Sorry, but this username has already been taken...

[harleyx]

This happens whenever someone tries to register over at my forum (http://www.gtds.net/talk/) - click Easy Register, then either of the COPPA statements... A while back I installed some SEO mods and a mod to make registration quick and unintimidating. For a long while it worked just fine, then something changed (or I changed something) and the registration stopped working.

My problem is I can't remember where I got the mods HOWTO, and I can't remember what changed, and I can't find why this keeps coming up. The only place I knew to look was includes/user_cpregister.php. This is the only line I can figure that might be causing a problem, but I don't see anything wrong with it.

Code: Select all

if ($mode == 'register' && ($userdata['session_logged_in'] || $username == $userdata['username']))
{
   message_die(GENERAL_MESSAGE, $lang['Username_taken'], '', __LINE__, __FILE__);
}


Any help, ideas, suggestions welcomed!

[lurttinen]

This most commonly occurs when the anonymous user is missing from the users table. Let's see if that's the case.

1. Create a fix.php file with the following:
   

   Code: Select all

   <?php
define('IN_PHPBB', true);
$phpbb_root_path = './';
include($phpbb_root_path . 'extension.inc');
include($phpbb_root_path . 'common.'.$phpEx);
$userdata = session_pagestart($user_ip, PAGE_INDEX);
init_userprefs($userdata);
$page_title = 'phpBB Fix';
include($phpbb_root_path . 'includes/page_header.'.$phpEx);

$sql = "INSERT INTO " . USERS_TABLE . " (user_id, user_active, username, user_password, user_session_time, user_session_page, user_lastvisit, user_regdate, user_level, user_posts, user_timezone, user_style, user_lang, user_dateformat, user_new_privmsg, user_unread_privmsg, user_last_privmsg, user_emailtime, user_viewemail, user_attachsig, user_allowhtml, user_allowbbcode, user_allowsmile, user_allowavatar, user_allow_pm, user_allow_viewonline, user_notify, user_notify_pm, user_popup_pm, user_rank, user_avatar, user_avatar_type, user_email, user_icq, user_website, user_from, user_sig, user_sig_bbcode_uid, user_aim, user_yim, user_msnm, user_occ, user_interests, user_actkey, user_newpasswd) VALUES('-1', '0', 'Anonymous', '', '0', '0', '0', '1082539867', '0', '0', '0.00', NULL, '', '', '0', '0', '0', NULL, '0', '0', '1', '1', '1', '1', '0', '1', '0', '1', '0', NULL, '', '0', '', '', '', '', '', NULL, '', '', '', '', '', '', '')";
if( (!$result = $db->sql_query($sql)) )
{
   message_die(CRITICAL_ERROR, "Error inserting anonymous user data", "", __LINE__, __FILE__, $sql);
}
else {echo '<table width="80%" class="forumline"><tr><td>The anonymous user was missing, and has successfully been added</td><tr></table>';}

include($phpbb_root_path . 'includes/page_tail.'.$phpEx);
?>

2. Upload the file to your board's root folder (the one with config.php)
3. Run it by navigating to the file in your browser (ex. http://www.yoursite.com/phpBB2/fix.php)
4. Delete the file after you see the "All queries have run successfully" message

[harleyx]

Wow, that did it. thanks a bunch. now that I think about it I purged a few thousand bot-generated user accounts a while ago and enabled CAPTCHA to prevent it. I probably deleted the anonymous account accidentally in the process.

Thanks again, killer response time!