A few threads that can ONLY be viewed when logged out (post upgrade)

[imahawki]

I've got users reporting that there are a few threads they can't get into. The page just goes blank and they never load. After some troubleshooting, it appears that they can be accessed when logged out but not when logged in. I'm getting the same behavior as the admin. Would love to not lose these threads, is there any way to fix this?

Eventually this error is displayed
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/homethf1/public_html/includes/vb5/template.php(329) : eval()'d code on line 127

[glennrocksvb]

Increase max_execution_time in php.ini on the server. If you don't have access to it, then ask your host to change it. If you are on a shared plan, web host usually does not allow changing this setting as it will affect other sites on the same server.

[imahawki]

Update... I'm not longer getting that error message but the threads still aren't loading.

Is there some difference in a thread load query when a user is not logged? All the threads in question load fine when I log out. They certainly don't take 30 seconds to load...

[Mark.B]

Have you got many thread subscriptions?

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM subscribediscussion

[imahawki]

Results = 149748

[Mark.B]

The reason I asked that - I've seen this on a number of sites and its often been down to high numbers of subscriptions on the thread. Hence why you can view it as a guest, because it's not bothering to look at the subscriptions.

To test this - take a copy of your subscribeddiscussion table - then truncate it.(Which empties it so make 100% sure you have a back up of it!),
Clear the system cache and then try to to load the thread.
If it loads, that's your problem Obviously, users have then lost their subscriptions but many will be years old and out of date anyhow.
If it doesn't fix it - restore the subscribeddiscussions table back.

[imahawki]

is there a way to clear subs on just those threads? Cany I run the truncate query with a parameter that's like the thread ID?

[Mark.B]

You can try to pull the count for just that thread, that might indicate if it has a high number of subscriptions:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM subscribediscussion WHERE discussionid = xxxx

Change xxx to the id number of the thread.

[imahawki]

There are only 40 subs on that thread. Its only a problem on larger threads but those particular threads don't seem to have a large subscriber count... just a lot of posts relative to other threads on my forum.

Also, it isn't related to the number of subs I have on my account because the thread won't load with my test account either.

[imahawki]

Increase max_execution_time in php.ini on the server. If you don't have access to it, then ask your host to change it. If you are on a shared plan, web host usually does not allow changing this setting as it will affect other sites on the same server.

On a whim I tried this. I do have a virtual host so I can control this setting. I quadrupled the time out and it made no difference. Everything just spun.

The reason I asked that - I've seen this on a number of sites and its often been down to high numbers of subscriptions on the thread. Hence why you can view it as a guest, because it's not bothering to look at the subscriptions.

To test this - take a copy of your subscribeddiscussion table - then truncate it.(Which empties it so make 100% sure you have a back up of it!),
Clear the system cache and then try to to load the thread.
If it loads, that's your problem Obviously, users have then lost their subscriptions but many will be years old and out of date anyhow.
If it doesn't fix it - restore the subscribeddiscussions table back.

Good news bad news. The good news is that I was able to successfully copy, truncate and test and then restore the subscribediscussions table. The bad news is it didn't fix the issue. And I did clear the system cache while the table was cleared. No dice.

[imahawki]

Update: some users CAN access the threads while logged in. They report NO slowness or abnormality at all. Just some users including me cannot load at least a half dozen threads that I know of now.

I created a new test ID and it can access the threads in question with no problem.

However my own ID, as well as a different test ID I set up at the time the forum was originally launched in 2007 cannot. That old test ID only has a few posts and subscriptions.

My brother, who is a member of my forum, can access the threads with no problem. His ID has thousands of posts, hundreds of subscriptions, and is as old as my ID.

Can an admin maybe update the thread title? It appears that it has nothing to do with being logged in or not. Its just some IDs cannot access threads over a certain post count (somewhere over 300 posts which is not a huge amount).

[imahawki]

RESOLVED:

I got frustrated with why this seem to be USER related and nothing else (not browser or IP or any other setting). So I dumped the user table to excel and started filtering it. Turns out EVERY user that was having problems had maxposts set to 0 and everyone else had it set to -1. So I set the value to -1 for everyone and it is working.

[Wayne Luke]

RESOLVED:

I got frustrated with why this seem to be USER related and nothing else (not browser or IP or any other setting). So I dumped the user table to excel and started filtering it. Turns out EVERY user that was having problems had maxposts set to 0 and everyone else had it set to -1. So I set the value to -1 for everyone and it is working.

That is weird. Did you make a backup before upgrading? Did the users have these same settings?

[imahawki]

Yes, made a backup, upgrade went without a hitch. Not even sure what maxposts does but setting to -1 fixed it. Also ONE user out of all my mysers had a maxposts of 30. Very odd. This was originally a vB3 forum. Its been up and running for 10 years. Sometimes there are some gremlins post upgrade. This one was very frustrating...