New users can't access gallery properly

[paperthreads]

I have a problem with my gallery in regards to new users.

Let me break down what is happening.

Customer joins my forum (i run VBulletin forum 3.7.3) and in turn, they are automatically registered for the gallery, as I have the two integrated.

However, when they go to the gallery, they get an error message saying they don't have permission to view the gallery, and they can't upload. However, they can log out, and be able to see things.

then, as an admin, when I go into the admin control panel, i log in, and it logs me out completely, I click again, log in again, and it logs me out once again, but when I click back on the admin link, instead of actually being logged out, I'm actually logged into the admin.

All of this started happening after I had to recover from a database dump back in October (our forum was hacked, so I had to go back to a dump of the database from 3 days prior). We didn't realize there was a problem with new users accessing the gallery until a week or so later when a couple started reporting the issue, and at first, didn't know what it was related to (as at the same time, I also integrated some better password protected directories to protect my site from another hack.

Anyway, I am currently running Photopost 6.2, as I did the upgrade, hoping it would fix the issue, but it didn't...

I'm assuming the problem is that there is a syncing issue between the forum membership in the database and the gallery membership, or something like that. I'm not sure. And at this point, I don't know how to fix it.

(I'm computer literate, but programming illiterate. I know just enough to set up the forum and gallery through researching etc...but not comfortable enough to do much with the database itself.)

ANY help would be appreciated!

[Chuck S]

My suggestion is you check your forum database information and make sure that the access information in your forum config is the same as it is on the photopost config file for the user database so your actually integrating with the right database not an old copy.

Then you can also check to make sure your cookies are set right by reading the cookie FAQ thread in the Photopost FAQ forum.

[paperthreads]

Argh...I've been researching off and on for a couple months as i have time, and didn't even think about it being the database login and passwords themselves.

So I checked, and sure enough, when we recovered from the hack, we had to start the forum in a new database, and the config file didn't get changed in the gallery to reflect as being in that new database.

So, what I have done is I left the original database username and login for the gallery database log in (because we have had many many pictures added since october, and are currently hosting a couple of contests on there--and it's all located in Database 1) and then for the integrated vbulletin, I put the new database and password in the gallery config second portion. (database 2- as I can't switch the forum back to database 1, or we would lose threads and posts, and some of those are subscription services)

Thanks for pointing out what should have been obvious...but my non-programming brain can't wrap around all that stuff! I'm a marketing person and a retailer....lol, not a programmer!

But, now i can see the forum and gallery, and it seems to have resolved the login issue and permissions issue....

BUT...now I have two different databases. Is this going to cause future problems, or is this something where they can be "merged" so I can get back to one database? Since merging is above my knowledge, I need to just know if I will have future problems with the two databases, or if I should hire out and get someone to get them merged (if that's even possible).

[Chuck S]

You can have two different databases or the same depends whatever you want. If you want to move photopost tables simply back up the pp_ tables restore them to your new forum database update your photopost config and see if everything runs. If it does then you should be free to get rid of the old database. Or simply keep things in separate database just cleanup that old database of any old vb tables