[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

https://buddypress.org/forums/topic.php?id=1969&replies=2#post-10463

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

On another topic…is it good to create a ginormous robots.txt file? I’m wondering if that slows down your site at all.

I would place only what you need in your robots.txt file. The link I provide was just to show you that there are many, many bad bots out there. I would not implement the robots.txt file they recommend.

The fact hat yu are getting 500 instead of 404 error codes is a good clue. There must be some specific error showing up in Apache’s error log whenever that is fired. Please create the 500 error again, notice the exact time, and then check the log. What does it say?

Also, sometimes you can get a 500 error if directory or file permissions are not properly set. Where appropriate, they should be 755. Everything in /plugins/ that is BuddyPress specific should be set to 755.

A couple of additional questions while I’m at it:

1. Have you searched the WPMU forums for 500 Internal Server Error thread? I think this may be more related to you WPMu install than BuddyPress?
2. Are you using some special permalink structure? That should not be causing the lack of 404’s but every bit of info helps.
3. Did you carefully follow the readme.txt file that comes with WPMU?
4. Is this a new WPMU 2.7.1 install, or did you upgrade from an older version?

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

Rich-

Just a couple more thoughts while I think about your situation.

Have you determined the offending party that keeps triggering the redirects? Is it Googlebot-image? Have you disallowed it from searching your site with a robots.txt file?

If so, then it probably is not actually the Googlebot-image spider but a spam spider attempting to masquerade as the Google image bot. A robots.txt file cannot stop a spider from crawling your site. Reputable search engines honor the robots.txt file requests, unscrupulous ones ignore it.

For your information:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/search_engine_spiders/3204487.htm

http://perishablepress.com/press/2009/03/29/4g-ultimate-user-agent-blacklist/

Are you using Firefox? With Firefox and the Web Develoepr Add-on, you can get a lot of information about errors.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

Westpointer-

This sounds like an interesting plugin. Thanks for your contribution!

Please consider submitting it to the WordPress plugin repository, tagged BuddyPress, when you feel it is ready to go. I’m sure many people will find this useful.

I will be interested in using this plugin myself on a new site I’ll be developing in about 2 months.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

I am using WPMU 2.7.1 and Buddy Press 1.0-RC1.

I assume you mean BuddyPress 1.0, the public release version. If you truly are using 1.0-RC1, then I’d advise you to upgrade to the public release version when you get WPMU functioning properly.

If you are upgrading from RC1, use these instructions.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

@Erich73-

This is really a WPMU issue as the configuration files play a big role in getting multi-language support successfully setup.

Here are a few links that may help:

Home

http://www.poplarware.com/languageplugin.html

I would contact the people behind these projects and ask them if they’re working on BuddyPress integration.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

Boy, other than coding a special function that checks to see is a user has filled in all required profile fields upon log in, I’m not sure at this point. What does happen in this scenario though is that the next time a user edits their profile data, they will not be able to save any changes unless they fill in the required fields.

You could ask them to update their profile data, but that is always a hit or miss proposition.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

You’re welcome. I’m glad that it is working now, but feel your pain in figuring out (and more importantly resolving) what 3rd-party plugin is causing the issue.

So, now my plan of attack is to add in my plugins, one-by-one

This process is the only approach. Once you figure out what plugin is causing the issue (and hopefully it is a single plugin and not some plugin combination), then you should contact the plugin developer and ask them to help you.

Please let us know what you discover as this will help us help others in the future.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

Dennyhalim-

So, you have no issue when that plugin is deactivated? This issue only appears when that plugin is activated. Is that correct?

If so, then your best option is to contact the developer of that plugin and ask for his or her support.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

These are not necessarily tools but some additional measures you can consider:

https://codex.wordpress.org/Administration_Over_SSL

https://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory

http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/firewalling-and-hack-proofing-your-wordpress-blog/

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

Jfcarter-

Okay, looking at the two links, it appears that everything is there except for the positioning is off. Is this correct? Or, do I need to be logged in to see the issue.

If it is the former, I’ll take a look at the CSS in more detail later today or tomorrow. Just post a friendly reminder here if I don’t get back to you in 24 hours!

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

Subster-

This sounds like a WPMU-specific support issue. These forums are for BuddyPress support. Please search the WPMU forums for an answer. If you cannot find one, then post a new thread there.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

Aytac-

Is the premium theme BuddyPress enabled? Is it designed specifically for use with BuddyPress? If so, contact the theme designer and tell them of your issue. They are the ones who should be providing support.

If the premium theme is not designed to be used with BuddyPress, then choose a theme that is.

if I use default theme Buddypress admin bar is working well

Since this is not a BuddyPress support issue but an issue with a custom theme, I’m setting this to resolved. As you state, your site works fine with the defualt BP themes.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

Jrothe-

And then a friend told me that Bluehost just allowed a one click Buddy Press install.

I’m not sure why some ISPs keep trying to push a BuddyPress one-click install option. BuddyPress is not stand-alone software. It requries WPMU. So, at best, and if this was even practical, you would need to click twice–once to intsall WPMU then another time to install BuddyPress.

