Made a jock of my free website

Deleted User

Hey all,

Never visited this area before as I haven't a notion of this kinda stuff, so much so, i don't even know if I've posted this in the right sub-forum.


In the Bargain Alerts forum recently, someone reported that OVH were giving away domains and two years hosting for free. Don't know the first thing about making a website, but it's free, says I: I'll have a shot!


Anyone, I'm having a problem now that's driving me up the walls. I think I killed my website

Here's a post I made on the Bargain Alerts thread which will probably be of more use than explaining it from scratch;

Deleted User wrote: »

Anyone fancy helping me work out something that's probably quite simple?


I have no knowledge whatsoever of building websites (aside from a Proboard or two ) but so far I've managed to add the Zenfolio module and uploaded and sorted photos into albums, etc. etc.

So now I've got that done, I'm trying to figure out how to make an actual home page.

Tried my luck with that Joomble! module, but found it extremely awkward to understand.

Playing with the Drupal one at the moment, but not exactly blown away by the results. Looks pretty crap and I'm not entirely sure I know how to make an actual homepage on it.

I can make a homepage on it, but it just looks like a blog entry that had little effort put into it.

Wordpress, though I haven't really looked at it also looks like it will be more blog-like pages. Meh.

I just want a simple enough page, nothing too complicated or busy, perhaps a customisable background image or theme if possible, where i can stick an introductory message, and have a menu to link to a gallery page (the Zenfolio page), a contact page and then if i get bored in future a blog.


Is there an easy way to do this? Or will I need to just play with Drupal for a while until I figure it out?



EDIT: I've been playing with this for ages and have gotten nowhere! Why don't the different modules acknowledge each other?

The zenphoto one creates a gallery and nothing else, it seems, so i can't create a home, or contact, etc. page with that module, but when I use one of the other modules for that, such as Spip, which I'm trying to use now, it won't let me make a gallery tab on the menu to bring me to the zenphoto page I created.

I still can't seem to make even the most basic or minor changes to Spip. Complicated bastards. I made a relatively nice website using webs before. Now, obviously webs is kinda dumbed down (or at least has that feel to it) but it looked good and was easy to make. This is just making me go around in circles.


EDIT 2: Actually finally got a decent looking website out of WordPress. Was a painstakingly slow process but it was all actually coming together quite well. I knew I was going to have trouble actually getting the site up and running, so I decided to do that and then go back and fix up the other small bits and pieces that were in need of repair.

In my attempt to do so (never dealt with FTP or such before, didn't even know what it stood for, to be honest, until today) so I figured, on my wordpress admin section, my site URL was shanemaguire.ie/wordpress. I reckoned that if I changed that to just shanemaguire.ie, then OVH Manager would know that I did that, and would get rid of their "coming soon" page and instead direct to my wordpress home page (which is a static page, so should have been fine, I thought).


Of course, that's not what actually happened. Instead, I somehow managed to lock myself out of the WordPress admin section, and now get an error message when I put in my user/password telling me that "The requested URL /wp-login.php was not found on this server."


So I thought perhaps that getting rid of the zenphoto module might help me out and clean things up a bit (I downloaded filezilla, an FTP programme) seen as I have all my photos on the wordpress module anyway.


I re-read the "get your site online" OVH tutorial where it says to delete their index.html and change your site name to index.html. So I deleted theirs and then went looking for my own (though I do have a copy of the URL from theirs saved on my PC as a firefox application incase it needs to be replaced again). No such luck finding anything with shanemaguire in the title, so I went looking instead for the Wordpress "index.html". Found an "index.php" i think, but I'm not sure if i moved it or not.


Pretty much, ever since I took the "wordpress" off the url in the wordpress admin that I mention above, the site has imploded and I haven't a clue what to do with it.

I've been up all night messing with it (was actually enjoying figuring it out) but I think it's just after draining all my energy now.


Anyone have any idea of a quick fix to this issue? I'm gonna go to bed and hope that when I come back to the PC, someone will have replied saying something like "just press the big green button in filezilla", and when I do that, the whole site is up and running and looking better than ever before!


I'm doubtful, though

So I was just wondering if anyone here can help at all? I've just given up at this stage.



Cheers to anyone able to help out here. I really do appreciate anything at all.



Happy Halloween, too (if that's something people say?)


Cheers guys!

JohnathanM

So, Wordpress is still on your site but it thinks that it's base path (which it calls "ABSPATH" IIRC) is shanemaguire.ie rather than shanemaguire.ie/WordPress - that's what you've noted. First thing to do is get that sorted out.

NOTE: I really don't know if this will work for you, but short of some WordPress guy coming along the only other thing I can think to do is modify the database, and I don't know if you're up for that.

(UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = 'http://shanemaguire.ie/WordPress/' where option_name = 'siteurl')

Access your login page here, and enter your credentials:

http://shanemaguire.ie/WordPress/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2Fshanemaguire.ie%2FWordPress%2Fwp-admin%2F&reauth=1

You'll see this:

The requested URL /wp-login.php was not found on this server.

With luck, though, you will have actually been authenticated although it is probably posting to a page it can't find. Try then accessing here:

http://shanemaguire.ie/WordPress/wp-admin/options-general.php

If you can see that screen, change "WordPress address (URL)" to what it was:

http://shanemaguire.ie/WordPress

Leave Site address (URL) as:

http://shanemaguire.ie

JohnathanM

JohnathanM wrote: »

Try then accessing here:

http://shanemaguire.ie/WordPress/wp-admin/options-general.php

If you can see that screen, change "WordPress address (URL)" to what it was:

Unfortunately I can't see that screen. It still brings up the same message.


