Cthulhu
Administrator
- AKA
- Yop
So liek y0 gaiz. I bought a vB license earlier this year in order to upgrade to the latest 3.8.x version, which works with the current versions of the PHP runtime. However, it's more of a patch really; vB 3.8 is over five years old (vB 3.0 was released ten years ago), and while it works just fine, I still feel like we're running way behind. My biggest concern really is that what happened to FFOF a few years ago is going to happen to us, i.e. someone finds a weakness in this version of vB and hax0rs us. For FFOF, I was unable to bring it back in working order (also because the software was too old to run properly on the version of PHP installed on our shared hosting software there, and it runs a separate license of vB so I'd have to shell out moar monies to update it, etc. But I digress).
I've done some fiddling on the test environment (a virtualized operating system with all the software + a copy of TLS) and did a test upgrade of our forums to vB 4, then 5. Here's the steps I did, and I'll do those on the TLS server next once I've got it working:
Now, a few things that need to be done, and a few answers I'll need, and shit:
1. Most importantly - what do you think of vB 5? Works well on everyone's computer? Nice? Stuff? What I gather from this and co is that it was basically rewritten, the original developers left shortly after 3.8.4, etc. V5 was released in a half-finished state, with a lot of features (like infractions, paid subforums, etc) not (yet) implemented.
2. We'll need to redo the forum styling. I could have a crack at it like I did with the current vB, but it'll take some time. We could also do a full redesign at this point. I don't want to deviate from the default vB styles too much (in terms of page layouts and shit), so it'll look a bit different at least.
3. We'll also need to redo the user customization, username colours, that kinda stuff. I personally don't think this is a very important thing, but, that's probably just me
. Definitely a lower priority than the forum theme.
4. Thanks system / hack. How highly valued is it? I'll have to look for a new one for vB 5, and I don't know if that one supports transferring the existing thanks from the old to the new system. If there's no easy way, would you mind if they were lost from the old forums and either gone from the new, or just restarted from scratch?
5. Reinstate ads (and disable them for donators). I read somewhere that vB has built-in ad support, but that some information about that stuff (and maybe a cut of it?) is moved to the vB dudes, I'd rather not do that. Editing the templates and manually inserting the ads should work just fine.
6. Smileys. Probably a matter of just copying the files over, the settings for them have been transferred over from vB 3 just fine.
Also just to reiterate: I've only done it on the test server (locally) so far, and that seemed to work. Next up is to install it on the TLS server itself. I'm gonna go play video games first though, I've been at it for a couple hours already. I'll get cracking again later this afternoon, tonight, or tomorrow or something. Stay tuned.
Bonus screenshots from local environment:
The current vB themes are all still there, but they don't work / look like shit, so I should probably disable them in case people accidentally select them and are unable to restore the original theme,
I've done some fiddling on the test environment (a virtualized operating system with all the software + a copy of TLS) and did a test upgrade of our forums to vB 4, then 5. Here's the steps I did, and I'll do those on the TLS server next once I've got it working:
1. Copy the TLS database from thelifestream to thelifestream_beta, by restoring a backup of the thelifestream database into a new one called thelifestream_beta:
2. Because of reasons, I can't make it 'public', i.e. the beta folder has to be password-protected so the general public can't access it. This is due to license restrictions, i.e. you can only have one instance of vB per license running. Add this to the relevant apache config file:
And create the actual .htpasswd file in /root/.htpasswd using:
(installing apache2-utils may be needed)
(also I can't actually get this to work locally, grr. Moving on)
3. Extract and upload the vB 5 files. Note that unlike previous versions, vB 5 needs to be a fresh install, i.e. not overwrite existing files.
4. rename core/includes/config.php.new to core/includes/config.php
5. edit config.php and set up database info and shit
6. chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/betaforums
7. open betaforums/core/install/upgrade.php (will auto redirect if you just go to betaforums/)
8. Enter vB customer number and shit
9. Fix any errors if need be
10. Run the upgrade. I got stuck at an error similar to this though, idk. I checked that file and changed the function to just return true, I'm sure it's a bug somehow. (it seems to be checking for user permissions, but, I'm the admin and not logged into vB so idk). Edit /core/vb/api/template.php and change the implementation of the checkCanSaveTemplate function to 'return true';.
11. Another error: 18 occurred in betaforums/core/vb5/route/channel.php in line 24. Fixxed / got past it by removing another permission check from line 21 to 25. I'll make a note of that on the forums.
