Problems With Images Recently

[Chris Savage]

I haven't upgraded or migrated so as far as I know nothing has changed on my host, but for some reason in the last few days attaching images seems to be problematic.

When I click the image button and select and image I can double-click it and set the size, but when I am done editing the image is full-size and now appears as an attachment thumbnail at the end of the message. This just started happening and it seems to make it so that when I edit the message I can no longer double-click the image to to change the properties. Any idea what might be causing this?

Here's an example message on my site.

[Chris Savage]

Here's another post on the CMS section that has the same problem. My wife added the photos normally and then set them to medium and gave them a description. Once she hit save they went full size and could no longer be formatted. Any ideas what might be causing this?

[Chris Savage]

Looking at the source of the page there is a difference in how images are displayed compared to before the issue. My wife's previous article contained photos and when right-clicking and viewing the source in chrome a photo before the issue shows the following code:

<img src="http://www.savagecircuits.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2278&amp;d=1430419560" border="0" alt="" class="size_medium" title="CLICK TO ENLARGE">

Whereas the recent article with the problems looks like this:

<img src="http://www.savagecircuits.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=2303&amp;stc=1" border="0" alt="">

[kh99]

I'm not very familiar with the CMS, but I tried to figure it out by looking at the code. Try editing one of the articles with the fixed image, set the editor to the mode where you see the bbcode (the A/A button on the left), then if the code looks like [attach]123[/attach], try changing it to [attach=config]123[/attach]. That seems to be what allows it to be edited, but I wasn't able to figure out what causes '=config' not to be there.

[Chris Savage]

My host was running PHP 5.3.29 and at some point changed to PHP 5.4.4. I can't confirm yet that was what caused the issue, but I know the latest patch mentions bug fixes for PHP 5.4 so I wonder if there is an issue with the latest version? Could that have caused this?

As for your question on the BBCODE, the pictures actually show [IMG] bbcode, not [ATTACH].

[Chris Savage]

Yep, I've confirmed that whenever I add an image it no longer uses the [ATTACH] tags but rather uses [IMG] instead. Any idea what would cause this?

[kh99]

It seems likely that it's related to the php version change. What vb version do you have? If you have 4.2.2, maybe try adding this line to your config.php, if it's not there already:

define('SKIP_DS_ERRORS', true);

I can never remember which php versions work with which vb versions, but it could be that with php 5.4 you need to upgrade to vb4.2.3.

[Chris Savage]

Sorry, I had links to my site in the first posts so you could see the issue and version I am running, which is V4.2.2. Upgrading to V4.2.3 would mean using a beta version with known issues. Since the insert button results in [IMG] tags instead of [ATTACH] tags I figured that would really spell things out. I guess at this point I am stuck since I don't know what caused the issue ergo how to fix it. My host switched back to PHP V5.3 and that did not solve the problem.

[kh99]

Sorry I didn't think of looking on your site for the version - I usually do that. Anyway, hopefully someone else will recognize the issue.

[Chris Savage]

kh99...I appreciate your help. I really wished I had seen at least one reply from someone at vBulletin, but I didn't, which was a bit disappointing. However in the interest of helping anyone else who comes across this problem here's what happened and why.

One day I noticed that when I added an image/picture to a post or CMS article that after I submitted the post the image went full size and editing would not allow me to change the properties of the image. I could not figure out why but did find out my host did some updates, but they weren't clear on what. kh99 asked me something that made me realize that these images were no longer being tagged as [ATTACH] in the BB code, but rather as [IMG] which doesn't have any special properties. That led me to believe it was related to the PHP which could be affected by changes.

I am running vBulletin V4.2.2 and my host had been running PHP V5.4.29 but had recently updated to V5.4.4 for security reasons. When I mentioned the issue they tried going back to what they thought was the previous version, which was V5.3.x but that gave the same results. So finally they did a restore from archives of the PHP directory which put it back to V5.4.29 and now everything works fine.

Furthermore if I edit the adversely affected messages I can remove the images and then go back and add them in again and they work fine. I can even add them from the Manage Attachments box insert inline and they work now. I hope this helps someone.

Unfortunately since nobody from vBulletin gave me any official information it seems that vBulletin V4.2.2 is not compatible with the newest version of PHP and my host plans on updating soon. They're asking me to fix my software, which I can't. So I may have to call the site a loss and move to something else, which would be sad, but I can't run the site with these issues.

[Wayne Luke]

There isn't really enough information in this thread to solve your problem. I can't recreate the issue running vBulletin 4.2.3 Beta 4 running under PHP 5.5.23. Unfortunately, 4.2.2 won't run properly on that version of PHP. An exact list of steps to recreate the issue would help. Every step and button pressed from the time you press "New Thread" to the "Submit" button.

You'll probably need to open a support ticket so someone can look at your actual server configuration. vBulletin 4.2.2 should work without issue on PHP 5.4.X but individual server configurations often change things.

[Chris Savage]

Wayne,

There is plenty of information. I solved the issue on my own. Quite simply, as I said in my previous post, vBulletin V4.2.2, which I am running, is not compatible with PHP V5.4.40, causing image attachments to become [IMG] tagged instead of [ATTACH] tagged. This applies to both new posts as well as editing posts that were previously unaffected. I checked other hosting sites and everyone seems to have the latest version of PHP, which means migrating my site wouldn't solve the issue.

A similar situation in the past caused my website to become unstable and crash causing me to lose everything on it. Since then I had to start over and now this issue has come up again in a similar manner. Ever since I have had the vBulletin software installed I have had to solve my own issues based on suggestions from other members. Not once have I gotten any useful help from vBulletin. The last time I did get a reply it was to "ignore all errors", which that setting did stop the errors, however I felt that was like sweeping dirt under the rug instead of cleaning it up. In any event my site has a limited time left while I attempt to backup as many posts as I can and then I am moving to new software.