Admin Was Locked out, Deleted Admin, Can't get Verification emails

Ok guys check out the sticky situation i've gotten myself into lol.(I've been searching for an answer to this for a few days so I think I know what I need).

I'm a new elgg user with the latest version of elgg and Win 7. I forgot my admin password, and was not recieving an email when I used the "forgot Password" button. I know this is dumb but in my haste to find a solution I deleted the admin user via phpadmin.

Then I realised I could have used the "salt" to get my password back and felt dumb. So my situation is now, I don't have an admin, and even when I attempt to create one, I can't validate my new user because the "send mail" part of my php.ini is not working properly which means that i'm not recieving validation emails.

I'm essentially locked out with no way to create a new user that I could dub admin because of the validation rule. Crazy huh?

Ok so i've gotten that far and now i've been using people's posts to try and figure out how to get send mail working on Win 7 via the php.ini file and i'm having no luck. Any suggestions for either getting send mail working for a local host or creating an admin without validating the new user?

If your suggestion is to tell me exactly to set up send mail i'll take that because the instructions i'm finding online are not applicaple to a localhost, on Win 7.

  • If you want to send emails from localhost you have to do a lot of things.

    Why don't you make a new installation instead? I don't know if there's another way to get a password or create an account

    Rodolfo Hernandez

    Arvixe/Elgg Community Liaison

  • rjcaliforinia,

    you make a great point. I definetly considered that. If by "alot of things" my you mean installing an email server like pegasus, won't I have to do that anyway in order to test funcationality while using a localhost? I mean if I want users to be able to verify emails won't I eventually have to solve this send mail problem anyway?

    I'm a novice but I always read and test until I find an answer so alot of work doesn't bother me but if you think its not worth it i'll just reinstall.

    LMK

  • Mail will automatically work when you move it to a real server, so don't worry about that.

    If you deleted the user through phpmyadmin you almost certainly corrupted the database anyway.  If you have other users on the system you can make them admin and validate them using phpmyadmin, but that won't fix the corruption you created by deleting the user.

    Start again, and follow the golden rules unless you absolutely know exactly what you're doing:

    http://docs.elgg.org/wiki/Should_I_edit_the_database_manually%3F

    http://docs.elgg.org/wiki/Dont_Modify_Core

  • @Matt Beckett you got it. I'll follow these rules.

    Already did reinstall and we should be fine. One last question:

    how do i test functionality if i'm using localhost then? Should I wait for user testing until I upload it on to a real server?

  • As far as I know (not using Windows at all...) it's possible to set up a mail server also within XAMPP (or whatever you are using on Win7 to test your Elgg site locally). It should be possible at least to send and receive mails locally on your computer (or within the XAMPP environment). Or you disable the validationbyemail plugin to let new accounts be activated automatically without validation. Or you could use the validationbyadmin plugin (that's almost the same as the bundled validationbyemail plugin with the only difference that new accounts have to be enabled by an admin).

  • @iionly,

    When you said "Or you could use the validationbyadmin plugin" it was a good suggestion. Only thing is remember I couldn't install any new plugins becasue my admin account was no longer in existence. The two gents above were correct I should have never deleted the admin user.

    What i'm concerned about now is my beta testing. Can I do that with a local host or should my website be loaded to a webserver and locked as private so I can test it?

    How does it usually work?

  • You can get mail working on windows xampp, it's just a PITA.  You can test everything else without the emails, other notifications you can test with the messages system.

    I use a development server (a real non-localhost server) specifically for user testing.  Set up on a subdomain and lock registration - like dev.mydomain.com or whatever

  • Thanks Matt! Also thanks iionly, and rjcalifornia. Cheers.

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