We're back again

I'm so sorry for what's gone on today.

As I mentioned earlier, I did fix the original problem on my local machine, but once I imported the database onto the live board here, another problem to do with default language IDs reared its head. Without going into detail, this problem proved more elusive to solve, and in fact the forum is only hanging by a thread in that I had to make a source edit to stop it erroring out. But the only limitation introduced by that edit is that we can't install any extra language packs until the vB techs figure out how to fix the underlying problem.

Which I'm sure you'll agree isn't a huge problem. Still, I can't promise we'll be getting a Chinese language pack any time soon. :)

Any further problems, please notify me. Also be advised that there may be further downtime still to come, though hopefully less significant than before.

The underlying issue now appears to be fixed. The forum has been running for over an hour now with no problems.

I can now confirm that this whole catastrophe was probably caused by the Chinese language pack in question being corrupt. I've tested on two test installations and it seems that even if you specify that the file import as a new language, not overwrite anything else etc., it will fill the default language with its gibberish irregardless. Furthermore, it overwrites the default left-to-right text status of the English language set and instead sets this to right-to-left, which is how Chinese is written.

There is another Chinese language pack which I have confirmed works fine (except it's traditional Chinese as opposed to simplified), but I won't be importing any foreign languages until I have thoroughly tested them locally.