I really, really appreciate you trying to help out here, but I think the best route is to try and delete the whole wordpress module from OVH Manager, and then just do it again from scratch.

Will be a pain in the ass, but at least I have an idea what I have to do. Will hopefully get it sorted out sooner rather than later.


Again, Johnathan, thanks so much for your help though. Really appreciated.

Just to ask one other thing in here;


I created a whole new WordPress module on the OVH site. I then followed the above isntrutions to try and get the site online, but to no avail.


shanemaguire.ie is linking to a html looking index that I thought I had gotten rid of. There's stuff on it (Spip, zenphoto, etc.) that are modules I have used temporarily and then deleted, so they shouldn't be associated with my site anymore, I don't believe.


Shanemaguire.ie/wordpress isn't working any more either (though I am still able to move around in the admin section of the site, so all is not lost just yet).

I just want my site homepage to be at shanemaguire.ie.

There was an OVH tutorial on the original shanemaguire.ie page (along with an Under Construction message) that told me in order ot get the site up and running, I would be required to use an FTP program, delete their Index file, change my site name to index.html and then transfer everything using the FTP software.


Now, I've already used filezilla to change images in a WordPress theme Im using, but aside from those images, none of the site has been made on my PC. So I don't really have anything to transfer over. Everything should be up and running, but I can't figure out why it's not.



EDIT: I changed the site url back to shanemaguire.ie/WordPress and now that's linking to the site.

Pretty much, I want shanemaguire.ie/WordPress to redirect to shanemaguire.ie, but even if I do figure that out, shanemaguire.ie seems to be took up with that stupid index that won't go away.

JohnathanM

Deleted User wrote: »

EDIT: I changed the site url back to shanemaguire.ie/WordPress and now that's linking to the site.

Pretty much, I want shanemaguire.ie/WordPress to redirect to shanemaguire.ie, but even if I do figure that out, shanemaguire.ie seems to be took up with that stupid index that won't go away.

If I understand, this is what I was talking about in the last two steps. Read about it here, where's it's written properly:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory

You've done step six but pay attention to step seven, though. You've deleted (or moved) the index.php file which is why you are seeing a directory listing. Looks like you should follow their advice for this step in reverse - copy index.php (and perhaps .htaccess) from the WordPress directory to the root directory (the one directly above it). Then complete the steps.

Hope this is more use to you than the last post. Good luck!

I was in filezilla, and I changed the name wordpress to index.html on a whim, and now it seems OK?


Could you do me a favour, Johnathan, and just see what shanemaguire.ie links to for you? It should go straight to the wordpress?

If that works, then I'm just leaving it. I don't care anymore. I'll continue to fix up the site, but if you can get onto the site then I'm happy enough.


Thanks again for all your help with this.

EDIT; and for no reason it's gone back to being a html index. Feck sake.

EDIT again; sorry if i seem a little ignorant Johnathan, i'm not ignoring your advice, I just only seen your post now. Have had to copy the index.php from wordpress to my computer and then back to the directory above wordpress. I now have two index.php files? Or should i keep the one in th eroot directory and delete the wordpress one?

It seems to take a few minutes to sort itself out, so Im just gonna see if that made any difference or not. The htaccess file was already there so i didnt touch it.

JohnathanM

These things are a pain, aren't they?

I can get to it, but can't click links to anywhere or see images. You seem to have changed the directory name "WordPress" to "index.html", when in actual fact that should be a file.

Try this:

- Rename the directory "index.html" to "WordPress" (shanemaguire.ie/WordPress).
- Go into that directory and locate the file "index.php".
- Copy that file back up to the top-level (shanemaguire.ie).
- Download it to your local machine.
- Do what it says in step 9, although you should substitute "wordpress" for "WordPress" (in case your server is case-sensitive).
So, you're looking for the line:

require('./wp-blog-header.php');

To replace it with:

require('./WordPress/wp-blog-header.php');

- Upload it to where it was on the top-level (shanemaguire.ie)
- Follow step 11.

Optional: Swear every now and again.

EDIT: Looks better now from shanemaguire.ie/WordPress, but not from the root. See above.
EDIT: Just to be sure - you will have two PHP files, and you are editing only the one in the top-level.

Right, I tried following that advice as best I could, but now I think I've made it worse.


I wouldn't mind, but all I needed in the first place was to get shanemaguire.ie/WordPress to go to shanemaguire.ie.

Complicated feckers.

If it makes any difference, I have a very top level, then a folder called WWW, and then within that folder is the Wordpress folder, etc. so when you were saying to put stuff in the shanemaguire folder, i was generally putting them in the www folder (as if i recall correctly thats what the OVH guide said).

Dunno if this is any use to you or not, it's a screen print of the hierarchy system down to the WordPress folder;


http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/4164/ftpbd.jpg


EDIT; Just realised there was an index.php missing there from the www folder. I added it in. Everything seems fine now. Can you do me a favour and check the site and let me know if its ok for you?

JohnathanM

Deleted User wrote: »

If it makes any difference, I have a very top level, then a folder called WWW, and then within that folder is the Wordpress folder, etc. so when you were saying to put stuff in the shanemaguire folder, i was generally putting them in the www folder (as if i recall correctly thats what the OVH guide said).

Yep. The modified "index.php" file goes directly above the WordPress directory. So if you have:

somemachine/www/shanemaguire/WordPress

The file goes as:
somemachine/www/shanemaguire/index.php


EDIT: Looks good. Sweet.

Thanks again for everything Johnathan!