I'll describe that in detail, first of all, I've restored the database and site content to a working 2 March 2014 backup 3 times to verify this.

I have a 6.x site that was using a very old 5.x era skin.  It upgraded fine and was like a wisdom extraction to get all the old 5.x era skin out of the site.  That done, Dark Knight was installed on it and it works now, fully.

Websites Creative has a great skin, Generic, that I have a trial of.  Tried installing it but then, the menu functions for the main part of the site worked but navigating to Host or Admin areas stopped working.  It isn't their skin, I've removed the content folder entirely, put the 2 March backup of it back in play, fully restored the DB.

Dark Knight of course is there and working.  As soon as I set the skin to Gravity (or any DNN provided 7.x compatible skin), via Admin | Site settings, the same thing happens.  I can't navigate by using the Host or Admin links in the top menu.  I can browse by typing /host/hostsettings or /admin/sitewizard, etc.  and get to those respective pages but nothing happens when I use any of the functions.

Browsing to /admin/sitesettings and trying to set the skin back to Dark Knight, definitely selecting "Update" does nothing.  The skin will stay at whatever it was -- WSC Generic, Gravity, etc.  Dark Knight or another skin / container can be selected but after Update is clicked, the settings don't persist.

 It APPEARS complex but can't be.  Again, the content was deleted and restored, db overwritten and the site comes back up.  All Nav functions for Host and Admin again work.

There almost has to be an omitted, obvious step in the upgrade process from 6.2 to 7.x.  I did upgrade, per Chris Hammond's site I believe to 6.8 and then to 7.x.  This went incredibly smooth with no breaking changes to any modules, which is what I really feared.

 The only issue is the one mentioned here.  I've tried everything I can think of but haven't stumbled on the solution yet.

Thanks for any help.

BUMP -- this seems to be the word when no one has responded. :)

On a site that has been upgraded a bit over a year ago from 4.9 to 6.2, we're now upgrading to 7.2.1.  When I got the site to this point, I set the skin to Dark Knight, all looked good.  We were able to log in on tablets, phones, etc. so it seemed like installing a new skin and testing it out looked good.

On this site, when we would change skins to any other skin, not just the one we got a trial of, navigating to Admin and Host pages didn't work.  Well, here's a bit more detail -- this menu is still showing up on the upgraded site which is now 7.2.1:

Since we also have to do a new install for another site anyhow, I did just change skins from Gravity to Dark Knight Mobile and back with no issues.  however, this menu is present:

I'm thinking the menu for Dark Knight that worked on 6.2 and uses DDR should do just fine in 7.2.1.

Or, this more modern menu should be the one showing up and is what the site expects.  That is, even though Dark Knight works ... the menu issue doesn't show up until changing skins?  What is this menu called -- the one in the more recent screen shot and how do I set it up?

Thanks!

Richard,

Thanks for being up so late over there in the UK. :)

There is a bug, apparently, with the Icon Bar menu where when Appearance | Skin settings are changed and updated, the control panel becomes ineffective/disabled.  At least on this site it does.  I can duplicate this malfunction and have several times.

Setting the Control Panel to Control Bar or to Ribbon prior to changing skins, it works just fine.

I just duplicated this right now after clearly seeing the skin could be changed on the Admin panel Site Settings and it worked with Control Bar or Ribbon Bar but broke once I set it to Icon Bar.

Just edited this at 8:45PM my time -- here's a clue: When restoring the database and the site was shut off in IIS, I got an alert the db was in use, could not restore.  Had to go and log out of the site because that locked the db up.  So ... when the Icon Bar is set up perhaps, under certain circumstances, what's really happening is the DB locks up?

FYI, this is an updated site from 4.9.x to 6.2 about a year and a half ago.  It had a Catalyst 1 skin on it when it was pushed to 6.2 and issues were experienced.  No fault of Catalyst, unbeknownst to us we should have been using Catalyst 2.

It was removed during the upgrade process, the Icon Bar was left in play the whole time.

Well, working with a trial skin from Websites Creative, it was noted after setting the skin up the Control Panel was disabled.  Zeroing in on the issue, changing to any other skin did the same thing.

That's the history on it.  I now have to restore the database again so that I have Admin and Host functionality.

I think no one is using the Icon Bar anymore but the Ribbon and Control Bar menus and thus this hasn't reared its head.

I'm not sure how I can send files up to anyone to duplicate this on another server and get it looked into.  What's the procedure on this, go via Gemini?

Thanks,

Mike