Discus 3.10 has a more robust and efficient storage of message times than previous versions of Discus. In Discus 2.20 through 3.01, the message time was stored in standard unix time format in the board's log.txt file. When you run the file update procedure in Discus 3.10, it extracts the message time information from your previous implementation of Discus by examining the log file. If this file does not contain the required information, Discus 3.10 attempts to recover these times from the messages themselves. If you customized the display of dates and times by modifying the Discus code or making substantial modifications to your language.conf file, this secondary procedure may not work.

To help yourself resolve this problem, please answer the following questions for yourself:

1. Did you upgrade your pre-3.10 message base using the administration program's upgrade procedure?

When you first upgraded to Discus 3.10, the administration program should have immediately prompted you to run the upgrade procedure. If you did a "first time" installation of Discus 3.10 and then copied in all of your pre-3.10 files after the fact, then this upgrade procedure was not ever run on the files, and this is the cause of the problem. You need to run that procedure now. To do so, click on "Version Manager" in your Discus 3.10 board and scroll to the bottom to the section on the Discus File Update Procedure. Click the link and then the button to run the procedure. After you have done this, the dates should properly appear on your posts. If they do, you can stop here. Otherwise go on.

2. Are you moving a board from one server to another and upgrading at the same time?

If this is the case, make sure that you have moved your message files and your administration data files as directed in the procedure for moving a board from one server to another. Specifically, your log.txt file contains date information for all of your posts. If you moved your board from your previous server to the new one but did not move your log file, the date information stored in that file wasn't ever made available to Discus for use. You can save some information by properly loading in your log.txt file and then running the file update procedure (see step 1).

3. Was your pre-3.10 message base created using a non-English translation of Discus?

If it was, make sure that your 3.10 installation is the same language as the one in which your messages were created. This will allow Discus to read the dates directly from your message files if they do not appear in your log.txt file (works in most cases where the language.conf file was not substantially modified). If you fix this problem, run the procedure noted in step 1.

4. Did you save a backup of your message base before upgrading?

If you saved a backup of your Discus message base before upgrading, Discus can go through your backup file and extract relevant date and author information. If the backup of your message base was stored in the unix tar format (this is the format that the Discus Backup Manager creates), simply upload the tar file into your "backups" subdirectory. The file must be renamed to datefix.tar for this to work. Then go to Version Manager and click the Discus File Update Procedure. Scroll to the bottom of the page, make sure that Use datefix.tar in "backups" directory is checked, and click the button to fix dates. When the procedure has finished running, in your Board Manager, choose to reindex your board. When that has finished, choose to regenerate your subtopic/message lists. This should restore proper dates to your board.

If your backup is not in unix tar format, create a subdirectory called "datefix" within your "backups" directory. Into this file will go all of the Discus files in their topic subdirectories. The following is an example of the structure that will go into your "datefix" directory:

• .../datefix
• .../datefix/3
• .../datefix/33
• .../datefix/513
• .../datefix/552

Specifically, "messages" and "secure" subdirectories are not created in that location. When your directory structure looks like the above and your HTML files are loaded in, go to Version Manager and click the Discus File Update Procedure. Scroll to the bottom of the page, make sure that Use files in backups/datefix directory is checked, and click the button to fix dates. When the procedure has finished running, in your Board Manager, choose to reindex your board. When that has finished, choose to regenerate your subtopic/message lists. This should restore proper dates to your board.

5. If you didn't make a backup before upgrading or none of the above work

If none of the above work, either because you didn't make a backup of your board before upgrading, you didn't properly transfer your log.txt file (or you manually removed entries from it at previous times), you didn't run the upgrade procedure, etc., Discus has a last resort to allow you to set all of the times on all of the messages on your board that are missing a date to a date and time of your choosing. This does not affect new messages or any messages that have the proper date information. If you must do this, go to Version Manager and click the Discus File Update Procedure. Scroll to the bottom of the page, make sure that Reset all dates to: is checked, enter in the date/time that you wish for all message dates to be reset to, and click the button to fix dates. When the procedure has finished running, in your Board Manager, choose to reindex your board. When that has finished, choose to regenerate your subtopic/message lists. This should restore proper dates to your board.