Support F.A.Q.

These are answers to frequently asked questions about First Chair, everything from installation issues to editing content to supporting multiple users. If you don't find the answer to your question here, please submit your question to us so that we can review it and update our F.A.Q. accordingly. Thank you. Please note: we are under the assumption that you have read the manual through and have followed the instructions accordingly. Almost 98% of your questions should be able to be answered by reading the documentation. The order of any support should be 1. Read the documentation, 2. Check the FAQ, 3. submit your questions... never the other way around. We will not respond to questions that are directly answered in the documentation or in the F.A.Q.

Installation Issues

When I try and run the installation file, I get an error message, reading "Application Error: Invalid Serial Number".

First Chair uses a serial numbering system that is taylored to your specific installation of First Chair. It is important that the domain name you supplied us (when purchasing a license to First Chair) matches the one that you place in your configuration file. Your domain name must include the http:// prefix and the trailing forward slash / . For example: our domain name would appear in our configuration file as http://www.dock72.com/

Also make sure that your serial number appears in the configuration file EXACTLY as it was provided to you upon purchasing your license. You cannot use the same license for more than one website. This means that if you have a sub-domained website (example: http://anothersite.dock72.com) you cannot use the same installation/license for that subdomain and requires a new license. Likewise, you cannot use the same license with a different domain name either. Your First Chair serial number and license covers ONLY the domain name for which you've purchased your license.

Should you change domain names and no longer use the one purchased for First Chair, you are required to purchase a new license. Your license cannot be transferred over to the new domain name.

First Chair doesn't seem to be completing the installation process. It either doesn't show the results of my installation or is giving me an invalid resource error message.

If you are unable to complete the installation process, it is usually because you don't have your MySQL database set up and ready to go. Do two things: first ensure that you've correctly entered/spelled all of the values in your configuration file that point to your MySQL database (the user name, password, and name of the database), and secondly, double-check with your hosting provider or network administrator that you do in fact have your MySQL database and user(s) set up.

If you have done the above two steps and are still having problems, our method of connecting to your database may not be the right protocol. By default, our method of connecting to the database looks like this:

$db_connect = mysql_connect('localhost', $db_user, $db_password);
$db_select = mysql_select_db($mysql_db, $db_connect);

But if your hosting provider uses a different method of connecting to the database, such as a socket connection instead of the usual TCP, then you may need to edit your db_connect.php file to match something like this:

$db_connect = mysql_connect('localhost:/home/mysql/mysql.sock', $db_user, $db_password);
$db_select = mysql_select_db($mysql_db, $db_connect);

Check with your hosting provider to make sure that this matches up correctly with their path, etc.

I am having problems logging into First Chair for the first time.

Remember that your UserID when you first install First Chair is "admin" (and is CaSe SeNsItIve). Your password is also case sensitive. Make sure you typed it correctly.

Issues with Menuing

In the menu management area, I’ve created a menu item in a sub-menu group but when I go to view the list of menu items, the page takes a really long time to load, and when it finally does display, I have a recursive loop of the same menu group and menu item(s). What the heck is going on here?

The problem of menu item/group recursion is from setting the same menu group for both the Main Menu Category and the Child Menu Category. This sets First Chair into a recursive loop, attempting to forever display the child menu group, which is really the same as the parent group. To fix this problem, edit the first menu item in the recursion, and change the child menu category to "No Child Menu". You CANNOT use the same menu group for both the parent and child menu categories. This is what causes the recursion to happen. See the section on menu groups in the documentation (pages 33 and 34) for more information on the roles that menu groups and menu items play.

I’ve tried editing the templates for the menu items in embedded_navigation.php, but I’m afraid that I’ve broken it and it isn’t working.

First off, ensure that you have "escaped" any quotation marks that appear in your code with a backslash \ mark. For example:

< img src="images/".$MouseCurrent."" > would look like this:
< img src=\"images/".$MouseCurrent."\" >

Note how only the quotations that surround the variable $MouseCurrent were not escaped? It is only the variables that appear in the HTML that you need to escape with the backslash \ symbol. If you are inserting variables in the middle of your HTML, the variable ($variable) should be surrounded by ". and ." So in essence, your variables will start with a quotation mark, followed by a period, then the variable name ($VariableName), then closed out with a period followed by another quotation mark. For exceptions to this rule, please refer to page 18, which covers PHP variables and how to use them.

Double-check that you’re editing the right template functions. In all, there are eight templates—four for the text navigation (two of them are the main menu items, two the sub menu items) and four for the graphic navigation (again, two for the main menu items, two for the sub menu items). You don’t need to edit all of these templates, only the ones you need. So for example, if you are using a graphic-based main menu, but a text-based sub menu, then edit the main menu functions g_main_menu_item_link and g_main_menu_item and for your text sub menu, edit t_sub_menu_item_link and t_sub_menu_item.