I'm [not yet] done with Concrete 5

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I've tried to be patient with this program. I've been using it for two months on two different sites and I have had NOTHING but problems.

Files dissapearing, pages completely dissapearing. Pages changing, site maps and paths changing randomly. [Commented out by poster b/c it was unjust :)]. I can't believe BlueHost rolled this out as a stable package for site development.

I have to completely rebuild my band's website now because Concrete5 decided to crap out and 8 pages of content went poof.

Hope you get it all worked out someday because the concept is interesting. Just not stable for me at this point.

Z

 
jereme replied on at Permalink Reply
jereme
I have to argue that there are many of us out there that use Concrete5 without any issue at all.

None of my sites have ever experienced the issues you describe. I even have Concrete5 sites on BlueHost that work fine, but I didn't use their auto install.

There are two major elements in your issue. Concrete5 and BlueHost. What made you decide Concrete5 is the issue?

I beg to differ on this one. I believe that BlueHost must have a faulty implementation of Concrete5.

You're paying $7.95/month for hosting. What do you expect? DreamHost is at this price point, and they lose my stuff all the time, Concrete5 or not.

I hope, for your sake, that you're able to resolve your issues.. However, I'd find a host with a credible service level guarantee.
zteverhart replied on at Permalink Reply
I cannot be so certain it's bluehost. I have a friend who uses the service and is on the same box and he has zero issues with his version of Concrete5.

I really enjoy the versatility and the uniqueness Concrete5 offers but it's VERY frustrating that in the last two months I have had to uninstall/re-install countless times and rebuild websites four or five times. I can't image this would be BlueHost.

Do you recommend doing a self installation of Concrete vs the SimpleScripts installation?

None of my other SimpleScripts apps have ever given me any grief.
frz replied on at Permalink Reply
frz
I'm disappointed you didn't have a great experience with concrete5, as I and many others have. I know for the benefit of others reading this that after some yelling and back and forth I finally heard from simplescripts that they are fixing their broken install of our concrete5 package. (If this is news, their install package didn't include empty directories, which our sourceforge archive included)

Any rate, I'm always disappointed to hear someone got less than what they hoped for, but honestly I have no idea what you're talking about on any of these issues. I've never had anything randomly disappear or change on me, only human error. While I'll be the first to admit we should have fuller docs, and more add-ons, I'm not really sure what I can do with this feedback.
zteverhart replied on at Permalink Reply
Perhaps it is a SimpleScripts issue. In almost all of my uninstall/re-installs I've had entire directories go missing. Mostly the 'jobs' directory never gets created that I can recall from memory.

As for human error ... I'm really not certain what i could be doing as I don't edit anything but hand in terms of Concrete5 scripts/code. I do everything through the supplied interface.

If you search some of my posts you will see the really weird situations I've experienced.

Absolute paths /band/member_name.html changing to /band1/member_name.html to entire pages becomming no available to navigate unless they are directly navigated to from the Site Map tool (Dashboard). A lot of other kookie stuff too.
Fernandos replied on at Permalink Reply
Fernandos
Hi, zteverhart!

I'm sorry you had problems with c5, nobody want's to lose a customer. Which Version of concrete5 does your host offer?

I'm a long time cms user and I've used really most of the cms out there free and commercial.

All had their cons, a few had pros.

I can tell you that I'm using c5 since February. I have had issues, which were often my fault, but sometimes the system just wasn't perfect at that point.

But now with the latest version, I can tell that I didn't have any issues jet.

I'm interested in knowing why it didn't work for you, because I believe your hoster is responsible for that, or you.

Could you download concrete5 yourself from sourceforge and do a test install? I mean you install it completely yourself, not with any script. It's really as easy as 1,2 without 3!
Then report back if and what problems in detail you experience?

Would be nice of you, really. Don't blame somebody and say your product is sh*t, because of problems you had, which you cannot tell us. You know it's free beer.

ps: I'm not an c5 official! just a user.


cheers
Fernandos

EDIT: haha, you all answered faster then me :P I've just been writing to this topic when it had no answers.
zteverhart replied on at Permalink Reply
I would be happy to try out a self install tonight when I get home from work.

Like I said, I like what Concrete5 has to offer and it's made my life a lot easier, when it works. If it's a matter of SimpleScripts or Host issues then I completely rescind everything I've said but up until this point I'm really uncertain.

Will report back later tonight on a test run

Z
bcarone replied on at Permalink Reply
bcarone
ztevehart

If your saving your content as .html files, your definately making some errors. You can use an HTML block...but not filename.html. You wont see that.

Anyway....Let us know how that clean install works for you. I am using different shared hosting company and do ALL my installs by hand, not ever using a supplied install script. Just seems to make things a little easier.

Bill
zteverhart replied on at Permalink Reply
Sorry .. the .html is wrong on my end.