I would be wary of such claims. Also, be advised that some people have had issues with this in the past, so if you go that route and come here asking for support we will ask how you installed BuddyPress.

Remember, BuddyPress is just a big WPMU plugin. So, you can download and activate it via the WPMU’s admin menus. You don’t need a questionable one-click install.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

Okay, I did not see anything out of the ordinary in your PHPinfo file. Please delete that from pastebin for security reasons.

Actually I did have some mu-plugins still running, so now everything is out, just buddypress.

Okay, with just BuddyPress running now, are you still getting this error?

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

t’s about 30 minutes later and an Internal Redirect Error just showed up in my logs with wp-super-cache out, and all but buddypress plugins out. So it doesn’t look like its a plugin.

So, you had all plugins deactivated except BuddyPress?

doncha’s domain mapping plugin

What are you trying to accomplish with this plugin?

Are you running this as a subdomain or subdirectory install?

I’d suggest that you also create a phpinfo file and provide the output of that file to a pastebin that some of us can look at.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

301 Redirects:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93633

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/url-rewrites-and-301-redirects-how-does-it-all-work

Using your robots.txt file to block googlebot-image from discovering your image files:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35308

Make sure you block only the image directories that you do not want indexed.

Also, if you do not use Google’s Webmaster Tools, you may want to investigate. This service offers many tools, including a list of which files are throwing 404s. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tour/tour1.html

Do you mean while I get this situation worked out? Or do you mean that people are working on this because numerous people have been getting this issue?

I’m not sure that the word numerous applies as I’ve only seen a half dozen or fewer threads with this particular issue. Remember, one person’s 404 is not necessarily the same as the next persons.

This type of issue often comes down to one or more factors: bad install, using too old a version of WPMU or BP, plugin conflict, custom theme issue, apache issue, ISP limitations.

We can try helping you with most of these but do not have any control outside the core of the BuddyPress code. We investigate as best we can with the information provided and if it is caused by BuddyPress, offer a fix in trunk.

I see in another thread that you are on Slicehost. I’m with them as well. Since you have to set up your own slice, there may be an apache issue. So, to better understand you particular issue, please provide some more details:

1. Have you tried deactivating all non-buddypress plugins, wp-super-cache in particular?
2. Have you tried using the default .htaccess file that ships with WPMU?
3. Are there any PHP errors in your log files?
4. what are the other listed errors in your apache log?

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

So i traced the error to my access log and I found that these errors are being caused by some site requesting a file that no longer exists

While this issue is being worked out, you should either block the offending site(s) from attempting to accessing the non-existent files, or you should do a 301 redirect of the moved files–or at least the moved directories.

Furthermore, you can block the Googlebot-Image bot in your robots.txt file. Although the image bot should not be causing the issue since it is just searching your site gathering information. It is not requesting files, it is discovering them.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

@Fi3ryfalc0nz and @Ineffabelle:

What versions of WPMU, BuddyPress, and bbPress are you using?

Have you followed the additional instructions in the installation-readme.txt file included in /buddypress/bp-forums/ folder?

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

Try switching to the standard, default Buddypress theme. If the issue goes away–meaning that you have three columns once again–then it is time to contact the facebuddy designers.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

Okay, so you have three additional WPMU/BP installs working without issue. This means that you have no avatar uploading problems with those installs. Is that correct?

If so, then what is different between those three installs and the malfunctioning one?

1. Are all installs running the same versions of WPMU + BP?
2. Are there any plugins in your malfunctioning install that are not being used in the other three?
3. Is the theme different in your malfunctioning install but the same in the other three?
4. Are the .htaccess files in the working three the same but different in any way in the malfunctioning install?

You need to narrow down the variables and focus on the differences between the installs, in particular what is the same in the three working installs that differs with the malfunctioning install.

I would also suggest contacting your ISP about that Apache error.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

A couple of questions:

1. Did you clear your browser cache?

2. You state that you “removed the super cache plugin”. Did you deactivate it first and then delete it from its plugin folder?

3. Are you using a custom theme?

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

@Richs0914

Nice catch! You’re correct. The BuddyPress Support Plugin is still versioned as 1.0-RC1.

I’m use to thinking in terms of file names. In this particular case, buddypress-enable.php. So, I incorrectly made a wrong assumption.

@Ehegwer-

Make sure that you carefully read the installation-readme.txt file included in /buddypress/bp-forums/ folder.

You state that your:

buddypress integration plugin [is] (installed in my-plugins)

This is not the proper location. See Step 6 of installation-readme.txt:

In the bp-forums component there is a /bbpress-plugins/ folder. Copy the ‘buddypress-enable.php’ plugin file from that folder into your bbpress plugins folder (eg domain/bbpress/bb-plugins/)

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

Mike-

I’m setting this to resolved as it is a feature request and not a bug.

[@jeffsayre Participant 17 years, 5 months ago]

@Fi3ryfalc0nz-

I’m glad you’ve got it all working now!

I’m setting this thread to resolved.