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vangogh
03-21-2010, 11:28 PM
Hey All,

Just an early head's up that I'll be updating vBulletin soon. Probably next weekend unless I end up with a bunch of other things to do.

Today I set up a testing environment, that's a duplicate of the live forum. Then I upgraded the testing environment to the latest version of vBulletin. It seems to be working, though I'll play around with it some during the week.

When I do upgrade I'll have to turn the forum off for a bit. Hopefully no longer than an hour, but that assumes everything goes well. One of the reasons I'll run the upgrade over the weekend is we're usually less active so it should affect less people while the site is down.

The new version of vBulletin comes with a slightly different look. If you want to see you can have a look at own forum (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/). The stuff you see on the side (recent blog entries, recent articles, etc) won't be here after I upgrade. That's part of the full vBulletin publishing suite, which I haven't purchases. I like will when the current license expires, but that's still a few months away.

Click around their forum though and you can see it's mostly the same as what he have now with a modified look. I have noticed that the menu is different. Everything we have is still in the menu(s) on the new version, but they're moved around a little. Also User CP has become Settings. You won't see unless you happen to be a member of vBulletin.com and login.

One last thing. Keep in mind that a few other things may not be the same or may not be working quite right. As far as things not being the same we'll have to deal. Personally I like how the new version looks and hope you do too. As far as things not working quite right, just let me know if you find anything and I'll do my best to fix things. I'll simply ask for a little patience while I do.

I'll let you know a little before I plan on starting the upgrade and I'll answer questions and post new info in this thread. If you'd like to keep up with any news about the upgrade subscribe to this thread.

Thanks,
Steve

Blessed
03-22-2010, 10:09 AM
aaaaacccckkk - Change!

just kidding - sounds great Steve, I can be patient - thanks for all the work you do to keep this place up and running.

vangogh
03-22-2010, 10:34 AM
It won't be too big a change. For the most part things will work like they do now. The look is a little different, but not so much you won't recognize the place.

Harold Mansfield
03-22-2010, 12:10 PM
Well, you know I like the latest version of V-Bulletin, so I'm all for it. Can't wait.

vangogh
03-22-2010, 12:46 PM
Yeah, I was pretty sure you'd be fine. At first I wasn't sure about the full publishing suite, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's something we should use. That won't be part of this upgrade, but the current license expires towards the end of summer. I won't need to buy another license to keep the place up and running, but I will need to renew it to get future upgrades. The extra cost to move to the publishing suite isn't all that much so when the time comes I'll likely upgrade us again.

cbscreative
03-22-2010, 12:59 PM
Sounds good, I just don't know how you find the time. Oh, that's right, you did let it slip before that you're really a robot. That explains things.

vangogh
03-23-2010, 10:51 AM
I thought we went through this before. I'm not a robot, but rather a team of robots. :)

KristineS
03-23-2010, 01:10 PM
From what you've told me about this, I think the new upgrade will be awesome. Can't wait to see it.

vangogh
03-23-2010, 11:29 PM
Hopefully I'll have time and won't be too tired this weekend. Us robots have to sleep from time to time after all. :)

dynocat
03-26-2010, 12:59 AM
A heads up maybe. I just read on another forum that vB 4 does not support Google Chrome browser. I have no idea if that's true or not, but thought you might want to check it out.

vangogh
03-26-2010, 02:26 AM
Thanks. I'm looking at vBulletin 4 in Chrome on my Mac and everything looks fine. If someone has Chrome on Windows and wants to test that would be great. If not I can do it the next time I boot up Windows.

You can check the vBulletin.com forum (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum.php).

It should work. It definitely works in Safari and they use the same rendering engine. If you don't mind could you post a link to the forum thread where they were saying Chrome isn't supported. Thanks.

vangogh
03-26-2010, 02:57 AM
Just did a little digging and it seems like support for Chrome isn't 100%. The main issue is in the WYSIWYG editor. It doesn't work in Safari either. In all my years with vBulletin I've never actually used the WYSIWYG editor so it's not a big deal for me personally. It's also not something that would be currently working with Chrome in the version of vBulletin we're using now.

Most of the other bugs I found in regards to Chrome seemed to be a couple years old.

