Trouble changing to subdomain

[dryeyezone]

I know this has come up a few times and I've tried searching the forums and reading related threads but I'm still missing something.

We are moving our domain to a new host but we want to leave our forum where it is, so we've set up a subdomain. The subdomain is pointed to the forum root directory and that part works fine.. until we change the URLs in admincp options..

Then we run into problems others have had with internal server 500 errors and the forum not rendering properly (as if there are 404 errors, no styles etc). So if I'm understanding correctly it is trying to find files with the old address.. but in our case none of the files have moved and we haven't redirected the old domain to the new host yet so all old URLs should still work?

I've been in contact with our host's support to make sure allow_override is set in our php.ini and that mod_rewrite is enabled. I reinstalled the install folder and tools.php to reset the URLs but got the same result as setting the URLs in admincp > Options.. but so far I'm having no luck.

Now that I've found tools.php I no longer need to delve into the database to fix the URLs every time I try to switch them over (thank goodness).. and for the record that's the ONLY bit in the database I did anything with...just changing references from the new URLs back to the old ones.

So I guess my questions would be.. what other information can I give that might be helpful? and of course, what am I missing??

I did try setting the paths in config but that resulted in no change (either way).

Thanks

[Wayne Luke]

Make sure the Cookie domain and cookie path options are set to their defaults under Settings -> Options -> Cookie and HTTP Header Options.

[dryeyezone]

Make sure the Cookie domain and cookie path options are set to their defaults under Settings -> Options -> Cookie and HTTP Header Options.

Checked.. path is / and domain is blank. I assume those are default..

[dryeyezone]

Further observations:

Tried setting the cookie domain to the site domain name .dryeyzone.com with no obvious change in behavior.

When URLs are set to subdomain trying to navigate anywhere gets a 500 error. Even though the front page seems to load fine (minus styles of course)

[Mark.B]

A 500 error is a generic server error, rather than a vBulletin error. Because it is generic, it doesn't tell us anything about the actual problem.

Check the server error logs (ask your host if unsure) for what is showing there. This will tell us the actual error.

[dryeyezone]

Asked our host about it the other day, they claimed it was caused by vBulletin.. but I'll see if I can find the error logs.

[Mark.B]

Asked our host about it the other day, they claimed it was caused by vBulletin.. but I'll see if I can find the error logs.

Hosts always say that. If it was a bug in the software, we'd have thousands of customers reporting it.

[dryeyezone]

Hosts always say that. If it was a bug in the software, we'd have thousands of customers reporting it.

heheh yeah I bet. Ok, so I was finally able to dig up a very vague error log and got on with our host's support again and after some effort we managed to dig up an actual probable cause. "too many redirects" So it seems we need to add some code to our .htaccess

Unfortunately, I know only just enough to be dangerous with things like this.. so some assistance would be very much appreciated. Our current .htaccess doesn't have any redirects configured.. The forum is installed in /public_html/talk but we want the URL to be forum.dryeyezone.com

Edit: Or wait.. the .htaccess does have the line..

RewriteBase /talk/

Am I correct in thinking I need to change this or comment it out? Since we're switching to forum.dryeyezone.com from dryeyezone.com/talk/ ?

[Mark.B]

I would comment it out completely initially.
You also need to update the URL settings in the admincp BEFORE moving the site. Note that the third of those settings has '/core' at the end and that must remain the case.

[dryeyezone]

Yes, I turned the site off, used tools.php (so very convenient!) to update the URLs and then commented that bit out of the .htaccess and.. everything now appears to be running smoothly.


SO glad that's done. Thanks.

[Wayne Luke]

Further observations:

Tried setting the cookie domain to the site domain name .dryeyzone.com with no obvious change in behavior.

When URLs are set to subdomain trying to navigate anywhere gets a 500 error. Even though the front page seems to load fine (minus styles of course)

I don't recommend changing these values at all. Unless you have multiple vBulletins installed on the same domain, there is no purpose to do so with the way cookies are currently handled. Even if you have multiple vBulletins installed, it is easier to manage them just by giving them unique cookie prefixes and not worrying with these variables. They really should be removed or at least hidden as unsafe variables.