UBB.Developers Forums UBB.threads 7 Development How Do I? Private to Public?

I recently invited another author to my messageboard; to create excitement for her, I set-up her forum in advance and called it "Top Secret." I made it private so that I could go in and play around with stuff (getting it right, etc.) ... and then, I figured when I was ready to reveal who she is, all I'd have to do is turn the private forum into a public one.

Wrong! I had nothing but a bunch of symbols and letters when I opened the thread!

So my question is this: once you make a forum private, can it be reverted back to a public one?

(I solved my "problem" by quickly creating a new forum, choosing the template for the forum, and transferring the threads from the private to the new forum, but I'd like to avoid this in the future!)

To diagnose problems with UBB.classic, we'll need a full URL to your UBB and where to find the issue.

Try rebuilding forum stat files if your using version 6.0 or above.

No need Greg. It's a software architecture problem in UBB.

Here's the cause. When you make a forum "private" (let's assume this is Forum #1), the data files for the private forum are tuck under a randomly named directory directly underneath ubb/Forum1 which contains the data for each thread (call this directory where private threads are stored as ubb/Forum1/4jdsk04). When you change this Forum #1 from private to public, UBB now reads the threads files from ubb/Forum1 - it doesn't move files in 4jdsk04 into ubb/Forum1. As a result, it looks as if the private files have just disappeared (the data files will still be in 4jdsk04 though); they are not moved when you change from Private to Public.

Therefore, the softare architectural answer (the easy answer):

1. If you switch the forum from private to public, authorized users will only be able to view/add/edit/delete/... the public directory, not the private directory.
2. If you switch the forum from public to private, authorized users will only be able to view/add/edit/delete/... the thread data stored in the private directory, not the public directory.

Please LMK if you have any other questions.

qasic

Thanks for the explanation, Qasic!

That really threw me for a loop yesterday. All my hard work--GONE!

But then I reverted the original forum back to being "private" and the files I needed were there--so it wasn't difficult creating a "new" forum.

Lessons learned.

Well duh, Q.