Steve B
03-26-2010, 05:56 AM
I haven't heard the term "WYSIWYG" in a long time. I didn't know that was still in use for anything.

dynocat
03-26-2010, 09:48 AM
It was just a one line post, "Chrome is not supported, for any reason, under that version of the forum," Steve. I asked for details or a link. I'll post the response here.

vangogh
03-26-2010, 10:46 AM
Chrome is not supported, for any reason, under that version of the forum

When checking last night on the vBulletin forums they said they do support Chrome, though some things are a little buggy. Looking deeper it seemed the only consistent complain was the WYSIWYG editor. Most everything else seemed to be the result of human error.

If you find out more, please let me know.

@Steve - The term has never gone away, though I suppose it depends on what circles you hang out in and what kind of stuff you read.

In this case it's the editor for posting. If your using the WYSIWYG editor here and you grab a section of text and click the button to make it bold, you'll see the text as bold. I don't see that editor, because I'm using Safari. When I select text and click bold, I see the code that will make the text bold wrapped around the text I selected.

After we submit the post we both see the same thing. Having the WYSIWYG editor is a nice feature, but not anything critical enough to prevent upgrading in my opinion.

dynocat
03-26-2010, 05:06 PM
Steve, it sounds like you've already found out what the person I mentioned was referring to.

Here is her response to my question:
From vBulletin, The bulletin board may work with most everything when viewing through Chrome. However, if you post an issue with vBulletin, they will tell you that it's not supported.



We don't support Webkit browsers with the WYSIWYG editor. Rewriting the entire editor to add this functionality wasn't on the todo list for this version but can be added in the future. Higher priority is to get the system so that it uses one editor across all content instead of having different editors for each type of content. Than adding extra functionality like Webkit support will be possible.

So probably nothing critical, as you said.

vangogh
03-26-2010, 05:22 PM
I think that was the exact post I found. :) I did some quick searching of the vBulletin.com forum after you mentioned the possible issue.

Probably not critical since anyone using Chrome of Safari now can't use the WYSIWYG editor with pre-version 4 vBulletin either. They wouldn't even know they were missing anything. Kind of like me using Safari.

vangogh
03-29-2010, 12:03 AM
Just a note that it doesn't look like I'll be getting to the upgrade this weekend. Too many other things took precedence. I'll shoot for next weekend, unless I find some free time during the week that coincides with some quiet time here.

dynocat
03-29-2010, 01:25 AM
Just a note that it doesn't look like I'll be getting to the upgrade this weekend. Too many other things took precedence. I'll shoot for next weekend, unless I find some free time during the week that coincides with some quiet time here.

If you're lucky, next weekend, the Easter Bunny could lend a hand! ;)

vangogh
03-29-2010, 02:05 AM
I wouldn't mind a hand. I would have gone for the upgrade today, but wasn't ready to spend the just in case time, just in case it was needed.

KristineS
03-29-2010, 09:58 AM
The upgrade will happen when you get to it, Steve. Sometimes other things do take precedence. It will be nice to see the upgraded version of the forum, but the current version works just fine.

vangogh
03-29-2010, 11:02 AM
True enough. At some point we'll have to upgrade just for the security. Hopefully it won't be too long before I can get to it.

jamestl2
03-29-2010, 09:41 PM
So are you going to change the forum skin once you upgrade too, Steve?

Don't really care too much for the skin vbulletin.com currently uses...

vangogh
03-29-2010, 11:05 PM
At first I'll just leave it as the default vBulletin skin. I think the version 4 one looks a little nicer than this one. In time (assuming I find time), I'd like to modify the template and give us a different look. One nice thing about version 4+ is that the layout is css based as opposed to table based. It should be much easier to customize the look of the forum.

jamestl2
03-30-2010, 01:09 AM
I was wondering when they were finally going to make the switch. (Haven't looked into it myself yet.)

Converting all the preexisting templates that most forums use into tableless layouts does sound nightmarish though. Hopefully the admin side of version 4 does make customization quicker and easier for those who weren't as familiar with the previous versions.

vangogh
03-30-2010, 01:33 AM
I won't really know until I try to customize the look, but knowing it's css already has me more optimistic. I've looked at the code and it is cleaner and I read a short tutorial showing how easy it is to make some changes to give the forum a new look.

First things first though. Finding time to actually upgrade.

Spider
08-01-2010, 11:37 PM
What version is the upgraded forum?

vangogh
08-02-2010, 12:40 AM
We've moved up to the version 4 line. I'd rather not say the specific version since it's a security thing to hide it if you can.

