@jon666
As iionly said:
no problem with connecting to the database
It's means that you don't have problems with the database.
Start by turning off all 3rd-party plugins.
This may also occur due to incompatibility of new versions of PHP/MySQL
Thanks for your suggestions iionly and Nikolai. None of them worked. Then I noticed something wierd. In the browser I went to "View Page Source" and saw that all content text was in fact there! My text backgrounds are white, very light yellow and very light grey. I could now barely see a faint glimmer of content text. So all this has simply been caused by a change of the text colour in css from black to white. How on earth could such a thing have happened? I haven't touched the site for months!
It's interesting ;)
I guess there may be 2 reasons for this:
- the result of a third-party plugin;
- the result of the browser/OS on the color scheme of your site.
I'm not sure what exaxtly you are referring to with image compression. Do you mean the creation of the image thumbnails with some optimized settings with regards to image quality/filesize? If so, I'm not sure (though I think rather not) that Tidypics has this functionality in the version compatible with Elgg 1.8 as I think i've added it only later and never backported to the older version.
With regards to upgrading from v1.8.0-rc1 to the latest version of Tidypics compatible with Elgg 1.8 it should be no problem as the image files itself will not get touched. Only some changes in the database are most likely necessary (as done by the upgrade scripts that come with Tidypics - and it should show you on the Tidypics plugin settings page if updates are pending). Nonetheless, I would advice to backup your data directory and database before upgrading as there might even go something wrong when changes are done in the database.
Apart from Tidpics I would definitely advice to upgrade to a more recent Elgg version as soon as possible. Beside Elgg you would also need compatible versions of your plugins, too, to be able to upgrade (I had not the time yet to upgrade all my own plugins to work on Elgg 3 yet). Whereas Elgg 1.8 (and up to Elgg 1.12) gets no support anymore Elgg 2.3 is still supported and would also work with PHP 7 (whereas PHP 5 has reached its end of life, too).
Do you want to keep only the users and get rid of all the content you users posted during all those years? If you just export/import the users you will lose ALL CONTENT (including messages and any uploaded files). Is this really what you want? If not, you need to upgrade your site from 1.8 to 3.0 step-by-step (1.8->1.9->1.10->1.11->1.12->2.3->3.0 - yes, you can upgrade from 1.12 directly to 2.3 but do not omit 1.9 - 1.12). You would also need to have compatible versions of any 3rd party plugin for the corresponding Elgg versions.
Well, I'm still weighing my options. My users seem to want a less bloated site with fewer options (plugins) and a more easily navigable interface. I think like me they're getting old! I could no doubt re configure 1.8 to meet their needs. But I wouldn't mind starting over with the latest Elgg version.
So far as a total update is concerned, you cautioned me similarly a year or two ago. I know it would drive me crazy. Elgg 1.8 is a long way from 3.0, and I made loads of changes to everything except the engine. Also I never bothered updating anything as my site runs in walled garden mode. It runs itself perfectly with little attention from me.
I'll give this more consideration before doing anything drastic. Meanwhile I'm still curious to know how to transfer just the members' display name, user name, email address and password using CSV. The posts on the site that mention using CSV for this are all years old.
Thanks' for your time iionly and all your help in the past.
Read: http://learn.elgg.org/en/stable/admin/backup-restore.html.
To be able to restore your site you will need the complete Elgg install folders with all subfolders, the database and the complete data directory. You only need to backup the install folder after changing the Elgg version or upgrading plugins. The database and data directory contain all the user data and you will have to make regular backups of both. The database can only be backuped as a whole, so no way to reduce the work here (you could only try to automize it in some way). The data directory backup can be reduced in the time necessary for example by using rsync to only download the changed/new files from the server, i.e. syncing the local backup with the remote data directory. Other possibilities for backups could be usage of a backup service by your webhoster (if offered).
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