Help! Every time I install a plugin or theme my website locks up

So I admittedly have very little experience with elgg. I just installed the website on the server, and enabled all of the default plugins that I wanted. I am trying to load a theme, and a couple plugins from the community here. I install the file in the mod folder, select the zip file that I just uploaded, extract all, then delete the zip folder. Then I log into the website and enable the theme or plugin, and it gives me two messages on the website. Plugin installed successfully , then it also gives one that says misconfigured plugin. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong? Any help would be greately appreciated. This is a website for a non profit group and we have very little funds available to pay for someone to do it for us, so I have to try and do as much work myself as possible.

  • Try disabling then enabling your plugins one at a time until you find the misconfigured one.

  • Thanks for your reply edlove. I removed everything that I have installed from the server. The elgg installation is now the same as it was when I originally installed it. I am trying to install the innovative free theme, and after installing it, extracting the files in the mod directory, deleting the zip file from the server, then enabling the theme in my administrative section it does not work. The only thing  that happens is that some features are switching from the left side to the right side of the page. None of the colors, backgrounds or anything else is changing. I am using elgg 1.6, and firefox and cannot get anything to work. Any advice on what I may be doing wrong?

  • got a URL to take a look at? You can PM if you wish.

  • ok, so things look ok with the default except register will not send register email.  I would start enabling the core plugins that came with the elgg package.  Don't enable any third party plugins or theme.

  • Also it is a good idea to run upgrade.php whenever you make a major mod change such as a theme.  You should also turn simplecache off then back on again.  

  • The site is sending the register mail, but every person that has registered on the site has had the confirmation email sent to their spam folder.

  • Spam Folder is common problem with the average $5/mnth hosting ISPs. Mail MX records and related params don't match so e.g. Yahoo etc will dump email to Spam Folder

  • Agree your ISP must be on a black list coz gmail does not typically send to a spam folder.

  • There was some post re: this same problem abt 1 week ago. I think I said something there, esp re: sendmail mail headers/ flags. Main point is $5 shared hosting has too many restrictions b/c account owner does not own the "server". We ourselves have dedicated and so can whatever we like.

    I believe there's still methods to ensure delivery even with shared hosting ISPs. I just don't quite have 100% of my time spare to investigate all problems. Cash has posted some good notes ("somewhere") on MX records.

    Thumb's users should goto their spam folder and view full headers so that they identify the params and maybe see what's causing --> spam.