12. Lots and lots of waiting. I'm sure they completely changed the database structure to something unmanageable.
13. Move htaccess.txt to .htaccess, edit if need be (RewriteBase should probably be /betaforums/ or something)
14. Make sure mod_rewrite is running (it should, the front page uses it after all)
15. Add the following to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf or whatever (site configuration) to enable mod_rewrite if not working (needed to happen in the test environment):
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
16. Start fixing shit:
* Copy images like smileys and avatars over; avatars may need to be re-added by users
* check BBcodes (and modernize them if need be)
* check user groups and their permissions, I'm sure those changed over time. Also get rid of empty / unused / stupid usergroups
* Check login and registration procedure, SMTP settings, captchas, password recovery, that kinda deal
* Check anti-spambot measures
Code:
[in mysql]> create database thelifestream_beta;
[commandline]> mysql -u root -p thelifestream_beta < backup.sql2. Because of reasons, I can't make it 'public', i.e. the beta folder has to be password-protected so the general public can't access it. This is due to license restrictions, i.e. you can only have one instance of vB per license running. Add this to the relevant apache config file:
Code:
<Directory "/var/www/tls/betaforums">
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Authentication Required"
AuthUserFile "/etc/.htpasswd"
Require valid-user
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>And create the actual .htpasswd file in /root/.htpasswd using:
Code:
sudo htpasswd -c /etc/.htpasswd tlsbeta(installing apache2-utils may be needed)
(also I can't actually get this to work locally, grr. Moving on)
3. Extract and upload the vB 5 files. Note that unlike previous versions, vB 5 needs to be a fresh install, i.e. not overwrite existing files.
4. rename core/includes/config.php.new to core/includes/config.php
5. edit config.php and set up database info and shit
6. chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/betaforums
7. open betaforums/core/install/upgrade.php (will auto redirect if you just go to betaforums/)
8. Enter vB customer number and shit
9. Fix any errors if need be
10. Run the upgrade. I got stuck at an error similar to this though, idk. I checked that file and changed the function to just return true, I'm sure it's a bug somehow. (it seems to be checking for user permissions, but, I'm the admin and not logged into vB so idk). Edit /core/vb/api/template.php and change the implementation of the checkCanSaveTemplate function to 'return true';.
11. Another error: 18 occurred in betaforums/core/vb5/route/channel.php in line 24. Fixxed / got past it by removing another permission check from line 21 to 25. I'll make a note of that on the forums.
12. Lots and lots of waiting. I'm sure they completely changed the database structure to something unmanageable.
13. Move htaccess.txt to .htaccess, edit if need be (RewriteBase should probably be /betaforums/ or something)
14. Make sure mod_rewrite is running (it should, the front page uses it after all)
Code:
sudo a2enmod rewrite15. Add the following to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf or whatever (site configuration) to enable mod_rewrite if not working (needed to happen in the test environment):
<Directory /var/www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
16. Start fixing shit:
* Copy images like smileys and avatars over; avatars may need to be re-added by users
* check BBcodes (and modernize them if need be)
* check user groups and their permissions, I'm sure those changed over time. Also get rid of empty / unused / stupid usergroups
* Check login and registration procedure, SMTP settings, captchas, password recovery, that kinda deal
* Check anti-spambot measures
Now, a few things that need to be done, and a few answers I'll need, and shit:
1. Most importantly - what do you think of vB 5? Works well on everyone's computer? Nice? Stuff? What I gather from this and co is that it was basically rewritten, the original developers left shortly after 3.8.4, etc. V5 was released in a half-finished state, with a lot of features (like infractions, paid subforums, etc) not (yet) implemented.
2. We'll need to redo the forum styling. I could have a crack at it like I did with the current vB, but it'll take some time. We could also do a full redesign at this point. I don't want to deviate from the default vB styles too much (in terms of page layouts and shit), so it'll look a bit different at least.
3. We'll also need to redo the user customization, username colours, that kinda stuff. I personally don't think this is a very important thing, but, that's probably just me
. Definitely a lower priority than the forum theme.4. Thanks system / hack. How highly valued is it? I'll have to look for a new one for vB 5, and I don't know if that one supports transferring the existing thanks from the old to the new system. If there's no easy way, would you mind if they were lost from the old forums and either gone from the new, or just restarted from scratch?
5. Reinstate ads (and disable them for donators). I read somewhere that vB has built-in ad support, but that some information about that stuff (and maybe a cut of it?) is moved to the vB dudes, I'd rather not do that. Editing the templates and manually inserting the ads should work just fine.
6. Smileys. Probably a matter of just copying the files over, the settings for them have been transferred over from vB 3 just fine.
Also just to reiterate: I've only done it on the test server (locally) so far, and that seemed to work. Next up is to install it on the TLS server itself. I'm gonna go play video games first though, I've been at it for a couple hours already
. I'll get cracking again later this afternoon, tonight, or tomorrow or something. Stay tuned.Bonus screenshots from local environment:
The current vB themes are all still there, but they don't work / look like shit, so I should probably disable them in case people accidentally select them and are unable to restore the original theme,
Based on that thread (and the fact it's free and open source), I'd actually say Discourse was a better option. But we (or rather, Yop) paid for a vB license so we might as well use it.
