vBulletin .:. counter bug

GeX · 22 Jul 2009 at 16:18

hi all.

another forum that i am a member of (can i link to other forums on here? i won't at first but if i can, i will add it) is having issues with counters.

When threads span upwards of around 18 pages, when looking at the forum (not the thread itself) and hit 'last page' then the link messes up.

For example, one thread is 29 pages long. If i click on the 'last page' link then i get;

http://www.abc1234forum.com/subforum/178435-thread-title-28.:.html

If i skip to the last page and look at the threads page counter then it says;

Page 29 of 28.:

Once a thread reaches a higher number of pages (i don't know how many) the problem goes away

I'm not an admin on there, but know it's a bug that's been plauging the place for a while so am trying to help out in narrowing it down.

The problem has recently appeared on 'post counts' and also 'thanks' totals well.

Anyone ideas, is it a vBulletin / php / server bug?

NathanT · 22 Jul 2009 at 17:54

I'd check for any server changes on php version and any version upgrades on the forum software.

You say problems have started appearing when they have been fine for a while, this would almost guarantee that something has changed (as above php ver or forum ver) or somebody has been editing the code. If its the latter, tell them to put back what they did and est their modding on a localhost or mirror first

unknowndomain · 22 Jul 2009 at 18:40

ive seen that issue on other forums my self not sure if it was or was not vbulletin

GeX · 22 Jul 2009 at 18:41

just been chatting with the admin, and nothing was updated that brought about the bug - but everything has since been updated to try and get rid of it. it's hosted on a dedicated server, which the admin owns and it's him that's done all the coding on it. it's looking like one of the apps that has been added is causing the issue, but why is it presenting as a core error. it is quite a large forum, (65k members, 5k active users)

NathanT · 22 Jul 2009 at 20:29

Strange then..

Not sure how vbulletin handles purged members and or posts.

I know for example certain things (eg stats) are sometimes inserted in the database to ease server load rather than being done dynamically, if your admin has added a mod somewhere that has possibly overwritten one of the database writes could be one reason why your counts are out.

Pagnation though is normally done via the results that the database pass back, so should ring true each result. I'm wondering if it could be some freaky sort of caching issue.

NathanT · 22 Jul 2009 at 20:38

Just asked a server admin friend of mine. He says when he used to use vBulliten he had similar issues, its something to do with a global ignore issue.
You can find many reports and issues with the brilliantly named "Tachy goes to Coventry"