Frequently Asked Questions

1. I am receiving an HTTP 500 Internal Server Error when attempting to browse to the folder where the script is installed.

This error may mean that your server does not allow .htaccess overrides. Try renaming the .htaccess files that are included with this script to something else. They are located in the root folder, the "data" folder, and the "template" folder.

If that does not resolve the issue, check the Apache error log; it may contain a more specific error message that will help identify the issue.

2. The challenge verification code does not display; I get a broken image instead.

More than likely, GD lib is either not installed or not enabled. The following link describes how to enable GD lib.

How do I get GD to work with PHP

If you are unable to get GD lib working, the challenge-response test can be disabled by setting the $CHALLENGE_ENABLED variable to FALSE in config.php.

3. When attempting to add a guestbook entry, I receive an error such as "Unable to create guestbook file in data folder" or "Unable to open guestbook file for writing."

This usually means that the "data" folder, or one of the files inside of it, does not have write permissions enabled. On a UNIX server, the permissions can be changed with the "chmod" command.

4. I get the error message "Unable to send notification."

The notifications feature depends on the PHP mail functions being available. If you are getting this message, more than likely they are not. The following page discusses the requirements of these mail functions:

http://us2.php.net/mail

5. I am attempting to use non-ASCII (i.e. non-English) characters in the configuration or template files, but they do not show up correctly in the web browser.

In order to use non-ASCII characters, you must configure your text editor to save the file using UTF-8 encoding. It is also recommended that you save it without a BOM (byte-order mark), since some configurations of PHP do not handle the BOM properly. Notepad++ is an example of a text editor that has this capability.

6. I get an error message such as "It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings."

PHP 5.1.0 and later generate a warning message if a default timezone isn't explicitely set. In order to eliminate this warning, you must either set the $DISPLAY_TIME_ZONE variable in config.php, or set the date.timezone option in php.ini. See the list of valid timezones for supported values.