Bug Uninstalled thanks/likes-Tried to Reinstall, Lost All Thanks

hello,
We had an Admin that screwed up and uninstalled APT/L. We tried to reinstall it, however none of the thanks are showing up. We figured this data was held in the SQL, and reinstalling it would make it reference the data again. However that did not happen. How can we restore the database link?
Thank you,
~SR

Unless you have a backup, there's no way to restore the data.

When you uninstall the mod it removes all the data (as it should), since in 99.99% of cases people who uninstall the mod no longer wants the data.

Fillip H. said:

Unless you have a backup, there's no way to restore the data.

When you uninstall the mod it removes all the data (as it should), since in 99.99% of cases people who uninstall the mod no longer wants the data.

Click to expand...

My god. It just erases the data we had it put into our database? Thats a problem... I'm surprised that in 99.99% of the cases people want that. Well, no accounting for communities with low IT standards. But you guys should definatly fix that. Would be good to have the right way to treat historical data and guide them from their bad habits of erasing the data as if what was written never happened.

So we are restoring the thanks from the backup now.. but new problem. Going through the install manual I dont see how I get the actual button for thanks to show in the threads. I seem to have forgotten what to do once I've installed it and I cant find this in the documentation.
Thank you.
~SR

SRobbins said:

My god. It just erases the data we had it put into our database? Thats a problem... I'm surprised that in 99.99% of the cases people want that. Well, no accounting for communities with low IT standards. But you guys should definatly fix that. Would be good to have the right way to treat historical data and guide them from their bad habits of erasing the data as if what was written never happened.

Click to expand...

If I ever forget how long a nanosecond is, it's the time between the release of a new mod where I leave a DB table out of the uninstaller and someone pointing out how the mod is not cleaning up after itself

On a more serious note, you're going to be extremely hard pressed to find a mod for vBulletin that does not completely uninstall itself if you hit "uninstall" and choose "yes" to the "are you sure?" prompt vBulletin gives you. Leaving a bunch of data that's going to be useless for everyone that didn't uninstall by accident or didn't realise the implications is simply not the norm.

To put it in a different perspective: I've been involved in vBulletin development since 2004, and not once have I ever heard of this being something someone would consider needing a fix.
Unfortunately we cannot change the mod to not remove its data without potentially annoying thousands of users

I recommend not granting your less tech savvy admins "Can Administer Products", as they will have the power to cause potentially irreparable harm to your site via that interface.

SRobbins said:

So we are restoring the thanks from the backup now.. but new problem. Going through the install manual I dont see how I get the actual button for thanks to show in the threads. I seem to have forgotten what to do once I've installed it and I cant find this in the documentation.

Click to expand...

You can do this by going to the "Manage Buttons" screen and editing each button, setting the Can Click permission.

If you don't see any buttons there due to the backup restoration, click "Repair Cache" first - that will rebuild the button cache

Fillip H. said:

If I ever forget how long a nanosecond is, it's the time between the release of a new mod where I leave a DB table out of the uninstaller and someone pointing out how the mod is not cleaning up after itself

On a more serious note, you're going to be extremely hard pressed to find a mod for vBulletin that does not completely uninstall itself if you hit "uninstall" and choose "yes" to the "are you sure?" prompt vBulletin gives you. Leaving a bunch of data that's going to be useless for everyone that didn't uninstall by accident or didn't realise the implications is simply not the norm.

To put it in a different perspective: I've been involved in vBulletin development since 2004, and not once have I ever heard of this being something someone would consider needing a fix.
Unfortunately we cannot change the mod to not remove its data without potentially annoying thousands of users

Click to expand...

It really is an odd thing. And its true, I see it in many of the vB mods, but you guys present yourselves well, so I was surprised when you guys did it.

Im from an IT background and you're right, its interesting how poor the standards are for managing site data. The things some of these web administrators want to do to their data is bizzar, from security to best practices for handling data. But next time you get someone complaining how some of their data is still there after an uninstall, just ask them "Have you ever seen Microsoft remove MSWord documents when you uninstall Word?" That should shut them up. Anyway good luck with that.

Fillip H. said:

I recommend not granting your less tech savvy admins "Can Administer Products", as they will have the power to cause potentially irreparable harm to your site via that interface.

You can do this by going to the "Manage Buttons" screen and editing each button, setting the Can Click permission.

If you don't see any buttons there due to the backup restoration, click "Repair Cache" first - that will rebuild the button cache

Click to expand...

Yeah, needless to say that admin is restricted to the test site first before making the changes on the main.

Thank you for the info on the Manage Buttons. Forgot about all these things. Have a good one.

SRobbins said:

But next time you get someone complaining how some of their data is still there after an uninstall, just ask them "Have you ever seen Microsoft remove MSWord documents when you uninstall Word?"

Click to expand...

I disagree with that analogy, a more accurate one would be "Have you ever seen a game remove its saves when you uninstall it?" to which I'd answer "Before cloud saves? Absolutely, all the time"

Even if I agreed with you that the data shouldn't be uninstalled, we would still have to cater to what the majority wants

Sorry for the slow reply... works has been nuts.

Fillip H. said:

I disagree with that analogy, a more accurate one would be "Have you ever seen a game remove its saves when you uninstall it?" to which I'd answer "Before cloud saves? Absolutely, all the time"

Even if I agreed with you that the data shouldn't be uninstalled, we would still have to cater to what the majority wants

Click to expand...

I agree with catering to what the majority want. But I'm just not familiar with the games you play as the ones I play dont uninstall your saves. I have to disagree with the game analogy too, I would tend to focus on business minded analogies as I think its always healthy for a business(dragonbyte in this case) to regard what they provide as a important business function.

Still... the point is, if you do have the majority asking for all data to be removed as you indicated... I would still remove all data even if its bad practice. Customers first. But personally, I would have the option for best practice in mind. Simply because its been my experience that corporate clients bring in better revenue for your efforts than gaming communities.

On a slightly different subject, but still in line with our discussion, I have a interesting story.

A year or so ago I placed my gaming communities servers in one of my companies Manhattan, NY datacenters. I have access to Internet Service Carriers that serve Wall Street and hooked them up with a high end tier 1 provider with insane speeds that services a few major trading firms on Wall Street(gig connections and all that). Long story short.... we got DDoS'ed for a couple weeks and didn't know it cause there was no interruption to our gaming servers service. It caused a massive overage charge that I had to negotiate us out of.

The community leadership was furious with the ISC for not mitigating the attack or shutting down the connection. I had to remind them this is a REAL ISC not some home or little Johny gaming connection and that its up to us as the client to protect our own servers in a datacenter. They service wall street and if they took a clients connection down, they would be potentially stopping billions in trading. But they insisted that the ISC should have done something.

Anyway, point of the story was that these little gaming communities are young early 20-somethings and late teens. They dont understand professionalism and proper protocol and responsibility. So I completely understand how you would get such a bizzar request from your customer base. Either-way, love what I see with your vB work and will be making a purchase on one of your themes and a couple of mods soon. Thanks.