Troubleshooting

The PostNuke article modules are the most popular and most commonly used modules on websites, and as a result they also tend to produce the most problems and support requests. The following sections discuss a few of the more common problems you might encounter with articles.

Missing Topic Icons

Adding new topic icons is often one of the first trouble spots because it is usually also the first time a new user works with both web forms and files together. The system also simply has users type in the filenameexpecting the file to be therewith no browsing operation to allow definite selection of the image.

If you find your icons are simply not appearing, first check your directory location. Placing your images in the root /images/ folder is not enough; they must be in /images/topics/. Then, after the images are confirmed in the right folder, verify that you referenced them in the topic creation form correctly. Look again at Figure 5.2. Your filename must be written fully, including the extension, which is hidden on some machines.

Linux servers are case sensitive, so the name you type into the topic form must match the physical filename if your PostNuke is running on Linux. Even if it is not running on Linux, you should always maintain case consistency. PostNuke is portable; you can export your database and literally just copy the files to a new server and go. However, if you previously used inconsistent casing on a Windows server, you will have many updates to do before it will work on a new Linux machine.

If your files are named well and in the correct location, but you still can't get them to show, check your Topics Configuration settings at the bottom of the Topics Manager page. The directory path to your topics images can be set there. If you inadvertently changed it, none of your images show.

Missing Article Image

You can add images to your articles so they appear like any standard news article, with captioned photos or supporting diagrams on the side. But, often when new PostNuke administrators test this capability, they find their images do not show up with their article text. The word content appears fine, but not the side photo.

This problem is usually caused by restricted HTML options. By default, PostNuke prevents certain tags from being rendered for security reasons. The <img> tag is one of those tags. If you are the only poster, or you know you can trust your posters to not harm your site, relaxing the HTML restrictions should be fine. Go to the long HTML Options table under your global Site Settings page. You need to allow the <img> tag with parameters so the image source can be defined.

Missing New Submission Email

You might have turned on the Notify of New Submissions by Email option in your Submit News Configuration page, but you still don't receive any email. First return to the configuration page and check the email you entered into the form. A mistype in the address field could be the problem. If this is not the case, you probably have not configured the PostNuke Mailer properly. PostNuke uses the basic Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) PHP mail() function by default to generate messages.

If you are using an external host, you might not have access to the server's PHP configuration file. If this is the case, contact your host and ask about the email setting on the server. If you have access, open your php.ini file and look for this section of the code:

 [mail function] ; For Win32 only. ;SMTP = localhost ; for Win32 only ;sendmail_from= [e-mail] ; for Win32 only ; For Win32 only. ;sendmail_from = [e-mail] ; For Unix only. You may supply arguments as well (default: "sendmail -t -i"). ;sendmail_path = 

The semicolons are comment markers. You need to remove the semicolons by the lines relevant for your server type, and enter in the appropriate sendmail information for your mail server.

PostNuke alternately allows you to use a standalone SendMail, Qmail, or SMTP server, which can on a separate physical machine. If you have selected one of those options in your PostNuke Mailer Configuration, you need to verify that the separate mail server is running and configured properly.