There is no .html

just /band/member_name

I'm thinking in redesign mode now :(
bryanlewis replied on at Permalink Reply
bryanlewis
got a link for us to try and help out?
jereme replied on at Permalink Reply
jereme
Yeah, we're happy to try and help you!
jincmd replied on at Permalink Reply
jincmd
today, a long day... i had some trouble for the first time. weird stuff was happening... but I like to think I was tripping... or atleast, I trust the developers and following developers of c5.
yamamax replied on at Permalink Reply
I was editing an existing page with the default editors. After updating my edits and existed editing, I got an empty page except for the small logo on the left top of the page. I was not able to get back to this page though it is on the main menu.

Anybody have any answers? I would appreciate any assitance with this.

Thank you
bryanlewis replied on at Permalink Reply
bryanlewis
check the site map and make sure you page still is there. then double check to make sure your not calling jquery twice i know this happens a lot. if you call jquery 2 times it will screw things up
yamamax replied on at Permalink Reply
Where do I check to see if jquery is running twice? If there is more to this, please provide the whole solution.
Thank you
bryanlewis replied on at Permalink Reply
bryanlewis
check your source code. the solution is to only call it once. ;)
zteverhart replied on at Permalink Reply
uploaded files from source forge
established all dbs, user names w/ rights
site passes all c5 checks
"cannot connect to database"

all permissions are correct...

any idea?
yamamax replied on at Permalink Reply
Bryan
You gave me a piece of the answer. Where exactly do I check my source code. How do I know where to check that the source code is being called once. It is no wonder that people give up on Concrete5 with vague answers.
yamamax replied on at Permalink Reply
Here is my link. Everything was going fine until I edited and exited Installations. Does anybody have any solution? Do not tell me check the source code. That does not mean a thing. Please tell me where to check the source code, where in the source code to check. That is if the source code is really the answer. Thank you. yamamax

http://luiscountertops.com/
zteverhart replied on at Permalink Reply
dood you hijacked my thread ... if you've got a separate issue please open a new thread.

anyone have an idea on the database connection issue?
zteverhart replied on at Permalink Reply
I couldn't get the self install to work b/c I couldn't get any support on the SQL install.

Concrete could never connect to the database.

So I went back in and cleared EVERYTHING out and did a fresh install using simple scripts.

Same problem. Within MINUTES of installing C5, adding a page and editing the content pages started disappearing. In fact, old content from the PREVIOUS versions started popping up.

I know I'm not insane here. What's the deal?


ZE
frz replied on at Permalink Reply
frz
There's a few things that are confusing to me about this...

1) concrete5 uses MySQL for a database. concrete5 MUST have a working database in order to even install. ALL the content in a concrete5 site is coming out of the database, so unless you're talking about templates - that's where to look for pages and the data behind the sitemap.

2) simplescripts had some issues, I know we finally got someone there to update their software, but I don't know if it's worked its way out across the interwebs to various hosts yet.

3) if you're getting content from previous installs showing up, there HAS to be some legacy database things showing up. Either you're not really clearing out old databases completely, or your webhost is doing some super odd stuff in terms of restoring backups.

It sounds like you're trying some good stuff, but these are configuration/installation issues with your environment, not concrete5 bugs. Short of having us host your site for you, or paying someone to do a server review/installation for you, I'm not sure how anyone can help. No one else has these issues, and I think its pretty clear something very funky is going on.

gluck, keep trying - wish I had more helpful answers.

-frz
zteverhart replied on at Permalink Reply
Weird, I know. I sent as detailed of an e-mail as possible to BlueHost elucidating for them the issues I'm having and generally point out that it appears to be database issues on their side. Which to my non-advanced-techie mind seems to be precise.

From what I'm getting it doesn't sound like solely a C5 issue as much as a conglomeration of all three in some sense.

Will update with tech support findings
zteverhart replied on at Permalink Reply
well I finally got a manual install to work and so far so good. ive done a lot of editing and it looks decent and seems to be stable.

although ... it does seem to have rendered some high-res pictures rather poorly somehow.

look for yourselves ...

http://www.everheartsband.com/photos... (bad)
vs
http://www.pickapartpixels.com (my portfolio)

Same program on the same web server ... the originals for /photos are just as high quality as on Pixel.

Weird eh?

Zach
zteverhart replied on at Permalink Reply
More news ... I got to sleep, wake up and come to work. Check the website and almost everything is there.

Now suddenly all of the content on the /band page is gone. Poof. The page stills loads but none of the content that was on there last night exists.

POOOF.
zteverhart replied on at Permalink Reply
All is well! Manual install worked great. The site is really coming along well!

http://www.everheartsband.com

How do I back this up just in case is goes poof again?

Is there an automated process?

Zach