internal error when browsing without being logged in

[plongeur.com]

Hi,

I have an "internal error" message when trying to access a discussion without being logged in :


When logged in with a standard user the thread displays OK :


It is killing my SEO as google treats it as soft 404.
I have to say it looks like it appears after clearing the cache (to treat another issue with renaming a channel) but i can't be sure.

[plongeur.com]

a test if URL : https://www.plongeur.com/forums/foru...C3%A9e?t=10387

[plongeur.com]

I went in debug mode and give it a look, but i have to say it is beyond my understandign of vbulletin, can you help ? :

Debug Information

• Page ID: 133
• Parent ID: 132
• Page Template ID: 4
• Route ID: 149
• Page Type: default
• Screen Layout ID: 1
• Screen Layout Template: screenlayout_display_full
• Channel ID: 57
• Node ID: 8036
• Database Asserts: 0 (?)
• AJAX Requests: 2
• Facebook Active: No (Not enabled or no appid & secret set)
• Style ID: 36
• Templates/Renders: 35/112
• CSS Templates: 6
• JS Files: 5
• Included Files: 160
• Autoloaded Classes: 151
• Current Time: Tue, 02 May 2017 19:40:33 +0200
• Page Time: 0.3562

An internal error has occurred and the module cannot be displayed. Template: widget_conversationdisplay => display_contenttype_conversationreply_threadview_Text => display_contenttype_threadview_header => conversation_userinfo => conversation_profilefields Controller: user Method: fetchProfileInfo Arguments: Array ( [0] => ) Errors:
Array ( [0] => Array ( [0] => invalid_data_w_x_y_z [1] => 0 [2] => userid [3] => vB_Api_User [4] => fetchProfileInfo ) )

[Wayne Luke]

Do guests have permission to view the parent forum?

[plongeur.com]

the rights are inherited and my "non enregistrés / non connectés" group (n°1) is allowed to see channels and discussions.


If i check on the "view permissions" screen, it says "yes" when i list rights for this group.
However, in this screen if i select both the group and the channel i have this :


Now, when i go to the "quick Channel Permission Setup" and set these 3 settings manually, i don't have the error anymore and get

Sorry, you are not authorized to view this page.
Please try logging in or logging in as different user Login or send a message to the admin

Which is just crazy given i just gave the exact opposite rights.

Would there be a way to rebuild rights for a group or something like that ?

[plongeur.com]

If i browse the parent forum as guest i can see all discussions and i can see their content if i want.
This issue seems to happen with a few threads (around 150 of more than 60 000 if the google search console gathered all of them) that are not in the same parent forum...

[Wayne Luke]

If the topics are "Unapproved" or "Deleted" then Guests should get an Unauthorized error. That doesn't seem to be the case according to your image but there may be a flag out of place. You can try unapproving and then approving the target topic as well as deleting and undeleting it.

[plongeur.com]

i tried both but i still get the "internal error" when tring to see the discussion as guest.

[Wayne Luke]

Since you have ticket support, you should create a ticket and someone can look at your system more closely. The link is in the footer below.

[plongeur.com]

OK, answer from support is to migrate my database to UTF8... It is basically a joke as they do not at all explain why this would be a charset related issue.

I will not do a major and risky change to my site to probably (not) solve a mino rissue.
It really looks like they stop at the first thing they found and did not investigate at all.
i am very disapointed.

[plongeur.com]

ok i might have overreacted, support is doing its job now

[Wayne Luke]

The issue is most likely caused by having database fields in different collations and character sets. When these fields are combined in a single query, MySQL returns an error. Of course, we don't show this error to the end user because it isn't very pretty. So we catch it and show a plain error message. When you turn on debug mode for the system, then you can see the error. The only way to fix this is to convert all the fields in the database to the same collation. At this time, we recommend that all database fields use the UTF8MB4 collation. This will allow for better support in the future. In order to protect against future upgrades, the database and tables should also have their collations changed. We don't force this because 1) It will cause this error to be more prevalent and 2) The system administrator may have reasons that other collations are used.

We won't ask you to make changes to your database unless it is absolutely necessary.

[plongeur.com]

I actually won't move to utf8 until the URLs problem is fixed (supposedly in 5.3.1).
Now, i may not understand evrything but it is unclear to me how this could be a charset issue given the same thraed is well displayed as authenticated user and has an error as guest.

The database uses different charsets because vbulletin is still in latin and other parts of the site are in utf8, but all vbulletin tables are using the same charset and collation so it shouldn't be an issue.

I did go in debug bug and the error is pasted above, i dont see any DBerror in this message but maybe i did something wrong.

[Wayne Luke]

The option in 5.3.1 doesn't change your UTF-8 URLs. It allows you to remove the text from the URLs completely and route by the Node ID. UTF-8 will continue to be encoded in URLs because that is how it is supposed to be done. The browser should interpret that to display it correctly. Not all do at this time.

Anyway, you can fix the collation on your database or continue to have a system that doesn't work. It doesn't have to be UTF-8 but you'll have fewer issues if the entire system uses the same collation. We will use UTF-8 for AJAX and JSON. You should follow the advice given in your ticket.