Nerdy things going on in my Links2 database.

I thought i had it all clear and it sure works on my main site, the stopping of all the stuff like "rating" what's new" and even the "backup".

I have tried it first at my backup trial server and it seemed to work fine, but now that i wanted to try out something and make a TEST ADDITION to the database via the online HTML form i get again these

add_error messages

• Hits (Can not be left blank)
• ReceiveMail (Can not be left blank)

now i just come from several hours of sipping through all the posts about this in the forum that i have parcipitated in plus i have triple double checked all my files and compared them to the working version, they are identical!

So, why am i getting the above messages anyway, in what file are they produced???



Thanks for tips

sorry you had to spend hours and hours and hours looking for that error. As for your post you were not real clear on how it was working at your "main site."

since we don't know what your files look like anymore, I am not going to spend the time trying to duplicate what you did to them - I doubt that I could duplicate your work anyway. So I can't reproduce your error. I know what the problem is and how to fix it for those who have not modified their Links 2 files. But that is a useless suggestion for your situation. And I'm sure you don't want to spend more wasted hours on this problem.

Anything that I would suggest would be pure speculation on my part. That means you would be better off to stop reading what I have written right now and move to another msg post. If you read past this point, you do so with the full knowledge that what I have to say probalby will not help you and that if you follow them, you will probably waste a lot more of your time and probably not solve your problem.

The following suggestions are pure guesses on my part. If you spend hours and hours and hours on them and they don't correct your problem, don't say anything nasty. I will tell you up front the probably won't help you.

run a search on all the files again - all the cgi and pl files. search for the words Hits and ReceiveMail.

Also search the html files. Pay particularly close attention to the add.html file when searching for the above words.

I did tell you that it would be a waste of time to read to this point in my msg because I have no idea what I am talking about. Why did you read this far!



It is way to early in the day for me to be working on serious stuff like this. I need a cup of coffee...or two or three.


Gene
"The older I get, the more I admire competence, just simple competence in any field from adultery to zoology."

Do you have the same number of fields in your test links as there is in the main one? I am referring to how it looks in the db files, with the pipe seperators. But, you did say the files are identicle, so...

How come I spent four hours trying to set my system up on a new ethernet card/router/cable modem, and went to bed with it not working, but this morning it works on the second try??? Gremlins!!!


Leonard
aka PerlFlunkie

Thanks for the 2 replies.
In fact i have spent several more hours after posting my question sipping through the links2 files - and found the problem eventually in links.def
(if i remember the name now correctly)
where it says hits 10 10 1 0 or so,
apparently i had to use 10 10 0 0
for that and also further down in that
same file
i had to change from hits = "No" to "0"

that was it.

Funny thing is that on my main site i di not have to do this (on another server) it worked just anyway, that's why the confusion.

that was going to be my original suggestion and is the standard corrective action for the error msg you received. but as I recall you had done some extensive deleting and I was not sure if you had left that in with all the extraneous code related to that field.

Glad you got it working.


Gene
"The older I get, the more I admire competence, just simple competence in any field from adultery to zoology."

So far so good and i sure hope i don't offend the "police" in the GossT forum by asking a question that just keeps on roating on my mind but i never actually researched if someone else has posted anything about it before:

If i wanted to seperate the submisssions into
A: free submissions for non-commercial sites
and
B: paid subs for everything in commerce,
is something like it possible with some mods in Links 2 ????

the only way I can think of doing something like that is to have two different "add" links to click on. One that would take the user to the add page for the "free" listing and the other that would take the user to the add page for the "commercial" listing. Or use a select statement if you have more than 2.

You would then set up the database fields to include both the free and the commercial fields. One of the fields could be a "type" listing and could be either a Yes/No field or a select field with more than two options ( free, personal, business, commercial etc. )

The add page would include only those fields that relate to that type.

The modify page and the actual listing ( link.html ) could use the IF statement to control the display of the data ( make sure you download the enhanced tempate parser in the Resources section ).

<%if type eq 'free'%>put the free stuff here
<%endif%>
<%if type eq 'commercial'%>put the commercial stuff here
<%endif%>
<%if type eq 'personal'%>put the personal stuff here
<%endif%>

Or you could setup two (or more) databases - one for each type. But that seems a more difficult process. You could search for something like "two database" as I have seen some posts related to that.

As for the "police" they generally show up only when a newbie comes on board and needs to learn how to do things ( at least try to find if the question has been asked before - there are over 50,000 posts ) or when the poster just doesn't show some basic common courtesy.


Gene
"The older I get, the more I admire competence, just simple competence in any field from adultery to zoology."

Thanks for that pretty good hint,
2 add forms, i guess i will have a long trial and error road ahead once again, but you never never know if you never never try isn't it.