Important XML parsing & Internal Error displays

The COM_KUNENA_INTERNAL_ERROR appeared straight out of the install--a clean J! 1.5.21, Kunena 1.6 RC2, and JomSocial 1.8.8, in that order. The same message appeared on a sister site being developed synchronously with "my problem child". By this time, RC3 was the installed version. I backed Kunena out of the latter--awaiting either the stable or another option for forums. I played all the "games" suggested in this thread, and others cited on other forums for products that integrate with Kunena:

www.kunena.com/forum/11-jomsocial/64738-...kunena-and-jomsocial

Two RT templates are involved here with the quote menu overlay issue--Quantive & Syndicate. Evidently this problem has been present for nearly two months, as evidenced by this thread:

www.kunena.com/forum/170-k-16-templates-...quote-button-problem

This is the thread about this I have been involved in:

www.kunena.com/forum/170-k-16-templates-...vers-up-quote-button

I suspect that the disappearing menu tabs are tied to the mootools update--something that RT may be a little too bleeding edge with. A thread or two in the forum calls attention to this, and I have found no resolution as the mootools library is required.

The XML/token issue appeared with K 1.6 stable, and got considerably worse with the JomSocial 1.8.10 update. It only appears when a post is made. Likely an incongruity with the activity stream functions between JS and Kunena. I have played many games with uninstalling and reinstalling plugins, etcetera with no change in behaviors.

I wish I could say that this saga ended with the uninstallation of Kunena and its plugins--but that simply caused further headaches that the last 6 hours have been spent undoing.

After installing another forum product, I did a import of existing categories and boards to that, and then removed all of the Kunena plugins, followed by the component itself. The result was horrendous. The main JomSocial community page and all Community driven pages were blank. Dropping all the Kunena tables that were left behind in the MySQL database remedied that. However, the removal of the Kunena integration stripped all of the test user avatars out of their profiles, and dumped the test users out of their "paid" subscription plans in AEC/JSTP, reverting them to regular subscribers...

Users need to be very, very careful uninstalling this component if it is fully integrated in a JomSocial/JSTP(XITP)/AEC environment. EDIT: OR ANY OTHER COMPONENT THAT HITCHES ITSELF TO THE JOMSOCIAL AVATAR TREE

That has all been reset now, but the public view activity wall does not display old or new activities. Logged in users can see the stream--but public side is broken. This too shall pass. I am almost tempted to dump the entire installation and start again--sans Kunena--but at minimum that is about 60 hours of work as this is a complex socionet development.

EDIT 10/14: SOLVED--read my next post, as it details why this all happened, and provides a precautionary tale for others...

Keep up the good work--I know it's hard to keep integration functional with so many different layers and component systems being pulled together for comprehensive sites.

Patrick

Hi,

Very sorry to here about your issue. For some reason some of your statements do not make any sense to me.

If you want we can take a look at your site and find out what is wrong. I am reasonably certain that it something unique to your setup and the changes you have made. There are 10,000s Kunena 1.6 sites out there - most of them with JomSocial that work out of the box. Yes there might be some mootools and menu hickups - some go back to Kunena using new features of Joomla that need to get hardened, but some of the problems you are describing have never been seen before.

The XML error for example points to you running a system plugin that is crashing one way or another. This error does not even come from Kunena.

You also do not loose JomSocial avatars when you uninstall Kunena - unless you modify and or drop tables by hand and happen to take the wrong ones.

Again - happy to help - but at this point I would very much see the configuration myself.

Sorry, I'm a little late to this "party," but just wanted to chime in on the situation here. I've used JomSocial & Kunena for quite some time now (for my personal sites and client sites) and have never experienced these errors before.

The quote button problem you referenced was due to changes in the CSS file of the default Kunena template while in the beta phase and a CSS class naming conflict with RT templates. That would have no effect whatsoever on the symptoms you're describing.

Any Javascript problems are purely due to templates that haven't been upgraded to the latest (or even semi-latest) version of MooTools 1.2.x. Joomla has done it (finally) and template designers/creators have had months (years, really) of time to update. If you're using a version of Joomla newer than 1.5.18 (released in July), you have the latest-ish version of MooTools available. If you're not, you'd better upgrade ASAP with the latest security releases to 1.5.21. Our stance on MooTools and Javascript in general can be read here:

www.kunena.com/blog/19-developer-blog/68-mootools-and-kunena-16

The nature of the upgrade from MooTools 1.1.x to 1.2.x is not such that it would cause the symptoms you're describing.