Our license is up this week. I don't need to renew since I purchased an owned license, but the only way to get future ugrades and access to code in the support forums is to purchase the license for version 4. I was entitled to download the new version with the last license, but will need to pay again for future upgrades. I'm going to buy the full publishing suite when I do. That'll give us more features and turn the forum into more of a full site with a forum as the main section. I'm not quite sure how it can be set up though. I'm hoping we can still have the forum site at the root, but it's possible that when you type in the domain a home page will show up and the forum will be one of the main links.

I'll have to look into it all before actually upgrading to the full suite and I think even with the full suite I can set it up so only the forum is actually here.

Spider
08-02-2010, 10:48 AM
Thanks - but why is the specific version a security issue now? All previous versions of vB had the specific version clearly marked in the footnote.

vangogh
08-02-2010, 11:01 AM
The company always places it there. I had removed it though. It shouldn't have been showing before. The reason not to mention it is say version 2.3.4.5 has some security flaw, but version 2.3.4.6 doesn't have it and 2.3.4.7 has a different security flaw. By publicly showing which version you use you make it easier for someone to match the flaw with the version. There are other ways someone might find the hole, but why make it easy for them.

Imagine the back door of your house uses a specific lock with a flaw and could be unlocked with any key. That's a security hole that you should fix and anyone trying any key in your back door can easily get into your home. You wouldn't post a sign on the front door saying you're using that specific lock though. The security hole exists regardless and the only real security is to get another lock, but you're not going to announce which lock your using would you?

cbscreative
08-02-2010, 11:23 AM
Good explanation, vangogh. Unfortunately, Frederick, there are plenty of people out there with nothing better to do with their time than figure out what those security flaws are and exploit them. Yes, they need to get a life, but they apparently don't realize that. Nor do they realize that the same effort applied to useful pursuits could probably make them rich.

Spider
08-02-2010, 04:00 PM
Makes sense. Oh well, I'll have to find some other occupation to while away my evenings!

vangogh
08-02-2010, 04:09 PM
Sorry to ruin your plans to hack the forum :)

Spider
08-03-2010, 09:10 AM
Sammy Kamkar seems to be having better luck than me!

BBC News - Web attack knows where you live (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10850875)

vangogh
08-03-2010, 11:39 AM
Pretty scary. It's amazing how much can be hacked that we take for granted as being secure. It's also scary when I think GPS tracking and how much that can reveal about you. One reason I generally block apps from accessing GPS info on my phone.

Blessed
10-09-2010, 07:36 AM
OK... so I know this is old news but... :)

I just wanted to mention that I really like the "today's post" feature. I generally read everything that gets posted, even though I don't respond to near all of it. I realize that the "new post" feature lists the posts chronologically with the newest things being first and the oldest things being last, but I do really like the "today's post" tab - I click on it before I click on anything else when I visit the forum.

Keep up the good work on this forum - I appreciate it!

billbenson
10-09-2010, 12:28 PM
I use the new posts link. A lot faster than navigating the forum.

vangogh
10-09-2010, 01:04 PM
I use it all the time too. Just so everyone knows the Today's Post link shows everything in the last 24 hours even if you've visited the thread before. The What's New link should show all threads you haven't visited even if no one's posted in them for more than 24 hours. I think that only works for people who are logged in though as otherwise the system doesn't know what you have and haven't visited.

greenoak
10-12-2010, 09:34 AM
wanted to mention i miss a lot on the sub forums....i just dont notice them...or remember how to get there.... i like nice fat categories/subjects.......

vangogh
10-12-2010, 11:17 AM
Ann if you use either the New Posts or Today's Posts links at the top then you'll likely see every new and updated post without having to go through the categories/forums.

greenoak
10-12-2010, 01:13 PM
i guess i dont use that feature either..i see the button tho...
..i do like fewer categories instead of more..
.like now im lots more nterested in facebook than blog..since its working so well locally for me...and i see internet marketing as including website, blog and facebook..... so they could all be in one place for me.....as usual there are so many ways to look at it...and whatever you decide on we will be happy with and get used to...

KristineS
10-12-2010, 02:05 PM
I use the New Posts button almost constantly. I rarely visit an individual forum anymore. I just hit the New Posts button and get to see all that's new.

cbscreative
10-12-2010, 03:13 PM
I use the New Posts button almost constantly. I rarely visit an individual forum anymore. I just hit the New Posts button and get to see all that's new.

Ditto...I do exactly the same thing. Whether you use the What's New button or the New Posts link, they both do the same thing. But all the responses just prove we all use the forum differently so it's a good thing to have all the options.

