PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Topics about or relating to the forum itself and how it's run.
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Allan
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PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by Allan » 18 Jul 2012 14:16

Here it is, folks.

* At the time of this writing, the search index has not been re-built; search will not work until it has been. It's about a quarter of the way done, but I've de-prioritized it for the time being while:

* The YouTube shortcodes didn't come through properly yet. It's complicated, but essentially phpbb2 & 3 handle bbcodes totally differently. In order to get the bbcode to come through during an import, you have to setup the new installation with the new bbcode *before* you do the conversion. If you don't, only newly created posts will properly turn the bbcode into the embedded video. This isn't mentioned anywhere in the documentation, and while I possibly could have foreseen this, I didn't. In order for the bbcode to do it's work on posts older than today, I have to run a script that re-processes all 400,000+ posts. It takes f'ing forever to run. It's running, but I have no actual way of knowing how long it's going to take. It also keeps crashing, so I have to manually refresh; it's not a process I can just walk away from, which is super duper lame. Once this is done processing, I'll continue to process the search index.

* As a result of the above long-running processes, things might be slow to load. When those things are done, things should pick up. You might not notice anything at all.

* The previous version was reporting 3717 users; it is now 3282 because the system has flagged a number of users as "inactive." These accounts can be resurrected if need be.

Otherwise, I think I've successfully upgraded us to phpBB 3. Please poke around. Post some stuff. Let me know if anything doesn't work.

Questions? Bugs? Comments are welcome.

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Tjuggles
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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by Tjuggles » 18 Jul 2012 15:34

Allan,

The forum looks great. Thanks a lot for your time. I am into programming a bit myself and can only imagine how much fun this was.
TJ Boutorwick

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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by Muffinman » 18 Jul 2012 17:58

Thanks for all the hard work, Allan! You're the best.

EDIT: It looks like we got a crapload of spam users and posts with the new updates:
http://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=22273

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Allan
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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by Allan » 18 Jul 2012 18:39

I'm going to try to delete the spam posts, but it would be great if a mod could take care of that for us :)

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rjadamson
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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by rjadamson » 18 Jul 2012 21:02

Does the new version of phpBB include a captcha test (or equivalent) for user registration?

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AlekseyV
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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by AlekseyV » 19 Jul 2012 01:13

hi Allan, i think that old forum colours were better!

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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by jay7 » 19 Jul 2012 04:45

Thanks for all your hard work, Allan. I'm sure this is frustrating, and it is awesome for the community that you took the challenge.
Jay Boychuk

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F[uns]tylin' Eclectic
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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by F[uns]tylin' Eclectic » 19 Jul 2012 04:59

Thanks for the hard work and time you must have put into the new site. It's much more "present day" looking now.

However... Constructive criticism... It doesn't POP... New players like pictures of hardcore shred as soon as they log on... there are literally NO pictures on the new version. I feel like this is even more likely to drive new players away from the site. At least we had a few shred pictures in the old banner. Although the new modified is written in fancy letters, I fee like that is not enough to attract a new player's attention. You need some sort of cool shred banner with a bunch of rotating pics of present day-shredders killin it with PS Whirls, Spins, Ducking, and so on and so forth.. photogenic tricks like those would really attract a new player's attention.

But really man, great job with everything. That is just my 2 cents.

Never used this and thought it to be appropriate here -> :footbag:
Nick Polini

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Allan
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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by Allan » 19 Jul 2012 10:17

We can discuss a new banner that brings the pop you speak of; a new thread talking about it would be good :) I just wanted to get us on the modern platform and go from there. Personally, and no offense to anyone, I thought the photos in the header of the last theme would have done more to turn people away than not having anything. They had character, I'll give them that. But not a one of them was "cool" in my opinion. It felt like they were attempts at a meme that just failed.

:)

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Allan
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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by Allan » 19 Jul 2012 10:26

rjadamson wrote:Does the new version of phpBB include a captcha test (or equivalent) for user registration?
Yes, and it's enabled. I just changed it to the Q&A one where it asks the question: "What sport is this?" with the obvious answer. There are several different captcha plugins that can be used. The one (GD) that was turned on by default obviously sucks, as I had 60+ spam users attempt to register since yesterday.

