Transition from one web host to the other messed up my site!

Hi @admin or @ross,

I’ve tagged both of you because I’ve noticed your high level of activity and response rate on this forum.

Recently, I’ve encountered a deadly issue which I need to find a fix for ASAP! I am the Supervisor of an educational institution and I DID NOT expect to run into such of an issue in the middle of this instructional week.
I changed the web host of the website from my personal VPS to a NameCheap Shared Hosting plan. I exported a copy of the database, and when I installed the new copy of Gibbon (just to let you know, I ALWAYS use Softaculous), I uploaded the database and everything worked fine. I was able to find student accounts, enrol, unenrol present students, and much more ON THE NEW WEBSITE LIKE IT WORKED ON THE OLD ONE (and point to note - there are 100+ students who have already been using Gibbon for 2-3 weeks, so I really don’t want anything to be messed up on their end).

The HUGE problem is: When new students create their application, I CANNOT:

  1. Edit the application form in the “Manage Applications” page. - it tells me “the record does not exist” - and this is important because I need to set them to specific roll groups so they can be automatically enrolled into courses assigned to the roll groups
  2. View the student account after I would have approved/accepted their applications to edit it.
  3. On the acceptance page with the username, password, etc. I am seeing “Parent 1 could not be linked to family!” and “Student could not be linked to family!”.

What I think the problem is:
When I looked at the page that tells me the username and password of both students and parents when they were accepted, I saw this:
gibbonPersonID: 0000000000

I remembered on the old host when I used to accept applications, the student will be given their unique person ID but since I switched to a different host, that isn’t working…

Help me please. I need FIXES and not suggestions.

Hi Kevin, sadly there are no FIXES to such complex issues, but rather only suggestions to things that you can try. Can you please let us know the PHP and MySQL versions that the new server is using, as well as the version of Gibbon that you are using? We’ll then make suggestions based on previous observations. Ross.

Ok, noted.

Please explain how the gibbonApplicationFormHash is gotten in the gibbonApplicationForm table. What is the algorithm behind it?

Oh… and what is it used for?

Hi Kevin, following up on the original post, were you able to get this issue sorted out? It looks like Ross offered to help troubleshoot if you’re able to let us know the PHP and MySQL versions that the new server is using, as well as the version of Gibbon that you are using. If you did find a solution and it’s something that might be helpful to other users, sharing the solution here would certainly help benefit the community.

The application form hash is used for emails sent to parents after they submit the application, should they want to continue submitting applications for siblings who are part of the same family. It’s a basic sha hash used in conjunction with the application ID. In the future, be sure to post separate questions as separate topics, as this helps other users search and find the answers to similar questions.