Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Linux:

• Sendmail path is incorrectly configured (php.ini - sendmail_path)

Windows:

• SMTP server's host is set incorrectly (php.ini - SMTP). default: localhost
• SMTP server's port is set incorrectly (php.ini - smtp_port). default: 25
• It seems that setting this can help if none of the others work. Set it to the address you want your emails to be sent from (php.ini - sendmail_from). default: NULL

Email is getting marked as spam or not being delivered:

• Obtain an SPF Sender ID for your domain. You must be able to modify your DNS record
• Refrain from using words that might trigger spam filters (anything that might be linked to advertising, e.g. viagra, buy, cheap, enlargement)

More information about PHP's mail functions:

• http://www.php.net/mail
• http://www.php.net/manual/en/configuration.changes.php

More information about the Sender Policy Framework (SPF):

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework
• http://www.openspf.org/
• http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/content/technologies/senderid/wizard/

Normal text editors save a "Byte Order Mark" at the beginning of the file.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_Order_Mark
"in PHP, if output buffering is disabled, it has the subtle effect of causing the page to start being sent to the browser, preventing custom headers from being specified by the PHP script."

You should get a text editor that can remove it. Once such editor is Programmer's Notepad; when editing the file go to File->Encoding->UTF8 No Mark. See the FAQ about recommended tools for a link or possibly other editors.

When editing files through an FTP client, the default editor often leaves a BOM. You can change it for these clients where shown:
Filezilla: Edit->Settings->Remote File Editing
WinSCP: Preferences->Preferences->Editors

Screenshots:
Programmer's Notepad 2
Notepad (will probably leave a byte-order mark)

SE v3

This is now in the main stylesheet templates/styles.css. Look for: table.body { width: 900px; }

SE v2

Open /templates/header.tpl. Look for {* START PAGE *} in the code, and you'll see "width='800'" - make this 900 or more.

Text that is returned by PHP's built-in functions can often be translated by setting the locale. PHP will use the system's translations for the locale for returned text. One obvious place that this affects is the month names.

SE v3

In version 3, you can set the locale in the Admin Panel under Language Settings->Edit Language. It will try to populate itself with a list of system-supported locales.

SE v2

You must modify the setlocale call in the main language pack (i.e. lang/lang_english.php). There will be these two lines near the top:

Here is an example for German, general:

The setlocale() function will pick the first argument that matches an available local. The first four are all POSIX-type locale specifiers (Unix, Linux) however they may also apply to some other OS's. The first two specify a character set (utf8). The fifth and sixth are Windows-type locale specifiers.

1. Make sure your browser cookies are enabled
2. Session support may not be working on your server. This is usually caused by incorrect permissions on the session data storage directory. You can find this in phpinfo() under 'session.save_path'. The permissions should be 777. You may need root access to perform this operation. Contact your host if you have any questions about this.
3. Another possibility is that your browser is caching the security image. Make sure you have this line in the file images/secure.php:
   
   header("Cache-Control: no-cache");
4. If you had the trial version installed, make sure images/secure.php is not still encrypted by uploading the one from the distribution.

Google Chrome - Chrome is still in beta and is not supported. It has a lot of bugs related to Javascript. When a stable version is released, we should add support for it.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta - IE8B is still under development, and not supported. On the other hand, you should be able to work around it by forcing it into IE7 compliant mode by adding this in between the <head> tags in templates/header_global.tpl:

Apache limits the maximum number of post values with the directive LimitRequestFields. You should adjust it to accommodate the number of options you plan to use.

There are four fields used per option:

• Option ID
• Option Label
• Uses Dependency
• Dependency Label

Also, the rest of the field data needs to be sent with the request. Use this formula to calculate your setting. If the result is less than 100, you shouldn't need to change it.

(largest number of options in any field) * 4 + 20

MySQL limits the row size. If you encounter this problem, change some of the column types in the se_profilevalues table from VARCHAR to TEXT (TINYTEXT or SMALLTEXT should be good enough for ones that can replace a VARCHAR). This seems to be reported around 175 different profile fields.

