\) to the quote.
8) In any case you´ve to translate the files langindex.inc and
langcountry.inc in the lang folder of your guestbook. To make
the translation complete you should furthermore translate the
Skin you want to use: if there is a file called lang.inc in
the Skin directory, you only have to translate this file
(since Version 1.21 you can use the internal editor to do
this). If not you must search for text to translate in all of
the files in the Skin directory. Of course you will also have
to replace some of images that are used by the Skin to display
text.
9) Usually because of wrong permissions for the upload and the
upload/preview directory. Use chmod or your FTP client to
set the permission of both directories to 777.
10) You can use the chmod command or your FTP client to change
the permission of files and directories, please read the
manpage of chmod or the documentation of you client to find
out how to do this.
Here is an example for right permissions:
Guestbook dir 777
index.php 755
admin.php 755
install.php 755
functions.php 755
screen.php 755
ht_lock.php 777
ht_badwords.php 777
admin.css 755
lang dir 755
langadmin.php 755
langindex.php 755
langinstall.php 755
langcountry.php 755
skins dir 755
flags dir 755
upload dir 777
upload/preview dir 777
lang.inc and style.inc in your skin directory must also have
777, if you want to edit the files in the administration !
Use 755 instead of 777 for your guestbook directory if you get
an Internal Server Error (500) !
11) The YW Guestbook uses sessions to keep track of users that
are logged in. These sessions use a combination of a unique
session id and the users IP to identify each user. The script
make use of the IP as an extra safe-guard to help prevent
sessions being hijacked.
Unfortunately this only works when the users IP is constant as
they browse the administration. For most users this will be the
case. However certain providers route their users via a cluster
of proxys. In some cases, particularly AOL this results in
different IPs being forwarded as the user moves between pages.
The script takes account of this by not checking the entire IP
but only the first three bytes. Again in most cases this will
be fine. However again AOL uses IPs which can vary so much that
checking only the first two bytes results in a fairly static IP
being available for session validation.
If you are experiencing problems related to this you should open
admin.php and change the value of the IPBYTES constant on top of
the file from 3 to 2. Please note that reducing the IP
validation length does potentially increase the risk of sessions
being hijacked.
12) No, ask your Internet Service Provider what you have to enter.
13) Sure, but I can´t write you a custumized script for that.
Write your own, or just enter the old entries into your
YW Guestbook. Maybe there will be a import tool in future,
but till then you're on your own.
14) The YW Guestbook can send email two ways:
+ using the PHP mail() function
+ or directly via SMTP.
Some hosting providers limit the mail() function to prevent its
use in spamming, others may rename it or limit its
functionality. In either case you may need to make use of SMTP.
This requires that you have access to such a facility, e.g.
your hosting provider may provide one.
Before you try to use SMTP you should open the file
mail_sendmail.php with a text editor and change the line
define ( "CMDLINEPARAMETER" , "-f".RETURNPATH );
to
define ( "CMDLINEPARAMETER" , "" );
If that doesn't help you can try to use
define ( "HEADERSEPERATOR" , "\r\n" );
instead of
define ( "HEADERSEPERATOR" , "\n" );
Still no luck ? Then let's activate the SMTP support: set the
USESMTP constant on top of the file functions.php to 1. You can
enter your authentication datas and other SMTP settings in the
file mail_smtp.php which is located in the libs directory of
your guestbook. Please note that currently only the simple AUTH
method can be used for SMTP authorisation !
15) This is an annoying behaviour of XHTML document rendering in
the Internet Explorer, to avoid the scrollbars you must delete
the XHTML doctype declaration in your Skinfiles. If there is
USESCROLLBARCOLOR constant defined in the style.inc file, it´s
sufficient if you set this value to 1. If not you must search
and delete
<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN\"
"DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
in the files noFrames.php, contentFrame.php, menuFrame.php and
selectFrame.php.
16) The conformity is only given if you haven´t enabled certain
guestbook functions in the administration. All functions that
can lead to invalid XHTML have a warning in the description.
But even if you have all of these functions disabled, the
validation will not be successful since no XML declaration and
encoding attribute is used in the skinfiles. You can either
add these to the documents or use the Character Encoding
Override function (with iso-8859-1) of the W3C Validator to
receive valid documents.
Don't try to validate the demos on the YW Guestbook
website, they've colored scrollbars enabled and theirfore
doesn´t use a XHTML declaration !
17)
a) The reason for this error is a misconfigured php.ini
(typically on Windows machines). Open the file (located in
your Windows directory) with an editor and search for a line
starting with
session.save_path=
Enter a path to a temporary directory (e.g. c:\tmp), save the
file and check if the directory really exists.
b) The directories upload and upload/preview have the wrong
permissions (see questions about missing pictures and right
permissions above).
c) Could be a permission problem (see question about right
permissions)
d) If you have includeded the guestbook you must change the
constants on the top of index.php. Read readme.txt for more
details
e) This was a Safemode bug in earlier versions upgrade to the
latest version
f) Deactivate the hostname resolving (see question 5)
g) Your script has been modified by program that you've used
(download manager/editor/ftp client) try use other programs.
18) No, please keep your money for something more important !
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(c) 2005 by YahooWebs
www.yahoowebs.tk
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