Admin buttons missing

[AimEnglish]

This is going to be a long one.  I hope there is a simple solution to this.
I Installed CP 1.4.3 (not an upgrade).  I hired out someone to modify the theme and everything was working out well.
At one point I accidently deleted the files for the FTP uploads, and they were replaced (I am not sure about the index though).  At this time the programmer was adding a thumbnail option for the categories.
Shortly after this I lost my admin previlages.  The account seemed to have been whiped out.  I re-registered a seperate user and had had it upgraded to admin status.  Unfortunately I can not access any of the admin buttons (categories, albums, users etc...).  At this point it is not a big deal but It will become a problem in the near future.

1)  Is there any way to add a user and  change the status without going through coppermine?  Edit a php file?
2)  Without the admin buttons I can't change the language (as was suggested earlier) or any of the setting.  Any ideas?

The current developer has to take some personal time off, so I was hoping that someone here may be able to shed some light on the situation.

The page is at www.aimenglish.ca

[Joachim Müller]

split from unrelated thread. Don't try to hijack threads.
You claim not to have updated, but to have installed from scratch. Therefor, posting on the upgrading board is not a bright idea - moving this new thread accordingly.
To me it seems like you did make a lot of mistakes (fresh install instead of upgrade, deleting uploading files, deleting the admin account etc.), not sure what to suggest.

[AimEnglish]

Ok...  The topic was the missing buttons, which was a result of an update.  It was the closest topic I could find that related to the issue I am having.  Thank you for moving the topic but I didn't try to hijack a thread.  It is the same problem under slightly different circumstances. 
   I don't understand why a fresh install would be a mistake... 
   I deleted the uploaded files because I thought coppermine copied them automatically to the "user files" section. **That would be an amazing feature for a future date.  That way we can keep the ftp folder empty for new uploads... but I digress .. don't bite my head off

The admin account wasn't actually deleted... when doing the code the programmer may have inadvertently changed something.  The acount litterally dissappeared.  In a matter of moments, I was working away and then I got an error, and couldn't log back in.  The e-mail password didn't work.. so we set up a new account.  The programmer upgraded it and I now have  the button problem.
   I am not certain if this is only on my side (a cookie issue) or if it site wide.  It would be appreciated if someone could tell me which file to check which would contain these values.

[Joachim Müller]

so you had a freelancing coder apply changes to coppermine's code, and without telling what changes he did your expect us to come up with an answer to a misfunction that has never been reported with an an unmodified version of coppermine?
To answer your initial settings (although we have a "one question per thread" policy you agreed to respect when signing up:
1) Use a third party tool like phpMyAdmin to directly modify your database if you know what you're doing. No file to edit.
2) Change the language by adding lang=language_name to the url. Example: http://coppermine-gallery.net/demo/cpg14x/index.php?lang=japanese will display our demo in Japanese.

When applying code changes, you should always create a backup both of files and database first, so you can savely go back. I you would have done that, you could easily restore your admin account.

[kegobeer]

I deleted the uploaded files because I thought coppermine copied them automatically to the "user files" section. **That would be an amazing feature for a future date.  That way we can keep the ftp folder empty for new uploads.

Moving files around is a waste of resources.  There's no reason to move files because Coppermine keeps track of where everything is via the database.  If you "move" a picture from one album to another, one thing is changed in the database.  Why physically move the file when it's completely unnecessary?  This will never be a feature in any future release.

[AimEnglish]

Ok ...  anyway.. I got my buttons problem solved.
In a previous post Gau Gau mentioned phpMyAdmin (under hijacked sites).  To find this you go to:
your cPanel and select : My SQL Databases.
scroll to the bottom and choose "phpMyAdmin"
I tried different things and what worked was resetting the e-mail addies.  (changing the passwords didn't work; it got me into more trouble).  Use the little pencil icon to edit the table.

From there I went back to coppermine and requested a new password for the admin accounts.  For some reason I always got 2 new passwords so use the most recent one.  After that I logged in and got my full access again.  Happy Happy Joy-Joy!!    ***I changed the password and the buttons dissappeared again.  Each time I re-log in they are gone.  Only with a new password do they come back.. so for now, I don't log out!**

"Coppermine keeps track of where everything is via the database"  and coppermine does an amazing job of that.. us users aren't as eficient.