Support community for TTG plugins and products.
NOTICE
The Turning Gate's Community has moved to a new home, at https://discourse.theturninggate.net.
This forum is now closed, and exists here as a read-only archive.
You are not logged in.
I have made good progress with learning and exploring Backlight. I chose to do my work on a local Webserver running on a Synology NAS. This is a DS1513 system running Synology DSM 6.0 platform and uses Apache 2.2 php 5.6.
All was working well and had made a few pages and used the designer added galleries etc with no serious problems on the way. Then I decided to add a gallery to my home page. Immediately I had an Error 500 on the home page when accessing the site.
I have tested exactly the same thing on a Windows 10 machine running XAMPP and it all works fine there. I have the same problem regardless of whether I use Backlight version 1.00 or 1.01.
I am not a stranger to problem solving and have lots of Turning gate experience with CE ranges, my main current site uses CE4 and hosted by bluehost however I am stumped on how to sort out the error 500. Could you give me any ideas on where to look and what to try on my Synology setup as although I have alternatives this NAS approach is my preferred option.
Tony P
Offline
I need to correct one aspect of my initial posting. This morning I decided to apply the 1.01 update to my XAMPP system. I now get the error 500 on the home page here when I use the add an album to it. To be sure that the 1.01 has introduced this problem on that machine I then reverted to Backlight 1.00 and the adding an album to the home page works fine. So it looks certain that 1.01 has introduced the problem here. I will go back to my Synology system and recheck with tht to see if I can add an album to the home page with version 1.00 on that.
Offline
So back again. This time I reverted my Synology system to version 1.00 and tested. The behaviour here was to give error 500 after adding an album to the home page. When I go to designer and switch off the option and save the page the Error 500 goes away and the site works fine. So I have different behaviour on the two Apache based systems. The Synology will fail and give error 500 in both backlight version 1.00 and 1.01 when I add an album to the home page but the XAMPP system will work fine with backlight version 1.00 but will give an error 500 with version 1.01.
Bugger!
Offline
That sounds tricky. Can you find anything in the Apache / PHP error logs?
Offline
Hi Ben
No I am afraid that there seems to be no trail left in any logs that give a clue. Maybe I will have to set up a sub domain on my bluehost site and work in there as I don't really want to spend days fighting with this snag. I am hoping that someone would have a theory based on the code that deals with the loading of the album to the home page. The benefit of playing about on a local web server is the speed of ftp transfers etc and the increased scope for taking risks that can be undone without dropping a used site.
Will keep fingers crossed for a clue to arrive.
Tony P
Offline
Hi Tony, without the logged message, we can only make guesses about the cause.
Possible causes:
1. Something in your .htaccess file that your server doesn't like. Try renaming the .htaccess to something else and see whether the 500 still comes up.
2. An issue with open_basedir. Backlight has a known issue with open_basedir restrictions, however this should raise an error in the browser rather than a 500.
I suggest trying to enable or find the error logs. PHP has a setting in the php.ini called error_log, that may need enabling. Apache has an ErrorLog setting, that may need enabling.
Offline
Thanks Ben will follow up those ideas and get back later.
Offline
Hi Ben
Went back to my XAMPP machine and reinstated 1.01. Cleaned out all logs and enabled full apache and php logging. Opened up the home page remotely in an Edge browser on a windows 10 machine. With the home page setup to not include an album all works fine. Then I went to Backlight login and selected Set Insert Album to ON in the designer for my home page specified an album to insert from the drop down box. When I went to the page this time the server delivered a php error.
[12-May-2016 12:11:37 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Class 'Album' not found in C:\xampp\htdocs\www\backlight\designer\application\controllers\PageController.php on line 80
I do hope this helps.
Thanks for the helpful guidance
Tony P
Offline
Hi Tony, that helps thanks. We made a last minute fix for this issue. It is caused by a scenario that our testing did not cover -- a site that includes embedded albums but does not include an Album or Album Set menu item in the navigation. Can you try downloading 1.0.1 again, and replacing backlight\designer\application\controllers\PageController.php?
Offline
Wow Ben! it worked on both of my systems. I must now go and update my directory in which I keep track of TTG updates as I have two versions of update 1.01 now. I think I am going to call it a good day and have a beer after all that.
Very many thanks.
Offline
I'm glad that solved it! A beer sounds like an excellent idea.
We've taken steps in Backlight to banish 500 errors (with the dreaded blank page) to where they belong. Many errors that had previously been very difficult to diagnose should now raise clear error messages in the browser. I suspect that PHP 7 ignores some of those attempts to capture and present errors. Which version/s of PHP are you running on our two installations?
Offline
My Synology is running PHP 5.6 and the XAMPP system is 5.5.24. Pleased to learn about the work to improve error reporting . Its so annoying to get the 500 error with not a clue to start work on it. Beer was indeed a good plan ;-)
Tony P
Offline
I am having trouble getting BACKLIGHT to run on my synology server
I am not an Apache or PHP expert.
Can someone tell me what packages other than APACHE and PHP, WEB STATION, etc I need to install, and what if any paramaters I need to set.
Non Backlight created sites work fine
I get an error 500 when I go to my test URL
for now I am testing using xxxxx.synology.me as my domain
Thanks
Roger
Last edited by goodguy100 (2017-06-12 03:43:14)
Offline
Hi Roger, missing packages should not throw 500 errors. Backlight checks for the following modules on load, and displays messages if missing:
* PDO
* XML
* Sqlite
You'd typically get 500 errors from setup issues, such as directory permission problems or errors in .htaccess files. I suggest locating your Apache error log and seeing if the underlying problem is reported there.
Offline
It appears one needs to be much more knowledgeable than I to make this work.
The Apache error log does not seem to be available from the GUI (DSM) interface, and I am not able to access a command line from the GUI either. the .htaccess file is unchanged from what was supplied in the backlight package.
Thanks
Offline
It appears one needs to be much more knowledgeable than I to make this work.
Only because you're attempting to manage your own server. Backlight is designed to be simple to setup and begin using on most standard hosting services, for example on Bluehost, HostGator, etc.
Are you intending your Synology server to be a permanent home for your Backlight site, or are you just working with it as a test environment before publishing a live site elsewhere?
Can you confirm whether your server is properly set up with the PDO, XML and Sqlite modules that Backlight requires?
Offline
I'll second what Matt said. The difficult you're having is in managing a web server. Such a task is not trivial, and would usually require at least familiarity with systems administration to solve problems that arise.
Is your server online? If so, I'm happy to have a look and try and work out what's going if you're able to send me FTP details via the Email link under my name.
Offline
Ben email addresses link not working
Roger
Offline
Ben email addresses link not working
Roger
that could be your browser not linking to your email program. Try right clicking on the link, copy, and paste into an email.
or copy the email from Ben's profile page: http://community.theturninggate.net/profile.php?id=101
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
Offline