1. Make sure the file and template have been uploaded (and did not fail to upload) over FTP.
2. If you have Subdirectory URLs enabled and have recently installed or upgraded a plugin or the platform, regenerate your .htaccess file.
3. If you have Subdirectory URLs enabled, make sure that you have mod_rewrite installed and you are able to use .htaccess files.
4. If you are getting a 500, 406, or 403 error, have mod_security installed, and the page name contains "user_", mod_security may be blocking the page. You need to add an exception to the mod_security rules. Please ask your host for details.
5. If you are getting a 500 error on all pages and have an htaccess file in your root folder, you may not be allowed to use htaccess files. Please ask your host.
6. If you are getting a 500 error and have to Suhosin PHP security mod installed, you may have global write permissions on the file or parent folder. This mod prevents PHP files that are chmod 777 or in folders that are chmod 777 from executing.

The default string operation functions do not support multi-byte text (virtually all non-english text). You can fix this problem by installing PHP's Multi-byte String Library and setting mbstring.func_overload to 2 in php.ini

Starting in 3.08, we will attempt to force this to on in header.php (if the mbstring library is installed), however unless you are running a fully dedicated server, it will probably fail due to security restrictions. If it is not working, you will have to set it manually in php.ini

Standard php.ini

Non-standard php.ini (used by some hosts)

.htaccess

Standard php.ini

Non-standard php.ini (used by some hosts)

.htaccess

This is likely caused because your server does not support "canonical web URLs", meaning it needs to see a "www" in front of your domain. To force this addition, add the following to your .htaccess file:

Please ensure your template files located in ./templates/, specifically profile.tpl, were overwritten when your last upgrade occured.

If you are using SE 3.12 or 3.13 , "Remember Me" is not fully supported, and you will need to upgrade to 3.14.

There is a bug in Internet Explorer 7 and 8 that impairs the creation and editing of profile fields. A fix is being created. In the meantime, here is the workaround:

This bug is inherently linked to tabs in IE. Try opening a second tab in the browser (Ctrl-T). You don't have to visit a site, the tab just needs to be open. In most cases, the presence of a second tab will cause the profile fields editing window to function normally.*

*In some rare cases, multiple tabs actually cause the problem, and the workaround is to have only one tab open.

To fix, edit your .htaccess file.
Look for:

Reuploading the files from the non-functional plugin, specifically the .SWF files, in the correct format should solve the problem. We recommend using the FTP client FileZilla, which will automatically upload files in the correct format.

The alternative to a complete upgrade is to replace the file ./include/class_inputfilter.php on your server with the newest version.

The solution is to upgrade your blogs plugin and SocialEngine Core to the most recent version. This will not only fix this issue, but will provide many feature enhancements, bug fixes, and security patches.

If you do not wish to upgrade, look to "Keyword blogcomment" in the "Recent Activity Feed" of the admin panel.

The encoded file _________.php requires a license file. The license file ________/license.txt has expired.

Remaining install_______.php files in the ./admin/ directory must be deleted as well.

To get rid of this error, click the X next to Server 1 in your memcache session settings, then click save. This will keep your server from attempting to contact the localhost to check the memcache settings.

1. The MySQL host is not appropriately identified. Often, in a shared server environment, the database server is not the localhost. Please check with your hosting provider and verify that you have entered the correct MySQL database host address.
2. The database server is not correctly configured. Please contact your host to ensure they have properly set the socket file used by the MySQL client, rather than connecting to the localhost loopback address 127.0.0.1.

• magic_quotes_gpc
• magic_quotes_runtime
• magic_quotes_sybase

1. The "HTML Templates" page of your admin panel. You can edit your TPL files in-browser in this page, allowing you to ensure that no third party application will corrupt them.
2. A plaintext editor, such as Notepad, or Notepad++. These text editors will edit the contents of any file without corrupting data.