Hi, originally I posted this question under the `Install Issues` board, but feel this is really a post-install issue:

I am in the process of setting up a new website and have installed Blah as an option provided by by my web host. Everything has gone OK up to the point where I tried to register a new member. I have installed myself as an administrator (seems OK), set up my new email addresses (seems OK) and turn on the validation by email option and ask for administration notification of new members. I then tried to register as a new member (went OK) and received both emails, one as admin and the other as new member.

Admin Email:
Hello Administrator!
There is a new member on (mywebsite) Forum. If you have enabled validation, click here to validate this new member.

However, this linked failed (HTTP 404)

Member Email:
Welcome to the (mywebsite) Forum!
Before you can start posting and use the member features on the http://www.mysearch.org.uk Forum, you must validate your screen name. After you click the link below, you will be allowed access to these forums.
To validate your screen name, please use the link below:
The same (404) error happened to my member registration.

Didn't have any problem in my registration to this forum, so I guess there is an issue with the configuration of my forum. Any suggestions what I doing wrong?

However, later, I found that I could go in as an administrator and manually validate the membership, but I am still assuming that this should have been possible via the email links mentioned above?

A copy of the link would have been very useful but this is caused by your website URL being wrong in Settings.

Martin, thanks for the reply, but I am literally starting with Blah today so still struggling to find my way around. Can I question you for a few more details on your last reply:

A copy of the link would have been very useful but this is caused by your website URL being wrong in Settings.

Found `Forum Settings` under `Admin Center` and looked under  `Directories and Web Addresses `. Presumably all the addresses were set on installation, so which one is relevant to the website URL. For example if my website was called http://www.website.com, the two following settings are currently:

Forum Address? e.g. http://website.com/
Root? e.g. /home/sites/website.com/public_html/eblah

I worried about the forum address having a trailing /, but when removed it and saved, it seems to simply be reinstated. I even tried reinstalling EBlah from scratch, but the problem simply reappears. Would really appreciate some specific suggestion.
Thanks

Looks like you are with heartinternet.

Your Forum URL should be: http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/forum/

Martin,
I appreciate your last post. Just to recap, I was having problems getting a new member of my Blah forum to be validated by email. You last wrote:

“Looks like you are with heartinternet.
Your Forum URL should be: http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/forum/”

You were right about Heart Internet, but unfortunately things were/are not so straightforward with getting a member validated by email. I did change to the directory you suggested, but it didn’t work. Then took a look at the directory layout on the Heart server. Heart organise things as follows:

public_html/<web file under here>

There is a cgi-bin folder at the same level as public_html, but with nothing in it. So went back to look at the instruction for Blah from Heart and it clearly implied that Blah could be installed under public_html/. Even so, deleted my first installation and reinstalled under public_html/forum, but got the same problem. Then found the Blah documentation at :
http://www.blahdocs.com/Performing_a_new_installation_of_E-Blah

This document started to raise all sorts of issues that were not mentioned on the Heart installation. So raised problem with Heart tech support, here are some edited responses from Heart:

Hi,
Some hosts require that cgi scripts be run from within the cgi-bin. Due to the way our systems are configured you can run cgi scripts from any folder within your site. I have checked the mail logs from the servers and I can see the mails being sent out from the web servers correctly. Please can you provide an example of the link that you get sent in the email as if you installed it via the control panel and have not made any changes to the forum it should work without any problems.
Best Wishes
Andrew Mchardy
Heart Internet Support

After some further exchanges Heart made some changes. This time, as before, I got emails for admin and user validation. Previously both had failed with http-404. This time the admin invoked a Blah script and I got a web page displayed but it said:

Admin path: http://www.mysearch.org.uk/forum/Blah.pl?v-admin/a-validate/
Error displayed: Fatal Error
Sorry, but an error occurred. If you are unsure about how to solve this error you can contact the system administrator.  

However, the member validation worked OK. Although Heart continued to look at the problem they finally sent me this response:

Hi,
I changed line 24 of Settings.pl from:
$realurl = "http://www.myweb.com/public_html/forum/";
to
$realurl = "http://www.myweb.org.uk/forum/";
From what I can tell most of the scripts for the forum are called via Blah.pl
However, I am unable to see why this error is happening. All I can really advise with this would be to check the E-Blah forums.
Best Wishes
Andrew Mchardy
Heart Internet Support

Can anybody at the Blah forum make any other suggestion what might be wrong in the configuration?

Many thanks.

Martin was right.  You have to register a new member, after you change that URL, in order for the validation URL to actually work.

Justin,
Thanks for the response, but as I attempted to explain, the member validation didn't work after I made the URL changes. Equally, Heart could not see the problem either. The new member validation worked, but the administrator validation did not. While it no longer produces a http-404 error, it goes to a Blah script/html that indicates that there has been an error. This is the problem I am now trying to resolve.
Any additional thoughts on this specific problem?

PM ftp details if you want me tio have a look. I have several forums with Heartinternet and have never seen this problem.

Hi Martin,
Thanks for the offer of help.
PM ftp? what ftp address?/what details in particular?
Have narrowed down the issue to E-mail System Administrator option:

Forum Settings:Main Preferences:Registration
Enable the Registration Agreement?  Yes
Disable registration to users under 13 years of age?  No
Member Validation: Must validate through e-mail first
E-mail System Administrator?  This is the problematic option.
Enable Registration Human Verification? No

I can work around the problem by simply turning this option off. Of course, I assume I won't then know when new members join without manually checking. While the member validation now works, it required changes by Heart support, so I am not sure how your other Heart users even invoked member validation. While I am not sure of the business model Blah is adopting, if any, I assume this forum is a voluntary effort on your part, so don't want to abuse the system.  However, I am assuming feedback from first time users, like myself, is of some value, As such, I would be quite happy to write up a summary at the end of this process, detailing the issues, good and bad, while setting up a Blah forum.