The Kunena dev team and the JomSocial dev team have been working closely together for quite some time now to bring the best in compatibility and stability. We use the latest version of both components on Kunena.com so we have a real world testing ground in case serious issues arise in a production environment. If issues crop up with JomSocial and or integration with JomSocial, we see them immediately and they go into the next release of Kunena and/or JomSocial. You're using the same versions we are so I'm confident the source of the problem isn't the relation between JomSocial and Kunena.

That leaves AEC.

In my experience, AEC is buggy and chaotically coded. My company went through an extensive process evaluating different account systems and it came down to AEC as the best option for the situation. But once we got into setting it up and customizing it, it was an absolute nightmare (as you described, never so many headaches with a component since I've been doing Joomla development in 2005). We ended up fixing far too many bugs in the component ourselves to make it worth our while. We should have gone with CB Subs or one of the other options out there. Hindsight is 20/20.

So, in reading your posts, the thing that stands out as the most likely culprit is the AEC. Are you using the latest version? Have you asked the developer for support? When you install it, it touches everything on your site, so an error in the forum (or anywhere else) could really be caused by the AEC. You said you tried a fresh install but was it in stages with Kunena and JomSocial first before anything else? Then install the AEC? This isn't to shift the blame of your woes somewhere else. It's just to isolate the source of the problem. In my experience, the symptoms don't always appear in the place where the source of the problem is.

If you want, we can take a quick look at your site to possibly provide some guidance on the issue.

Thanks for your comments Severdia, fxstein, and matias. I had read the mootools blog entry previously--but did not stop to consider the ramifications of it--namely the order that various libraries load themselves as a page is created! Regardless of how much I foam at the mouth over things, ultimately I am going to discover how to solve a problem--if a solution exists. Sometimes just for the educational experience...

A decision was made to rebuild the problem site from the bottom up. That is another matter. Replicating the build on still another fresh development domain, some games and monitoring were done. The "disappearing" avatars and later discovered missing points and friend count was found to be not AEC, but the granular ACL provided to different membership levels through XITP(formerly JSTP). Very strange things begin to happen when an avatar rule (and watermark) are applied in XITP and forum avatar integration are combined. I believe that the real tipping point is when MyBlog avatar/point integration is added to the mix. It all works well together until the integration is "broken" by removing some part of the tree. Lesson learned. One must be very careful with AEC/XITP/JomSocial/MyBlog/JomComments/Kunena integrations.

Back to library loading and mootools/jQuery. I had included an app called "Kunena Spam Killer". I have another name for it now, but that is not appropriate for publication here... This little gem is what was responsible for throwing the SQL errors. It can be "cured" by adding a handy little plugin called "jQuery Includer", which helps sort out library load order, header expiration dates, and versions. It also solves the "disappearing menu tabs" issue. I am keeping the Includer, but ditching Spam Killer for other reasons (too many queries). This component can be found here, and is recommended to Gantry platform Rocket Theme users by RT support:

extensions.joomla.org/extensions/site-ma...te-performance/10236

This only leaves the Rocket Theme issue with the Kunena quote button. I have made the new test Kunena loads with the K 1.6.1 DEV b3689 version, and the problem still presents--so it is not limited to the earlier 1.6 RC betas. This issue only applies to RT templates published after November 2009, when the Gantry/960 grid platform was introduced to all further RT templates. No issues exist with any earlier RT offerings. There must be a solution to this that does not involve "stripping" the quote typography out of the template--and your comments and the ones in the following thread seem to drop this squarely in the Kunena dev sandbox:

www.kunena.com/forum/170-k-16-templates-...em?limit=10&start=10

Is true resolution on track for this? After all, RT is probably the industry leader in generic club J! templates...

Thanks for everyones interest and comments on this!

P

Hi,

As I stated in another thread about the quote button, it is not something we will be fixing in Kunena 1.6.x as it would break all 3rd party templates for Kunena. (several already out there - many more in the making)

See my reply here: www.kunena.com/forum/170-k-16-templates-...it=10&start=10#65785