Lyrafire
10-16-2010, 10:17 AM
I use Chrome, and my operating system is Windows XP. vBulletin appears to work fine. Good luck on the change-over!

jamesray50
11-30-2010, 03:03 AM
I like the way vBulletin looks. Are you our moderator? What do the phrases under our name mean? Who came up with them? And what is reputation? Don't forget the oil this weekend. We don't want the robots to get rusty!

jamesray50
11-30-2010, 03:06 AM
I haven't heard the term "WYSIWYG" in a long time. I didn't know that was still in use for anything.

Isn't that for people like me who don't know html or other computer language? BTW, I'm your neighbor in Lexington, KY

jamesray50
11-30-2010, 03:09 AM
I just realized that I was replying to posts written months ago. That's what I get for staying up late playing on my computer. Ignore me everyone, I'm going to bed now.

cbscreative
11-30-2010, 11:58 PM
What do the phrases under our name mean? Who came up with them? And what is reputation?

Those phrases were created in the very early stages of setting up this forum. The vB defaults for non-staff members are Junior Member, Senior Member, and I think there are others. We decided we didn't want the boring defaults, so I suggested the ones we have and it stuck...we've used them ever since. When you hit post levels, I believe it's 25, 50, and 100, you advance to new titles. Since post levels determine your title, the keyboard theme seemed to make sense. I see you just hit 50 posts, so congratulations, you are now wearing out your keyboard.

Reputation is earned if someone gives you points by clicking on the star icon when they like your posts or feel you deserve points. It can take a long time to get these, but it does provide a credibility boost when your score exceeds the default of 10. Even though you didn't know what they were or how you get them, I suspect you already knew the members with higher scores are more active and have been here a while. That's pretty much the purpose.

vangogh
12-01-2010, 11:08 AM
What Steve said. Maybe we'll come up with some other ideas for the phrases under everyone's member names. I think we should also let people who've reached a certain amount of posts have custom phrases that they can change to whatever they'd like. And then we should probably have some kind of badge for admins and moderators to make us easy to find. Early on that wasn't a big deal, but as we grow it's less likely new members are going to realize right away who is and isn't part of the forum staff.

cbscreative
12-01-2010, 01:15 PM
You're probably right about knowing who the staff are. There is a link on the Home page, but I kind of doubt most people realize that unless they're aware that vB has that by default.

KristineS
12-01-2010, 01:36 PM
A badge for moderators and admins would probably be a good thing. We are growing and not everyone knows who we are anymore.

cbscreative
12-01-2010, 07:29 PM
I know there's a default setting to make staff member user names appear in bold and a different color because I've seen it used on other forums. That may not actually tell the average user who the staff are, but it could help. In one sense, there is a benefit to not revealing ourselves. A few days ago, I got a spam PM. It turned out the offender had already been banned by the time I sought to take action (which I would have done in a heartbeat for the offense), but I kind of like the fact that unscrupulous members have a harder time identifying us.

vangogh
12-01-2010, 09:15 PM
I don't think that's a default setting. I'm pretty sure it's done through changes to the template. I'll think of some ideas to set us apart a bit and them to my todo list.

Spider
12-01-2010, 10:00 PM
Of course you all are proud of your achievements with SBF and want to be recognized, and rightly so, but can we have that $^#! percentage thing fixed first?! :-)

vangogh
12-01-2010, 10:41 PM
It's on my list and I will get to it first. It doesn't mean I can't add other things to the list. Keep in mind too that I earn exactly $0 from this forum. While I'm happy to fix things there's only so much time I can realistically devote to fixing things. If you know of an easy solution I'll be happy to implement it.

cbscreative
12-01-2010, 11:01 PM
Of course you all are proud of your achievements with SBF and want to be recognized, and rightly so, but can we have that $^#! percentage thing fixed first?! :-)

LOL, Spider. If you read my last post carefully, I'd prefer NOT to be recognized. You're right about being proud of the achievements, but that is to the credit of the members and not us. That percentage glitch was part of the software upgrade and I agree I'd like to see it fixed. I could care less if my user name is ever in bold or not as long as lingering issues like the percentage glitch are fixed. The only real reason to clearly identify the staff is so members know who to contact for issues that only we can deal with. I like the idea of being just accessible enough that legitimate users can figure out who we are and riff raff have to take chances and find out the hard way.

