Forum Upgrade!

[Jakkal]

Because of issues with the hosting company that should hopefully be resolved, I will be trying this again on July 11, 2015.


So, as many of you may have noticed, we've had some difficulty with the forum over the past year or so. The weremap stopped working when the host updated our php and mysql servers. The front page stopped working for the same reason/around the same time. And lately we've had a problem where users posts will randomly go into the moderation queue.

Enough is enough.

I have a copy of VB4 that I've been sitting on for some time that I want to install for the Werelist on Saturday June 27, 2015.

Why have I waited so long? Well the update process is rather hairy. There's always the potential for us to lose the forum data (Yes I am taking backups). Because the forums have so many modifications on them, it might be difficult to use the database on a new install of VB, or another install of VB3x. (What it uses now).

Suffice to say, what I'm saying is, there are risks of losing all our stuff here.

So, what this means for you. There's a good chance that profile information will be lost. We are going to do everything we can to preserve user accounts and as many posts as possible.

To make this easier we would like to prune the fun and games forum, and potentially a lot of the threads in the Trading Post. If you have posted a thread in the trading post that is no longer valid, please reply to it so we can delete it beforehand.

If there are any posts you are particularly attached to, we suggest saving them somehow. Easiest way is to take screenshots. Alternatively you could go to File -> Save Page As. You'd need to do that for every page on that thread, and I can't guarantee it will "work right" if you try to view it in your browser, but at least you'd have the content available.

The same goes for your profile information. If you want to keep that, save it somehow.

I cannot guarantee that social groups will be saved. If you are concerned about this, again, save them somehow.

If you have any questions or comments in regards to this, feel free to ask the help staff.

[Jakkal]

During the Downtime, you can use the following resources to track our progress:

http://werelist.livejournal.com/
https://twitter.com/thewerelist

[Jakkal]

This is just a reminder that I will be <s>Ruining the forum for all time</s> doing the forum upgrade tomorrow. The forums will be shut down during this time. I don't know how long it will take. <s>It depends on how much stuff I mess up</s>.

So please make your backups if you haven't already!

I am going to try to keep all the forum thread data we can, and the user logins. I am expecting there might be trouble with user profile information and social groups.

If you are worried about your social group losing their posts, please make backups!

[Jakkal]

Bumpity Bump bump. I'm downloading the entire site now as a backup. I'll be shutting down the forums shortly thereafter.

[Jakkal]

Alright, if you happen to see this, please stop posting! I will be shutting down the forums at 12:00pm EDT. (That's about 10 minutes)

[Jakkal]

Upgrade was a bust.

The host's website is fucked up. I can't get to the host's control panel. I need this to get the forum database backup. Without the backup, I can't even start the upgrade.

They've sent my ticket to the system administrators. I don't even know if they work on Saturdays. There's no telling when they'll look at it.

I had this problem last week and I made them fix it right away so we wouldn't run into any problems this weekend. Unfortunately if I took the database backup last weekend, all of the posts between then and now would be missing. So I had to wait til the last minute to get the database to make sure no posts were lost.

But now I can't get it. And they've put my support ticket in a queue that might never see the light of day.

I have 4 other sites on the same host and we've never had these problems on the other sites.

This is the only day I had available to work on it, so this might have to wait another week or two.

Sorry folks, this site is cursed in a weird kind of way, and this the curse rearing its ugly head once more.

If the system administrators happen to get back to me today, the site might be taken down without notice. So I still intend to do this today if I can get access to the site's control panel. So please be warned that the site might go down at any time without any prior warning.

[Jakkal]

I haven't heard back from the hosting company, so the forums are 'safe' from me for at least a week longer.

I might not have another chance to try this until July 5th. We'll see how it goes.

I will try to give you guys as much notice as I can.

[Jakkal]

Okay guys, I'm going to try this again on July 11th. So start saving stuff if you haven't already.

[Jakkal]

Last reminder to save your stuff!

You will know of the forum upgrade actually works if the forums are in a significantly different format. The colors will probably be white/blue for a while (This is default vB). We will have to design a skin from scratch, which is why I'm taking a full day off to work on this.

But I suspect that it will be white/blue for at least a few days while we work on that.

And yes, I've checked the admin panel and it is working for me, for now. If it suddenly breaks tomorrow, I'm going to suspect someone's doing it on purpose!

[Jakkal]

I'm up. I'm awake. I'm about to have lunch. And then afterwards, the ruination of the forums.

I'll probably start around noon EDT. (That's in about 45 minutes as of this posting).

Reminder that you can keep up with progress or problems via:

http://werelist.livejournal.com/
https://twitter.com/thewerelist