"bonk" message while trying to activate any new theme

mkugelkolly

Hi everyone.
I try to use the MEGA theme, but I always get the "Bonk" error message.
It does not only happend with MEGA theme, but also with any theme I tried (MEGA theme, rounder, old vanillaforum.org and minalla yellow).

While I navigate through dashboard, I dont get any error message and it looks like it goes well (exept that I have to do a manual page refresh to see "apply or discard" button if I preview the them).
So I apply the theme, and when I come back to the main page where are my discussions are listed, here is a "Bonk" message.

I already tried the fix that say to put an empty en-CA.php in conf directory with chmod 777, but nothing change, "Bonk" still here.

Any help will be very appreciate.

Using the latest vanillaforum 2.0.6 and a very fresh just downloaded of any of the theme I used (tried to use). I also made a full fresh re-install of vanillaforum, fresh database.

DanDevine

I am far from an expert on all this but I had the same problem and I found that I had deleted a folder in the cache file called "smarty" when I was doing the upgrade from 2.0.3 to 2.0.6. When I put that folder from a backup back into the cache folder of 2.0.6 everything started to work again, including the MEGA theme and all the other themes where I also got the "bonk". Do a search on this forum, there is a way to edit the forum software so that is shows the error message instead of showing the bonk. Having the error message was the way I finally figured out what was going on. I too had changed the permissions to 777 and the empty en-CA edit and it didn't make a difference. The "smarty" folder fixed it.

mkugelkolly

I checked if the smarty folder is in the cache directory. And it is already there.
I saw this code to put in the config.php file, but it's look like vanilla rewritte it without letting me a chance to see the error message. It just say "Bonk".

DanDevine

Regarding getting error report to work, you have to comment out the old bonk line. I had same problem. See here:

http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/12857/my-theme-problem-with-2.0.6

mkugelkolly

Ok, it's work now.
Dan you definitly save my day.
The error was a missed "Smarty\compile" directory. I dont know if there is a need or not, but just in case, I chmod 777 both.
Now it goes round just fine. Again, THANK YOU

LeftBrain

Just wanted to report that I had this exact problem. The only theme that worked on my system was the default theme.

However, when I switched the cache\Smarty permissions to '777' (they were 775) and the cache\Smarty\compile directory to '777' the other themes started working.

Thanks for the tips guys.

dave_stewart

I just had the same issue. Turns out Smarty was trying to write to /cache/xjsfl.com but the folder that was there was /cache/www.xjsfl.com.

The thing is - I hadn't changed anything and this was working before. The only think I can think is that my server company upgraded PHP and something changed.

Any ideas?

peregrine

smarty write .ini files to the cache. e.g.

a_dashboard_library_map.ini

/cache/ is the folder - you say it is trying to write a file called
xjsfl.com.

seems odd.

Hbomb

There's really two things you need to know about this conversation. First, you need to get into your vanilla/cache folder. Second, you'll have to add a Smarty folder and a compile folder within Smarty. Permissions must be set as 777.

Props to Left Brain for his specific instructions.