Spider
12-02-2010, 05:09 PM
It's on my list and I will get to it first. It doesn't mean I can't add other things to the list. Keep in mind too that I earn exactly $0 from this forum. While I'm happy to fix things there's only so much time I can realistically devote to fixing things. If you know of an easy solution I'll be happy to implement it.Someone told me you are an eccentric billionaire and money means nothing to you, anyway. Is that correct?

Whatever happened to the ads you were going to run? I don't think anyone would complain about some Google Adsense/Adwords showing. I'd even click a few for you.

Harold Mansfield
12-02-2010, 05:20 PM
I heard he actually lives on a roof top Penthouse loft in Hong Kong from where he runs his empire. He only pretends to be in Colorado and masks his IP address to that effect.

vangogh
12-02-2010, 06:17 PM
Actually I'm an international jewel thief. Shhh, don't tell anyone. I'm on the lam as we speak.

When I upgraded to vB 4.0 the ads went away since they were coded into the old template. They didn't exactly make enough money to motivate me to add them back. In time I'll either add them back or try to sell advertising directly, but for now I left them off. Another one of my list items is to upgrade this place to the full publishing suite which will mean placing ads in different locations than I might for forum alone. The very little that Google was paying wasn't enough to do the extra work in between.

Don't worry though the percent thing is at the top of the list or maybe 2nd after upgrading to the publishing suite since it's possible an upgrade could fix the percent and other characters. I agree with everyone else that it's annoying.

Oh and does anyone know where I can fence some diamonds.

Harold Mansfield
12-02-2010, 06:24 PM
Oh and does anyone know where I can fence some diamonds.

Sadly, I actually do :(

vangogh
12-02-2010, 08:51 PM
I'm afraid to ask how you know. :)

jamesray50
12-03-2010, 01:34 AM
I didn't know the percentage thing was a program problem, I thought everybody had a typo!

KristineS
12-03-2010, 02:51 PM
Actually I'm an international jewel thief. Shhh, don't tell anyone. I'm on the lam as we speak.

Oh and does anyone know where I can fence some diamonds.

Shhh, Vangogh! You're not supposed to be telling people your secret identity.

Next you'll be revealing I'm really an international master of disguise and espionage and then where will we be?

Plus, diamonds? I don't remember any diamonds in the haul from the last job.

Oh wait, have I said too much?

cbscreative
12-03-2010, 05:58 PM
Oh great, next thing you know someone will be exposing me as the security systems specialist. Then all our covers will be blown.

vangogh
12-06-2010, 10:46 AM
I didn't know the percentage thing was a program problem, I thought everybody had a typo!

Yep, and oddly we all keep making the same typo :)

Actually I did a little research and think I know what the problem is. Unfortunately it's not a quick and easy fix. It means recompiling PHP on the server so it may take a little while before I get to it since I'd like to make sure I really know what I'm doing before attempting the fix.

On a positive note this apparently only affects the quick reply. The advanced reply seems to work (at least from the comments I've seen). As a temporary use the Go Advanced button if you need to type a percent sign or some other character that isn't displaying correctly. I'll get to the recompiling when I can.

Spider
12-06-2010, 12:37 PM
Testing! Testing!

Going into Advanced mode!

Lock the doors!

Here is a 5% percent sign. Here is another % because sometimes the first one is the only one that screws up % ... %

Completeion of Test. If this had been a real emergency.... etc.

Spider
12-06-2010, 12:39 PM
Well.'ll be darned.

What abound my special peeve the accented e -- é --- and my favorite £

Spider
12-06-2010, 12:43 PM
Let's see if typing them in advanced mode works too --

é é % % % £ ©

¥ (for our oriental friends!)

Spider
12-06-2010, 12:43 PM
OKAY!

Test completed.

vangogh
12-06-2010, 12:48 PM
Yep. We aren't the only forum experiencing the issue so I was able to find some workarounds. The people at vB are insisting it isn't a vB issue though let's face it all those characters used to work on the same server so something they've introduced into the code is causing the issue for some servers. I have to recompile php with a certain module and then there should be no problem. That's not something I commonly do and not something I prefer to try on a live server running all my sites. I may end up calling the hosting company for help, but I don't like bothering them unless I have to.

jamesray50
12-16-2010, 12:30 PM
Congratulations, it works 100% of the time.

vangogh
12-17-2010, 12:07 PM
So much nicer than having to type "percent" isn't it?

cbscreative
12-17-2010, 12:10 PM
We need one of those animated smilies that jump up and down and clap.