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Finally Upgraded Forum to Latest Version


Scot

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It would be hard to miss the fact that something big has changed around here. The latest version of Invision Power Board (IPB) has numerous changes. We are up to date with version 4.4.6. I did this primarily because the version we were running was end-of-life, this new version is supposed to be easier to update an easier to design around. We explored the moving to different form software including Simple Machines Forums, or SMF. But the only migration routine SMF has is old and was never all that successful for most IPB forums. We found a place that wanted to charge quite a bit for conversion in the end I decided to pay Invision Power Board supply, the makers of IPB, a small and reasonable sum to have them upgrade us. This worked out pretty well since we ran into the per usual four or five thorny problems that halted the upgrade process. I was able to focus on those while IPS dealt with the FTP and running the upgrade software and all that noise; I wasn't trying to do both things.

So let's see IPS initially had a lot of trouble getting FTP to work. I finally tracked that one down. We had the permissions/owner problem. The process involves performing two separate upgrades. After the first upgrade I then upgraded the server to the latest version of PHP, which brought down the SNF site. Actually it was visible it just didn't display any content. Shortly thereafter I put up the under maintenance sign. The upgrade was halted at that point for two hours while I was at the dentist. Three things need to be done to our PHP installation (specific extensions added and memory increased). I host did those steps but they didn't take. It took us a while to figure out we need to get the server of swift kick in the seat-of-the-pants. Actually what my host, KnownHost, wound up doing was switching from LiteSpeed to Apache and then back to LiteSpeed. That did the trick. And then IPS was out of touch for almost an hour. By this time it was 3:00 Thursday ET. We had started at 7 AM. About an hour later the ticket gets updated from IPS and the word is success!

Over the days and weeks to come, I'll be working on some sort of return to a logo like we had before. I'll be exploring the updated admin control panel to see what features we have now and how we can make the forums more secure. I might explore some themes to see if we can make the design look a little better. Anyone who has real Photoshop skills who would like to work on the logo, please PM or email me.

I could use your help!  IPS will fix problems for a short time; I can fix things that arise from settings or conversion or HTML. They need to know what to fix what problems there are. So far I haven't found any but I know that can't be true. If we could set up a thread informed feedback or somewhere like that and people just go there to note any issues they come across as much detail as they can that would be a huge help. Thanks.

— Scot

I dictate most email with speech recognition. Please forgive recognition "typos," which can be a tad bit strange.

 

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securitybreach

Thanks so much for the hard work Scot, it's great to have an up to date forum now. I have only been on the new board for a few minutes this morning but so far it looks great. I like how it suggests smileys as you type them out. Like when you type :thum , it shows all the ones that are under that heading.

Fridays are usually slow for me at work so I will definitely be exploring the new forum and AdminCp today. I will also create the thread for bug reporting.

Thanks again :thumbsup:

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