I screwed something up on my site....

[Tweek]

I know some HTML but I am a newbie when it comes to everything else. I just wanted it so that people could leave comments on some of my webpages, and I installed Drupla or whatever it's called into my home directory... decided I didn't know what I was doing and then deleted all the files. Now when I go to my domain, tweeksthoughts.com, it says, "forbidden" when it didn't say that before. I don't know what the deal is. Was I supposed to uninstall drupla or something? I hope someone can help me with this :/

[Dust3r]

Yup! Tweek, you stepped right in to it. :D

But no worries! We all have done it before. Nobody just wakes up one day and understands websites. So, the most important thing is not to sweat it too much. When your just starting out, a lot of things are all about trial and error. Personally, I'd suggest you experiment with some more things while your site is down, because you basically don't have anything to lose. But you DO have much you can gain by way of experience. And with with web stuff, it's all about learning, but it should be fun as you learn. So, whatever you do from this point on, make sure you have fun doing it!

Now, about your issue. A few things should be clarified... When you say you deleted ALL the files, does that mean all the files in your public_html folder? If so, you will be starting your website from scratch, because won't have any of your old files there either.

Did you make a back-up coy of your website files before you installed Drupla? If not, another lesson learned. Always make a back-up of your current website before making any changes to it. If you need to learn about that, we can go over it right after we fix your current situation.

If you log in to your public_html folder and there are no files there, such as index.html or index.htm, or whatever, you are going to get an error message because there is no file there to tell your browser what to do. For lack of a better explanation, you need an index.html file in there so that your site has at least one basic page to it. Do you know how to make a basic web page? Nothing fancy at all, just something that says "Hi There!" would suffice for now. It can always be changed later. If you need help with how to make html pages inside the file manager of your website or on your computer, that's no problem either. Just let me know...

Last, eventually, you will need to go in to something called "MySQL Databses" which is on the main menu page when you log in to your cPanel. From there, you will need to remove any databases and database users that were created during the Drupla installation. While they don't hurt anything just sitting there, if they are not in use, it's usually best to go ahead and delete them just to prevent further complications for you in the future.

Bottom line... Make sure you having fun while you learn. I couldn't even begin to describe how much stuff I have screwed up (and sometimes still do :p) while doing web stuff.

So, first things first. Do you have a back up of your site before the Drupal install? If not, do you know how to get a basic html page put together and uploaded to your site?

[Dust3r]

Tweek, one more thing just in case... There is a sticky posted in the forum here about how to do a back-up your website. If you've never done a back-up before, you should check it out when you get time. It will definitely save you some headaches in the future. ;)

http://bluehostforum.com/showthread.php?t=5844

[Tweek]

I didn't loose anything, I just deleted the Drulpa files. Everything's there. When I go to my index.html page, everything comes up, but when I just go to my domain, it says, "Forbidden. You don't have permission to access / on this server." I think that's because before when I went to my domain it was this Durpla login page, which was why I deleted the Drupla files. So now if I want to go to my website I have to go to the index.html page. I was wondering how to fix that..... like if I should've tried to uninstall Drupla or something. Is there a way to uninstall Drupla? I think that by deleting some of those Drupla files I messed something up...... Now I have no idea what to do.

[Dust3r]

Yikes! That is strange. Is there any chance that you have an index.php file AND an index.html file in your main directory?

If so, delete the index.php. That is the only thing I can think of that would cause the symptoms you have described. If you do have both files in there, index.php will almost always take precedence over an index.html file.

Look for index.php and see if it is in there with your index.html. If so, delete it. But before you try to access your website again, clear the cookies and such from your browser cache, close your browser and re-start it. That's to make sure your browser isn't trying to display a cached file instead of accessing the site itself.

If none of that helps, I'll try some things on my own to see if I can find an answer for ya. Take care and good luck.

[felgall]

There are two possibilities - either the install changed some of the settings so that the script would load and you need to change them back to get it to work OR possibly you deleted too many files and have deleted some of the system ones that help your account work.

[Tweek]

What happened was I installed my drupal thing to my domain, not another directory. Now because I deleted the wrong files I can't uninstall drupla, or install a new one. And my site won't work, because it tries to bring up drupla every time I go there, and I deleted all the drupla files. :/ I just got my site, I can backup all my files...... I wonder if there is a way to restore everything to the way it was before, all settings back to default or whatever. My domain is completely wrecked.

Edit: Somehow I deleted a few more files and now when I go to my domain my site is up, but it still has the Drupal icon next to it... I wish I could restore everything to the way it originally was.

[trawets]

Hi ;)
the drupal icon will just be a small file probably called
favicon.gif or
favicon.jpeg you can change this to whatever you like. there are online favicon generators where you can make custom ones for your site

look in you template header it should tell you there what its called and where it is
http://www.favicon.co.uk/

[felgall]

If its a favicon it will be favicon.ico

[trawets]

Hi
of course "felgall" is correct, what I should have said you can change the favicon.ico to which ever suitable image as long as you change your template header to reflect this.
sorry for the misleading post
trawets

[Tweek]

What is a template header and where can I find it? Also I can't seem to find favicon.ico anywhere.

[trawets]

apparently the favicon is in the misc folder ie
drupal/misc/

I suggest you go to the drupal site get a copy, http://drupal.org/drupal-6.1
extract locally and carefully compare the files in you home folder with those in the drupal installer package and delete the ones you don't need.
I also suggest don't just delete them rename 1 at a time each time checking your installation is still as its supposed to be