Site News For (star)date 2009.04.07

I will be working on the site quite a bit on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009, and will be turning off the board. I will try to have the board turned back on as soon as I can.

<insert assorted swear words here>

There-There! This is not like you!

What's wrong?

Is it being a naughty board?

:group: Poor Wolfe-Brother - we felt with you yesterday while we were playing RS and you were slaving along working on your site. Is it still not behaving?

My best guess says not, or he would have posted saying it was sorted. Poor Wolfie :group:

Okay. I may as well tell you. Had things worked out like I wanted, like it was supposed to, this board, (the old board), would have been made "Read Only", (so that the blogs and gallery would still work), and we'd all be posting on a brand spankin' new vBulletin Board.

I paid for the initial license way back before I had that nasty virus attack that wiped out my computer. After I'd gotten the computer back, I was apprehensive about continuing working on the test version I'd started.

In hindsight, I should have jumped right in and gotten that thing up then. As far as I can remember, the stuff that wasn't working yesterday, worked way back then.

Yesterday, using the current version of vB and their board importer program, (ImPex), it wouldn't import the moderator related stuff, avatars would not work, the page that shows the list of members was . . . not right. Oh, and all the members were initially banned because the importer didn't set the various user groups exactly right. Which meant going through and altering each group individually.

Did you know that user groups in vB have a lot more options than the user groups on this old board?

I just don't know what went wrong.

Oh Dear oh Dear, poor Wolfe. It's all way beyond my comprehension I fear.

I just looked at more stuff. Names with a ' in it have the code for the character. Many names don't even appear in the post. Some names are just . . . wrong.

That does sound most odd. :group: Is there a help desk thing you can email to ask for support?

I have posted on vB's board about this, but I think I may have figured out why this is happening. Remember when I posted about MySql 4 and PHP 4 being retired and MySql 5 and PHP 5 were both going to be used from now on on the server?

I did install a modification someone wrote that would make this board workable on the new version of MySql and PHP. Unfortunately, that made alterations to the database and I think those alterations are causing the errors in the import to vB. Also, unfortunately, no one at vB is likely to write a fix for this since I'm the only one that needs it. There has to be a demand for it.

And unfortunately, I can't fix it myself.

So, there are two things I could do.

1. I could try and reload the database from when I was trying this last time, (prior to the nasty virus attack of December 2007, or was it 2008?), which may have been before MySql 5 was active on this account. That import may have worked better and peoples names other things may have actually worked. In that case, I could use the import from that, most of the current members should be in there, although anyone successfully registering since then would have to re-register.

2. I could do the really simple thing and install vB fresh and clean and everyone can just re-register on the new board.

And some might say:

3. Just keep using this board. But the thing about this board is, it doesn't have capabilities that vB has and this board is not officially supported. (Hasn't been officially supported for many years.) I also paid for the vB license and just before the price was to go up and I've renewed it for this year.

In any case, whether the first choice or the second, everyone would have to redo their settings in their user control panels, maybe re-upload their avatars, possibly even use the forgot password link to redo their passwords since those may not come across with an import.

I would go with option 2 Fresh start etc

Mary, that's what I'm going to have to do. I just took a look at the database from back in late 2007 and the user names with a ' in it are messed up. From what I could tell, (not pretty when looking at it), anything in signatures is also screwed up. All the bb code was changed to html code. Only some links seemed to come across and others didn't. It just isn't worth the trouble to try to fix.

A brand new install, forget any importing, seems to be the way to go.

I suppose, I can work on a new install until I can get it halfway respectable before opening it up to everyone else.

Arghhhhhhhhhh :blink: :unsure: will I lose my place?

We're not putting too many graphics in are we?

This post has been edited by Wikitoria on April 11, 2009 04:57 am

That option should hopefully cause you least hassle Wolfie. Each member won't need to do much to register at the new site. Will this place stay as a read only? I know there is RS stuff here that a number of us use as a reference.

My intention is to keep this forum as a read only forum. This way, it should still be possible to log in here so that you can read those areas you have access to, use the current blogs, and use the current gallery.

I may install a new copy of the Gallery and link it to the new board. I'll think about it.

What do you mean, lose your place?

Graphics? I wasn't talking about graphics. We're you talking about graphics? Which graphics are you talking about and do they know you're talking about them?

:blush: I like being member Number 6.

Graphics ... we have a lot of photos posted, and I know they slow down loading pages, I just wondered if it affected the site up at all? And the ones in the gallery as well. Knowing nothing about these technical matters, of course, as you do :wub:

Oh! I would hate to lose my place too!!!!

But - that is quite unimportant compared with having things run properly.

Isnt it ANNOYING! papa!

(? I think that's a quote from something)


Hmm. Important - Unimportant - important - unimportant ???

Oh! I shall think about that tomorrow!

Well, on the new vB forum I don't think the user ID numbers actually show up with your avatar and stuff. *Wonders if there's a setting for that. Reminds self to look for it someday.*

A lot of photos on one page will slow down the loading of the page, that's the nature of the beast. (Or something like that.) Anyway, we haven't hit my bandwidth limits yet so I'm not worried.

Aw, Lily. :hugs: Look at the bright side, this board has a 150-something members and not that many of them actually even visit here any more. You can probably move to one of the bigger rooms. ;)

Oh, I just thought of something. Installing all those smilies for use with the other board. :faint:

Oh well.

It will be interesting to see how many members transfer over and who does and doesn't.

:group: Wolfie, fresh start sounds good to me too - although somehow, are you sure it's the easiest option for you? :lol: From what I read above, it all sounds very complicated.

Starting with a brand new installation and having everyone register is the simplest way to go. Trying to get the import to work would be the hardest.

I've got the forums arranged, I've got one skin mostly designed. It's like the gray one here. There are differences. But then, it's different bulletin board software.

I got all the smilies installed. I got the avatars installed that you pick from the avatar thingy. (You will have to upload your own custom avatar if you wish to use one.)

Sounds like a lot of work poppawolfe, is there a chance that with a change we will get rid of those pesky spiders?

I think the pesky spiders are here to stay.

I'm up for anything that is easy for you Wolfie, the only question myself and Woolly have is do we keep our post count (woolly worked hard for those).

Just give us warning when you are ready for us to go to the new place.

I wasn't planning on bringing the post counts over. (Since you asked, I thought I would too. There's a poll now. Post Counts From Here And The New Board)

When I'm ready to open up the board, there will be a link in the box at the top of the page. Also, this board will be made read-only.

The new board will be opening up soon.

The new board is open. I still have some work to do, setting up some more user groups for specific access, but the basic stuff is ready.

I have new registrations set to require approval. This is mainly to keep spammers from registering.

(I have an Ortho Doctor appointment today and have to do some other stuff so try to be patient even though you may be really really excited.)

Regeristeration is so difficult. I got my password wrong, did not realise it was case sensitive, I got the image wrong so many times, I have no idea if it was case sensitive or not, I found it impossible. And I got the nospam question wrong about 5 times, so I had to keep refreshing in the hopes that the letters would be readable and I could answer the question. At last it accepted everything. I feel such a wally, I though regeresting would be easy but I was still at it 20 min later.