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Judging by the Warning messages, the valid_column_name() function has been returning false negatives. Until I can look into this further, I have modified it to always return true.
I don't know what was causing the false negatives, but when I replaced a single return line with an if statement, the Warning messages stopped happening on a page I was getting them on. Let me know if you are still having the problems you described, and if you are, give me an URL where I can go and see the same problem myself.
The web site seems to be running better. I am still getting various warning messages out of at least 2 php urls. #1 is createsubject.php (It is the web page that I am using to send the message. #2 is play.pgp.  I'm playing an active game of eight stone chess with catugo, and the picture attached is a screen image from the game after I made a move. This picture below seems to warn about 2 vars named PersonID and UserID.
snipped corrupted image --BMR
I tired to send my screen shot as a jpeg attachment, but the attachment does not seem to have made it into the comments section. Note the subject name above. I did not type in that hex value. The php program createsubject.php seems to have generated it , or the clink of reply (in comments url) generated that subject hex value . I'll try Internet Explorer, and see if it is a firefox issue.
If you want I can send my jpeg or anything else you need via standard email.
Internet Explorer, seems a lot more stable. I did not see any warning messages in IE at 17:57 EDT on Sun May 13th.
Joe Joyce wrote on Sun, May 13, 2018 09:57 PM UTC:I couldn't get into the site for some hours this (Sunday) afternoon. I got blank pages repeatedly. I tried going into active games where I was to move, and got odd error messages and extremely truncated pages. Finally I was able to move in a game a while ago. When I tried again just now, the site came up fine. I use Mozilla Firefox.
The problem with valid_column_name() is that it was returning false if it could not connect to the database. I replaced it with a function that has all the column names hardcoded into it. The one drawback to this is that it will have to be updated when columns in the database are updated. Although I didn't notice any problems with valid_table_name(), I also replaced it with one that has the table names hardcoded into it.
I think there was a syntax error in fpd-indexing-funcs.php, which is used on nearly every page to varying extents. Things started working again after I fixed it.
Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, May 14, 2018 01:42 AM UTC:I'm guessing that while Fergus was fixing scripts, the new comments that were written had their subjects corrupted. I will push all the recent comments under the "something is off" subject.
wdtr's image still has some (monster) code in the source, which is also throwing off the "View" (and perhaps also wdtr's "Edit") link. I'll try to fix that while I'm in the database. BTW, for "subjects" like this (as opposed to comments attached to a page/ItemID) the scripts generate the hex code as the identifier, in addition to the subject title given by the user.
EDIT: done (but I edited wdtr's image link out using the site's scripts rather than directly in the database).
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I am getting an error after trying to attempt to edit one of the games I invented. Once this error occurs, it seems like the entire chess variant web site becomes unstable. Below is a cut and scrape of the messages I get after the system gets corrupt. My computer is a desktop, win 10, Firefox 56.2 borwser.
I'd say this issue started over the last 1 to 3 days.
I am trying to make a new game called Flank_Chess also, and that entire sub-program seems corrupt.
If you click on that one, the launch seems to go into an infinte loop, and I get a timeout, once that occurs everything is messed up. Including jumping to other web pages at chess variants. I was programming a sub-program last night around 10PM and the entire web site frooze up.
It's hard not to beleive that it was not my fault. If it was me, sorry.
What can I do to prevent this?
Based on past programming, once a program goes bad (feeding program play.php), I can never edit the program ever again. What I do is "reset" my creation back to standard chess, and type everything back in. It is painful.
Fergus, you've designed hundreds of games. What do you do when an edit session is saved and it contains a bug/error?
Warning: UserID is not a valid column name in the table Person.
Warning: ItemID is not a valid column name in the table Item.
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Game Courier Game Logs
This page shows logs for games played on Game Courier, a versatile web-based play-by-mail system that currently supports over 1100 Chess variants. By default, only publicly viewable unfinished games are shown. The form below lets you select various viewing options. To make a move in one of your own games, enter your userid in the form below, click Submit, then click on your name in the Next Move For column.
Game:
Age:
Status:
Log:
Tournament:
Sort by:
Userid:
It is not your turn to move in any game. This page will refresh and beep when it is your turn in at least one game.
Warning: UserID is not a valid column name in the table Person.
Warning: UserID is not a valid column name in the table Person.
Warning: UserID is not a valid column name in the table Person.
Warning: UserID is not a valid column name in the table Person.
Warning: UserID is not a valid column name in the table Person.
Warning: UserID is not a valid column name in the table Person.