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YaBB Quick Start Guide

Troubleshooting your Installation

While the YaBB team puts every effort into making sure the install process is as quick and painless as possible, there are some users who run into problems. This troubleshooting guide aims to help you solve some of the most common issues as reported by the fantastic YaBB Support Community.

Why am I getting a 500 Internal Server Error (ISE)?

Your server encountered an unexpected condition that prevented it from actually running YaBB. Since ISEs are very generic, there could be any number of reasons for this to happen. To resolve this, use the checklist below to rule out what could be causing the error.

  1. Does your server require Perl scripts to have the .cgi extension?
  2. Does YaBB.pl, AdminIndex.pl and Setup.pl have the correct path to Perl (the first line)?
  3. Are you sure your host allows you to run Perl scripts?
  4. Are all of your chmods correct?
  5. Do your Perl scripts need to be placed in a special folder such as cgi-bin?
If this still does not solve your problem, please visit the YaBB Support Community

I just installed YaBB, how do I log in?

The default username and password for any new install of YaBB is "admin" (without quotes). Once you're logged in, be sure you change this to something more secure by editing your profile.

When I try to edit my profile, I get a message about "$facesdir" being wrong.

In short, this messages is saying that the path you entered for YaBB's avatar directory is incorrect and it cannot find the folder. To fix this, enter your Admin Center and under "Forum Configuration", click on the link titled "Path Settings". Below, you will find several common paths that may fix this problem.

  • ../../yabbfiles/avatars
  • ../../public_html/yabbfiles/avatars
  • ../../www/public_html/YaBBImages/avatars
  • ../../www/YaBBImages/avatars
The exact path depends on where you installed the /yabbfiles/ directory. Remember, ../../ tells YaBB to "go two steps up in the directory tree then look for these folders" where as ../ goes up only one and ./ is for the current directory.