This document is designed to help you resolve a rarely reported problem where you:

• Click the administration link and see the "log in" form in the left frame.
• Type in your administration username (and password if applicable).
• Click the "Log In" button.
• In the left frame, you are again prompted to log in with the same form, and you could repeat these steps indefinitely.

First, perform this experiment:

1. Click on the link in the right frame to return to your board.

2. Click on the "Last Day" link. If this is your first time setting up your board, you should see that "0 discussions have new messages."

3. Click on the "New Messages" (3.10) or "Search" (4.00) link to bring up the search form. Use the search form to search for all messages posted within the last day (in 3.10, just click the "Search" button; in 4.00, check the box next to "Search by Date" and then click the "Perform Search" button).

4. If, after performing step 3, you received a search result, please contact DiscusWare Support. Use the e-mail support form, and be sure to mention that you have tried this experiment.

5. If, after performing step 3, you received the search screen again, read below for an explanation of the problem.

If searching for new messages just brought up the form:

The problem is that your server does not properly handle the "POST" method. This is a server problem that needs to be addressed with your web host. Fortunately, this occurs on only a very small number of servers and is therefore only very rarely reported to DiscusWare as a problem.

TECHNICAL EXPLANATION: Browsers use two main ways to communicate with a script on a server.

The "GET" method puts all of the query data on the URL line. This is what you see when you use a search engine like AltaVista or Google. When you enter a query and search, you see your query (and a lot of other information) displayed in the URL box in your browser. The GET method has two disadvantages. First, since the data is stored on the URL line, it becomes part of the query that is subsequently recorded in the server's access log (if you were ever to put your password on a form that was submitted through the GET method, your password would be recorded in the server's access log). Second, due to browser limitations, the amount of data that can be communicated on the URL line is limited.

The "POST" method is different, in that it does not put this data onto the URL line, but it sends it to the server directly via "standard input." The POST method is able to send much more data to the server, and data sent by this method never is recorded in the server's access log.

The experiment above tested both the "GET" and "POST" method on your server by having you perform a search for new messages. The "Last Day" link uses the GET method, by putting your query into the URL line (the number of days, the topics, and your other settings are all placed in the URL to perform the search). Going to the search screen and performing the same search used the "POST" method (since Discus safeguards the password, if any, that you entered when searching for new messages). Your experiment confirmed that the "GET" method works and the "POST" method does not work on your server.

Fixing the Problem

The problem you are experiencing is NOT a problem with the Discus code or your setup. In fact, if you got to the point where you could enter an administration password, you know that you successfully completed your setup of Discus!

This problem is an error with your web server. You should point your web host to this page as well as to your discussion board, and tell them quite simply:

As this is a problem with your web server, and not with Discus, we regret that DiscusWare cannot provide assistance or support for resolving this problem. If your web host is unable to fix the problem, you will need to move to another web server (since it is likely that any other CGI scripts you attempt to install on your current server will experience the same failures).