Thread

trcpusa - I knew I’d seen a similar issue, and it seems to be regarding the same site.  Here is the thread.  Are you still working through this same issue? If so, I may merge these and take it up from where Derek was helping you.

hello -

no, it has never worked to my knowledge. do you have any ideas on how to correct it? or what the problem(s) may be?

thank you

julia

hello lisa -

yes it is the same problem. sorry for any confusion

thanks

julia

Alright, I’ve merged these.  I’d like to take up from where Derek was - this was his last response:

So ImageMagick works, but still leaves the corrupted images?  I don’t suppose you have another server, maybe even on a different network that you have EE installed on to compare?  I mean, it’s working here, and this is the first occurrence I recall seeing this behavior reported by a user, but I’m afraid I’m not entirely sure what could be the underlying issue.

You could try:

/path/to/imagemagick/convert -quality 90 -resize 400x300 source.jpg dest.jpg 2>&1;

Do you have another server/installation that this could be tested on, to determine if it is environmental?  Thanks!

hello lisa -

ah well here is what has happened. Tripp was our former IT guru (and the person who installed and started this thread etc). Unfortunately, he is no longer with our company and our new IT person does not start until Friday. I do not have access to any server etc, nor pretend to understand expression beyond the basics. We were looking for guidance on what could potentially be the problem so that when our IT person started he would be able to pick up and fix it.

Is there anything, other than what this thread suggests, that I could do to get this process started or should I just show this thread to our IT person on Friday and let you speak with him?

thanks

Julia

Hi, Julia—unfortunately, you’ve got a fairly unique issue that we haven’t seen before, and so it’s going to take a bit more advanced troubleshooting.  It may be best to wait for your IT guy, unless you are comfortable setting up a second installation to see if you can reproduce the problem there.

Hello again Lisa -

Ah….I think I will pass this on to Matt (who is our new IT person). Matt will not be in until Friday and it might be Monday or Tuesday before he can get back to this. So, if you don’t mind, please just leave this thread open and I will forward him to it. I will try to make sure he at least responds by Tuesday. I appreciate all your help!

thanks

Julia

Hi, Julia -

No worries.  I’m sorry this one is taking so long to work out; you really got a new one here.  We’ll get it, though!

Thanks for working with us on this. =)

Hello,

This is Matt. I am taking over getting this situation handled. Thank you for being patient and being diligent about fixing our problem. I have had an opportunity to read over this thread and get up to speed with what’s going on.

This is an issue we need expedited because it has not been fixed in over a month. From my observation it looks like our members that use the forums have an option to attach an image with their post which should display when they post their forum thread. No dice. All they get is a corrupted file “x” where the image should be. I have messed around with this a little bit and have the same problem. I should be able to attach an image by browsing for the image file I want to upload, click the attach button, and have the option to preview or submit the thread and see the image that I attached in my thread.

The only way I have got this to work is by copying a pasting html from an image depository like Photo Bucket

IDK, but where ever the file is going when an user is uploading the attachment it is going somewhere on our server….where? What folder does it go to? How does EE call that path and display the image in the forum? That seems to be at the heart of the issue Or,could this be a problem with our hosting company and it be a permission issue?

Is it even a good idea to allow members of our forums to upload images to our server? This eats up space right? What concerns should we have in the future? Will we need an extra server or many to house these images?

You’ve talked about having us create a testing server. Do I have to ask my hosting company to set this up or can I just create a new folder within our site, call it test and copy the entire site to that folder so that you can do the tests you need to do?

Another thing: Our typical members are not necessarily computer savvy. I say that in the nicest way. This formatting row in the forums that allows an user to bold, italicize, underline text etc. is way above the knowledge of our typical user. If you’re not a web designer and under the age of 45 (which are our users) they’re not going to understand what these html tags, <b> <i> <u> @ <a> are….how about changing to say “bold” “italics” “underline” etc. The “guided” and Normal radio buttons are not straight forward either. There is a tag for images and its beyond me how to make it work for our intent and purposes. I tried clicking the button img] which gives me an opening and closing image tag, img] ..well, then what?

I believe that EE’s user interface needs to be simple, and from my observation it is not.  Not for our members. Can I customize any of the usability of the site to streamline the process of how an user would post a thread in the forum?

Let’s start with getting this attach image button to work. This is mission critical right now. Thank you for your help. Please email me back at:

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Hi, mames - let’s begin by focusing on the issue of uploading files.  You can start a new thread with your other questions, so that we don’t confuse the matter.

The recommendation for a test installation still stands.  What you would want is a fully new, fresh installation unlinked to your current setup.  So you’d need a new folder and a new database and install ExpressionEngine and the forums there.  Then create a forum and try uploading an image.  This will tell us if your installation is itself having an issue, or if the hosting environment itself is.

Thank you!

Before I go through the work of setting this up, let’s make sure this isn’t a permission or coding setting in EE. I found this: (pay attention to the bold code, does a path have to specified between the quotes?; i.e. ‘var/www/html/images/forum_attachments’

File: core.messages.php
——————————————————————————-
Purpose: Private Messages
=====================================================
*/

if ( ! defined(‘EXT’))
{
exit('Invalid file request');
}

class Messages {

  // URL Writing
  var $allegiance         = ‘cp’;          // Side of the divide: cp or user
  var $CP             = FALSE;        // CP Object
  var $base_url         = ‘’;          // Base URL used throughout
  var $form_url         = ‘’;          // For CP Forms, since Rick was a doofus and changed how they work
  var $path           = ‘member/’;      // User Side Path
  var $request         = ‘inbox’;        // User Side Request
  var $cur_id           = ‘’;          // User Side ID, if any
  var $theme_class     = ‘profile_theme’;
  var $images_folder     = ‘’;          // Location of Forum Images

Instead of going through the code, you should check the Preferences within ExpressionEngine. You should never need to go into the code itself.

Go here:

Modules ›  Discussion Forum ›  dem Discourse ›  Forum Board Preferences

and choose Default Preferences -> Attachment Preferences, you’ll see an attachment path there, make sure that is correct, and make sure where that is pointing to is fully writable (777).

ok, now we’re getting somewhere. Unfortunately, the path is correct as long as you agree to this being a proper relative path structure:

/var/www/html/images/forum_attachments/

Can it not be an absolute path? ie and why not?

________________________________________________________

What do you mean by ‘full writes (777)’ please talk simple language here. does that mean that I have to get on the server and set full permission and writes on this folder where the forum attachments are?

__________________________________________________________

and you are right, I shouldn’t ever have to get in the coding but in a week of working here I had to already to attempt to fix a communication error with sending html newsletters through yahoo by going back there and messing with the coding.

ok, now we’re getting somewhere. Unfortunately, the path is correct as long as you agree to this being a proper relative path structure:

/var/www/html/images/forum_attachments/

Can it not be an absolute path? =  and why not?

________________________________________________________

What do you mean by ‘full writes (777)’ please talk simple language here. does that mean that I have to get on the server and set full permission and writes on this folder where the forum attachments are?

__________________________________________________________

and you are right, I shouldn’t ever have to get in the coding but in a week of working here I had to already to attempt to fix a communication error with sending html newsletters through yahoo by going back there and messing with the coding.

Yes, it can be an absolute path, and I use one in my own installation.

And yes, the forum_attachment folder needs full write permissions of 777 so that ExpressionEngine can write to that folder. In Transmit, I do this by FTP’ing into the site, going to the images folder, right clicking on forum_attachments and choosing Get Info, then making the permissions “777”.