Was fixing up a fork of an unofficial eFiction version for personal use (which eventually became modded) and managed to fix this very old bug.
This should work in unmodded eFiction releases as well.
Bug in question: When choosing a skin, it would not save if that skin happens to be the same as the site's default skin.
Here's the patch:
1. Open user/editprefs.php
2. Line 37 - Original Line:
if($skinnew != $skin) $_SESSION[$sitekey."_skin"] = $skinnew;
3. Replace that line with the following:
if(($skinnew) != $skin || ($skinnew) == $defaultskin) $_SESSION[$sitekey."_skin"] = $skinnew;
4. Save and exit.
Site: http://cwcyrix.nsupdate.info/fhaven/ (private, archived)
Version: eFiction 3.5.3
Modules: Challenges 1.4, Recs 1.4.2
PHP: 5.6.40, self-patched
Other Setups (same server):
Test Site 1: http://cwcyrix.nsupdate.info/ef-testing-grounds/ (eFiction 3 Mod - chaotic, PHP 8.6.0RC4)
Test Site 2: http://cwcyrix.nsupdate.info/eee/ (eFiction 3 Mod - stable, PHP 8.5.12)
Test Site 3: http://cwcyrix.nsupdate.info/ef-clean/ (patched 'future' eFiction 3.5.9, self-patched PHP 7.4.33)
Rest of Server Details
OS - Distro: Ubuntu Linux Server 26.04 LTS (home)
Web Server: Apache httpd 2.4.69
MariaDB: 11.4.13