Website not loading

[lawyersh]

Hello Team,
I need your help. Whenever I try to load my SMF forum http://www.lawyershangout.com/ the "Index of /" page comes up instead of the home page. Any idea whats going on? Please advise.

Thank you.

 

[Dead-i]

Hi lawyersh,

Assuming your SMF installation was installed to /public_html/, it looks like many important files of SMF are missing. Did you upload these files from your computer, or did you use Softaculous to do this?

Thank you,

 

[lawyersh]

Oh no! I did not make any changes. There was this error "smf_sessions' is marked as crashed and should be repaired Table" on the home page before and I repaired it using MyphpAdmin. After repairing the file successfully I reloaded the website and got this error message. Is there anything that can be done? Will I have to start over again? I did use Softaculous for SMF install months ago.

Please advise. Thank you.

 

[Dead-i]

Hi lawyersh,

It looks like the base SMF script, "index.php", had been somehow renamed to "index.php~" and been given strange file permissions. I've now renamed the file back to what it should have been and given it file permissions of 644, and your site now appears to be showing up fine.

I should note that when files do not end in a valid extension (in this case, ending in "php~"), the source code of the file is exposed. Though your site appears to be working, for security reasons, I would highly recommend you take steps to securing SMF if you did not rename these files, in case this was an intentional attack by another party.

A few examples of steps to keep your SMF installation secure could be:
- Updating SMF to the latest and greatest version, as newer versions have patches against any previously-found security exploits.
- Changing your database password and cPanel password.

Thank you,

 

[lawyersh]

Dear Dead-i, Thank you so much for your help. This is highly appreciated. I have noted the points and will do the needful.

Thank again! Cheers!