Errors & Troubleshooting (BONK)

When using the download version of Vanilla, you may encounter the dreaded "BONK" screen.

This means that Vanilla encountered an error that it was unable to recover from. Typically these are caused by Vanilla trying to do something that the server won't allow it to do for some reason. To get to the bottom of the problem, you need to make Vanilla show you the *actual* error instead of this user-friendly one. You can do this by adding/replacing the following configuration setting in your conf/config.php file:

$Configuration['Garden']['Errors']['MasterView'] = 'deverror.master.php';

Once that configuration setting is saved, you can refresh the page to see what the actual error message is, and you'll see a full description of the problem, including a full stack trace telling you exactly what went wrong.

Often this information is enough for you to figure out the problem on your own. If you don't know how to solve the problem yourself, you can use the information on this screen when asking for help on the community forum.

Important!
When you are finished debugging your problem, be sure to switch the line in your config file back to the user-friendly version so you don't scare your users if they encounter further problems:

$Configuration['Garden']['Errors']['MasterView'] = 'error.master.php';