Major Forum Upgrade *Now Complete*

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CitroJim
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Major Forum Upgrade *Now Complete*

Post by CitroJim »

Hot on the heels of the latest update to the current forum software, I find the branch we are presently running will be going end of life in May.

This means no more patches, no more updates and most importantly, no more security updates..

This means we must update sooner rather than later to version 3.1.x.. I have already discussed this once but at the time the new branch was very new and still slightly under developed...

Things have moved on somewhat since then and I have now spun up a brand new test/development instance based on a backup from a couple of nights ago.

I have taken a decision to keep the new forum software as close to 'Out of Box' (OOB) as possible to ease maintenance and upgrades...

The only change I've made (and plan to make) to the OOB version is to use the 'We_Universal' style as used on the present forum so that we can keep the same look and feel into the new version. It's not quite exactly the same but very similar...

I should be grateful if you will take a look at the test/development board at this address:

http://www.xantiav6.co.uk:8808/forum/index.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You can log in using your current credentials and freely play and post.

I know it's slow. It's running on a lowly specified test server and not on the main production server.

There are many changes and enhancements, notably in the search function...

One major change is that newly registered members will have their first five posts approved by a moderator before appearing on the forum. This is to further guard against spammers...

I should be grateful for your comments but do make them constructive and be aware this is going to happen. It is not a desirable but a must... The risk of running time-expired software against the current threat level is just too great to ignore...

If you don't believe the threat, I invite you to take a look at the production forum webserver logs!!!!

The upgrade itself will take at least a day as it is a big one so prepare yourselves for the forum being unavailable for that time at some point in between now and May. I will give plenty of notice...

Thanks!

.
Jim

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Post by addo »

I can work with that. :)

Are you still travelling OK re crowd funding?
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Re: Major Forum Upgrade *Please Read*

Post by vborovic »

Jim, I've tried removing max-width: 1170px; from the common.css file (line 78), it looks good in Firefox (95% of the full screen width) ... the responsive layout also seems nice at lower screen widths ...
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Post by CitroJim »

addo wrote:I can work with that. :)
Excellent :-D
addo wrote:Are you still travelling OK re crowd funding?
Very much so... Currently all hosting, software development, maintenance, hardware and administration has so far cost us £0.00. I've got a bloody good company doing it :wink: WFA IT Services Unlimited...

Even the hosting of the offsite backup server is coming out very reasonably at a cost of £0.00 per month...

The only cost at present is the domain registration fees and as they're all mixed up with my own, I cover that quite happily...
vborovic wrote:Jim, I've tried removing max-width: 1170px; from the common.css file (line 78), it looks good in Firefox (95% of the full screen width) ... the responsive layout also seems nice at lower screen widths ...
Lovely! Very happy about that :) I can see a lot of work has been done on the we_universal style since the last release, with was very flaky in some areas...

It's now based off the default prosilver theme and therefore inherits it's adaptiveness. The earlier version did not...

We_universal is still under development but is looking quite polished now. They also do a blue theme called 'Clearblue' which looks gorgeous but it's not yet been ported to phpBB 3.1.x..

Unfortunate name as 'Clearblue' is the name of a pregnancy testing kit in the UK...
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Post by addo »

I thought it was a toilet cistern additive!
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Post by CitroJim »

addo wrote:I thought it was a toilet cistern additive!
That rings a bell somewhere too... Unless you're pulling my chain...
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Re: Major Forum Upgrade *Please Read*

Post by CitroJim »

Good. I assume from the general lack of replies that we're all happy then.

OK, I shall start planning the upgrade.. Expect it to happen sooner rather than later...

So, speak now or forever hold your piece...
Jim

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Re: Major Forum Upgrade *Please Read*

Post by Northern_Mike »

CitroJim wrote:Hot on the heels of the latest update to the current forum software, I find the branch we are presently running will be going end of life in May.

This means no more patches, no more updates and most importantly, no more security updates..

This means we must update sooner rather than later to version 3.1.x.. I have already discussed this once but at the time the new branch was very new and still slightly under developed...

Things have moved on somewhat since then and I have now spun up a brand new test/development instance based on a backup from a couple of nights ago.

I have taken a decision to keep the new forum software as close to 'Out of Box' (OOB) as possible to ease maintenance and upgrades...

The only change I've made (and plan to make) to the OOB version is to use the 'We_Universal' style as used on the present forum so that we can keep the same look and feel into the new version. It's not quite exactly the same but very similar...

I should be grateful if you will take a look at the test/development board at this address:

http://www.xantiav6.co.uk:8808/forum/index.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I like it.
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Re: Major Forum Upgrade *Please Read*

Post by wurlycorner »

It's fine Jim - tbh I think most people are happy with whatever you do, we're just happy someone goes to all the hard work of doing this for us! :D

I'm a regular on a prelude forum btw (I have 3/5 of them as well as my Citroens) which runs the same software by the looks. The guys there are fantastic at supporting and developing it (a couple of them are software technicians, so they should be :lol: ).
There are lots of things they've done to on there and I'm not going to suggest picking them all up, but there are a couple of things which I notice work much better on there, than on here and make quite a big difference and I wonder if they could be incorporated into the new build for here? Namely;
Picture resizing happens automatically, so the linked (hosted elsewhere) image displays at the right width to fit the forum page, instead of having the scrolling bars if the hosted image is a larger size than the forum width.
Also the 'new posts' link for each thread doesn't seem to work well on here - it always takes me to the newest (most recently made) post in a thread, whereas on there it takes you to the newest post in that thread that was made after the one I last read (which isn't necessarily the newest post). If my description there makes any sense? :lol:

Have a look to see what I mean if that helps? http://www.ludegeneration.co.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; (nb: there's no 'new posts' button on each thread in there - just clicking anywhere in the grey banner for each thread acts as the button)
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Re: Major Forum Upgrade *Please Read*

Post by CitroJim »

Thanks very much Iain and very appreciated :-D

I shall go and take a look, always keen to learn how others do things....
Jim

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Re: Major Forum Upgrade *Please Read*

Post by Eroe »

Hi, all good stuff, but can't find the 'new post' or post button on my dashboard?
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Re: Major Forum Upgrade *Please Read*

Post by CitroJim »

Eroe wrote:Hi, all good stuff, but can't find the 'new post' or post button on my dashboard?
At the top left of each forum is a button marked 'New Topic'

To reply to an established topic there is a button after the last post marked 'Post Reply'
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Re: Major Forum Upgrade *Please Read*

Post by KennyW »

Sir JIm, Citrojim, Karate kid, what title next!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Re: Major Forum Upgrade *Please Read*

Post by CitroJim »

KennyW wrote:Sir JIm, Citrojim, Karate kid, what title next!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now that would be telling!!!!
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Re: Major Forum Upgrade *Please Read*

Post by Stickyfinger »

Looks good to me...

And I have lots of server space for hosting with very low traffic on it (a smallish market place)....so if I can ever help. All with FastHost.
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