Urgent, please answer (forum software)

jdman321

I'm running this demo board: http://ignitiongaming.freehostia.com/index.php

And I have this issue when you click on a board and view the topics.

To the left of a topic's name this appears: ï¿½ it's supposed to show • (bullet)

Direct link to where the issue shows: http://ignitiongaming.freehostia.com/board.php?boardid=1&lastpostid=4

I tried looking through board.php but didn't see much..but here is my board.php file anyway

<?
   $starttime = microtime();
   include("common.php");
   $sql = "SELECT private FROM " . TABLE_BOARDS . " WHERE ID = '" . $_GET['boardid'] . "'";
   $exe = mysql_query($sql);
   $row = mysql_fetch_array($exe);
// if ((!$row[private]) || (checkAccess("accessvip")))
if ((!$row[private]) || ($row[private] == "1" && checkAccess("accessvip")) || ($row[private] == "2" && checkAccess("accessinsider")))
{

   $viewboard = viewBoard($boardid, $page);

   $output    = $viewboard[boardoutput];
   $centerrow = $viewboard[navbar];
   $sql = "SELECT vippost FROM " . TABLE_BOARDS . " WHERE ID = '" . $_GET['boardid'] . "'";
   $exe = mysql_query($sql);
   $row = mysql_fetch_array($exe);
if ((!$row[vippost]) || (checkAccess("accessvip")))
{ 
   $areaoptions[] = array("name" => "Post New Topic",
                          "url"  => "post.php?boardid=$boardid");
   if ($userloggedin)
   {
     $areaoptions[] = array("name" => "Create Poll",
                            "url"  => "poll.php?boardid=$boardid&returnurl=".urlencode($PHP_SELF.$querystring));
   }
}
else
{
   $areaoptions[] = array("name" => "Only Admins Can Create Topics For This Board",
			"url" => "");
}

   if ($userloggedin)
   {
     if (!inFavourites($userdata[ID], "boardid", $boardid))
     {
       $areaoptions[] = array("name" => "Add to Favourites",
                              "url"  => "watch.php?action=addboard&boardid=$boardid&returnurl=".urlencode($PHP_SELF.$querystring));
     }
   }

   // Show the last 10 logins on the bottom of the page
   $lastusers = fetchLoggedinUsers(10, "recent");
   if ($lastusers[userlist])
   {
     $bottommessage = makeLink("usersonline.php", "Currently online", "MainMenuLink").": ".$lastusers[userlist];
   }
}
else
{
header("Location: noaccess.php");
}

   $pagecontents = $output;
   include("layout.php");
?>

Pikachu2000

It's a non-standard character that the browser won't display. Probably resides in the td section in the css stylesheet of the theme. Shows up as an exclamation point in Firefox, and the "I don't know what the hell that character is supposed to be" symbol in Safari.

EDIT: Now it's an exclamation point in Safari as well . . . The topic icons are still "I don't know what the hell that character is supposed to be" symbols, though.

halojoy

The file is saved with the wrong format:
UTF-8 with BOM
If you edit and save the file again, and make sure
your Text Editor save in format UTF-8 without BOM or even ANSI/ASCII format
then it will be good.

Weedpacket

One thing I notice is that you never declare the character set you're using to serve the page with. Which looks like it should be UTF-8.

Thing is, "ï¿½" is a Latin-1 rendering of the bytes that make up a single UTF-8 character. That's the good news. The bad news is that it's character 65533; official Unicode name REPLACEMENT CHARACTER, meaning - as Pickachu2000 put it, I don't know what the hell that character is supposed to be.

BULLET would be character 8226, which in Latin-1 would look like â•¢.

Fortunately, you could just use "•" instead wherever it is that you're defining the contents of those table cells.

jdman321

I still don't know where this issue is. If you could be specific as to where I could fix this I'd appreciate it.
I know very little about where to find things and the proper way to go about changing things (sometimes)

Here is where I downloaded the software; http://www.sbdesigning.com/disco.php

It's GC Boards v2.2..there's not too many files in it so that's why I am doing this. 99% of the files are php and are probably considered simple to most of you.

I would REALLY appreciate this.

Pikachu2000

The bad news is that the bad character shows up in the page source in a place that looks like it's stored in the database in the wrong format. It shows up in other places as well, so that theory makes sense. Try changing the theme of the board and see if the problem is still there.

I don't think this is a php issue, per se.