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The following document applies to these symptoms in Discus 4.0:
- A topic is created in Topic Manager without error
- The topic is listed on the topics page of the user interface
- Clicking on the topic name produces a "Not Found" error
and:
- Icons do not show up on the topics page, in the administration program, etc. (if icons do work correctly click here)
In this case, the problem is that the HTML directory as specified in the discus.conf file does not match the HTML URL that was chosen for setup. You did create the HTML directory according to the instructions in the "readme.html" document, but the problem is that the HTML directory you chose on the setup form was not in your server's web space.
This is a problem with your setup of Discus caused by incorrect setup parameters. You may choose to re-run the entire setup procedure again, supplying the corrected information for the HTML directory. However, this problem should be easily fixable if you do not mind editing your discus.conf file to insert correct information.
Determining the correct value for html_dir
You will need to figure out the correct HTML directory in order to proceed. Since your web host knows how your server is configured, if you have problems with this step, they should be able to help you find the site's base directory, sometimes called the "document root."
To find the document root yourself, log in to your FTP server and navigate to the directory containing the main file (typically index.html) for your entire site. That's the file that is called up when viewing the "root" of your site at http://www.yourdomain.com. Now, compare that directory with html_dir.
Hint: Most times, an incorrect html_dir setting is a forgotten "wwwroot" or "html" or "docs" directory that was not present in the suggestion on the setup form. If, when you navigate to find the site's main directory you find yourself going into a directory such as that, and it is not indicated in your html_dir setting, that's the problem.
Example 1 - Unix server, did not include "wwwdocs"
Before:
admin_dir=/home/users/foomatic/discus_admin_23402394
html_dir=/home/users/foomatic/discus
html_url=http://servername.foobar.com/discus
script_dir=/home/users/foomatic/cgi-bin/discus
script_url=http://servername.foobar.com/cgi-bin/discus
When logging in to this server, you discover that your main web pages are all in a subdirectory called "wwwdocs" - something that was not suggested by the FTP setup program. To fix this problem, you move the "discus" directory from /home/users/foomatic/discus into the "wwwdocs" directory and then you correct your discus.conf file:
admin_dir=/home/users/foomatic/discus_admin_23402394
html_dir=/home/users/foomatic/wwwdocs/discus
html_url=http://servername.foobar.com/discus
script_dir=/home/users/foomatic/cgi-bin/discus
script_url=http://servername.foobar.com/cgi-bin/discus
Example 2 - Windows server, did not include "wwwroot"
Before:
admin_dir=c:/inetpub/discus_admin_23402394
html_dir=c:/inetpub/discus
html_url=http://windowsserver.foobar.com/discus
script_dir=c:/inetpub/scripts/discus
script_url=http://windowsserver.foobar.com/scripts/discus
When logging in to this server, you discover that your main web pages are all in a subdirectory called "wwwroot" - something that was not suggested by the FTP setup program. To fix this problem, you move the "discus" directory from c:/inetpub/discus into the "wwwroot" directory and then you correct your discus.conf file:
admin_dir=c:/inetpub/discus_admin_23402394
html_dir=c:/inetpub/wwwroot/discus
html_url=http://windowsserver.foobar.com/discus
script_dir=c:/inetpub/scripts/discus
script_url=http://windowsserver.foobar.com/scripts/discus
Example 3 - Misconfigured html_dir/html_url match
Before:
admin_dir=/home/users/foomatic/discus_admin_23402394
html_dir=/home/users/foomatic/wwwdocs/discus
html_url=http://servername.foobar.com/discuss
script_dir=/home/users/foomatic/cgi-bin/discus
script_url=http://servername.foobar.com/cgi-bin/discus
The problem here is quite simple - the HTML directory uses a subdirectory called "discus" (1 "s") while the HTML URL uses a subdirectory called "discuss" (2 "s"). Since the HTML directory and HTML URL are supposed to match, there is an obvious problem. This is most easily fixed by renaming the "discus" directory to "discuss" and then fixing discus.conf.
admin_dir=/home/users/foomatic/discus_admin_23402394
html_dir=/home/users/foomatic/wwwdocs/discuss
html_url=http://servername.foobar.com/discuss
script_dir=/home/users/foomatic/cgi-bin/discus
script_url=http://servername.foobar.com/cgi-bin/discus
Step-by-step procedure for fixing this problem
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Download discus.conf to your local machine using FTP, in ASCII mode.
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Open discus.conf in a text editor such as Notepad (NOT a word processor such as Microsoft Word).
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Edit the line starting with "html_dir=" so that it reflects the proper path (see hints and examples above).
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Save the discus.conf file.
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Re-upload your discus.conf file to your server. Use ASCII mode and set permissions on the file to 0755 (rwxr-xr-x).
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Move the incorrectly placed HTML directory into the correct location. With some servers you can simply move the directory exactly as it was created into the new spot. With some servers you will need to delete the old HTML directory and then re-create and re-upload the files to the new location.
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Log into Discus and confirm that your icons show up and your topic (if any) works. If you find that your topic doesn't work, then you probably had to re-create the directory, and that topic didn't get created. In that case, go to Topic Manager and delete the topic. New topics you create should work.
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