I also turned on admin approval for new users. This isn't ideal, but we have to do something about the spam we're getting. There are many dozens of spam users that aren't getting excised from the system (admins where are you!?). At the moment I'm not happy about being the gatekeeper, but I can manage it until we figure it out.

AlekseyV wrote:hi Allan, i think that old forum colours were better!
I think the new theme would grow on you if you just give it a chance. But I'm sorry you're not happy with the change. I believe it's for the better, but I recognize that not everyone is going to be happy. For what it's worth, I did warn people that things would change and we voted to go ahead anyhow.

I'll create another thread about the look & feel of the forums. There are a bunch of options to choose from, really.

edited to expand on the "admin approval for new users.

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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by Muffinman » 19 Jul 2012 14:57

AllanHaggett wrote:They had character, I'll give them that. But not a one of them was "cool" in my opinion. It felt like they were attempts at a meme that just failed.
I think that one of the most distracting changes is that user info and avatars are now on the right of each post (instead of the left), which feels wrong (for left-to-right reading countries anyway...). The colours and everything are fine and like you said will grow on us -- it's not really much of a change...

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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by Muffinman » 23 Jul 2012 12:30

I can never remember which of these new forum threads is which, but you'd said you'd fixed the user info on the right, by moving it to the left. It still appears on the right for me. Is there something I have to do to change it?

Another minor difference with the new software is that when you click on a thread title it brings you to the first page of a thread, rather than the latest, which can get kind of annoying. I know I can click on the latest page number beside the title, but it's so ingrained to click the title, and it just makes sense that the title brings you to the latest post.

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Allan
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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by Allan » 23 Jul 2012 13:23

Muffinman wrote:I can never remember which of these new forum threads is which, but you'd said you'd fixed the user info on the right, by moving it to the left. It still appears on the right for me. Is there something I have to do to change it?
Hmm. I'm assuming you know how to dump your browser cache, and have done so. And, not that it should make much difference, but that you've tried logging out and then logging back in? It should just work, and I'm surprised you're not seeing the change yet. If you've got some other browser on your system, can you do me a favor and see if the mini-profiles are still on the right on it/them?
Muffinman wrote: Another minor difference with the new software is that when you click on a thread title it brings you to the first page of a thread, rather than the latest, which can get kind of annoying. I know I can click on the latest page number beside the title, but it's so ingrained to click the title, and it just makes sense that the title brings you to the latest post.
I'll look into this.

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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by Muffinman » 23 Jul 2012 13:41

Oh, my bad. I didn't realize I was supposed to do all of those things to make it work. It does now. Thanks!

One more thing I thought of too:
New PMs require you to manually empty your inbox if it's full, whereas previously it would do this automatically.

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Allan
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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by Allan » 23 Jul 2012 13:43

Muffinman wrote:Oh, my bad. I didn't realize I was supposed to do all of those things to make it work. It does now. Thanks!
Phew! I'm glad it works :)
Muffinman wrote:One more thing I thought of too:
New PMs require you to manually empty your inbox if it's full, whereas previously it would do this automatically.
I'll take a gander at this too.

I was thinking of expanding the inbox from 50 messages, to, say, 100?

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Allan
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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by Allan » 23 Jul 2012 13:49

Muffinman wrote:Another minor difference with the new software is that when you click on a thread title it brings you to the first page of a thread, rather than the latest, which can get kind of annoying. I know I can click on the latest page number beside the title, but it's so ingrained to click the title, and it just makes sense that the title brings you to the latest post.
I think you might be mistaken about how this used to work ... ? I'll PM you a link to the old forum (I really don't want that link public), and you can see that clicking on the thread title took you to the first page of the thread.

I'll look at this a bit further, but I'm pretty sure that this is the way it's always been. It's one of the reasons I wrote that "footblogs" reader a while back.

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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by Muffinman » 27 Jul 2012 19:45

I noticed another weird thing about the new forums. I made a post with an image that was wider than the page and the page didn't materialize a horizontal scrolling bar. It was only in a post preview if that makes a difference. I didn't make the post because I didn't want to have to deal with not being able to scroll everything on that page.

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Allan
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Re: PHPBB3 Upgrade Notes

Post by Allan » 29 Jul 2012 13:58

I've seen this and will look into it ASAP unless I totally unintentionally forget, which I probably won't, but if I do I'm sorry :D

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