Upgrading the vBulletin software that runs this forum

[Gerald D]

The vBulletin used here is 3.6.7, 2 years old, and no longer supported by the vBulletin company. The pressure is on to "upgrade" (an abused word) to 3.8, but all the customising will need to be done from scratch again.

[jhiggins7]

Gerald,

If you are going to "upgrade", is there any way for some of us to help you with the required customisation?

[sailfl]

Gerald,

I would be happy to help you with customising, changing or adding if you decided to upgrade. You would probably have change my status back to what it was.

Let me know if you want some help.

[domino11]

I am also available to help on the customizations if needed :)

Upgrade, you mean the software or their bank accounts, oh yeah probably both. :)

[Gerald D]

The bank account side isn't a problem - the donations to the forum will cover it.

Thanks for the offers of help! The biggest help that I would need is some patience with things at first looking different than before. It will take a while to get the the familiar logo & pics at the top, the right shade of blue and a couple of other things that I have forgotten that I have done. For example, I removed all indicators that show whether a member is online or not. Disabled signature lines and avatars. Etc.

So I would need people to tell me what is missing, and what needs to be fixed, and then to be patient. . . . . :)

[PEU]

Create a thread called: help me retune vbulletin and we can consolidate the help in a single thread.

Make backups! :)

Good luck!

[sailfl]

Gerald,

We will be happy to help you in any way that you feel will help.

I think you out to get rid of quotes also.

[Gerald D]

Pablo, I have never made a backup. I am serious! :eek:

(Our ISP does daily backups, and sometimes I had to ask him to take me back to a point where everything was working correctly. Maybe loose a couple of posts, but he has always had the backup)

[sailfl]

Gerald

As long as your ISP is making a daily backup you should be fine.

[bradm]

Gerald, may I gently suggest that you arrange to copy one of your ISP's backups, or a dump of the forums somewhere else, say once a year, or once a quarter?

It's a hedge against a natural, political, financial, or hackical disaster befalling your ISP.

Rare and unlikely, yes. Consequences? Potentially extreme. To my mind, loosing a year's worth would be painful, but ultimately recoverable.

Maybe someday I'll tell y'all a story about concrete saws, remodeling the floor of the office suite next door to our data center, and a $70m/yr company knocked offline for 24 hours ...

[PEU]

Pablo, I have never made a backup. I am serious! :eek:

(Our ISP does daily backups, and sometimes I had to ask him to take me back to a point where everything was working correctly. Maybe loose a couple of posts, but he has always had the backup)

I guess you don't need tales of hard drives/isp/datacenter failures right?

Im not versed in vbulletin, but I guess there should be a way to backup the whole bulletin, quick googling the subject returned this thread: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=39558

Your main worry should be what would happen if they have a catastrophic problem, do they backup offsite?

If I were you, I would sleep better if I had a snapshot of the bulletin once a week or once a month at least.

Good Luck!

[Gerald D]

Hi Brad, I am not that attached to this forum! :eek:

Just kidding! My ISP guys do have regular offsite backups and servers at different centers across the USA. That's why they are of the most expense around, but I sleep very easily. :)

I have placed the order, and paid, for an upgrade within the next 24 hours. I am hanging on for the ride! :D

[Gerald D]

This written by our ISP: 5325

[bradm]

Looks like we're on 3.8.3 now and all seems well?

That backup.pdf document addresses my point in Section 7, page 13. :)

[javeria]

Just out of curiosity : what is the current size of the forum.

so can we have video embedded in the post now???

Thanks for everything G' -

[sailfl]

Gerald,

I want to thank you the expense you put into the MechMate Forum. Not many people have a forum with out lots of advertising to help pay for it. Plus all the thought you have put into making the forum clutter free.

Thank you.

[Doug_Ford]

Amen Nils. Gerald's selflessness still amazes me.

[Gerald D]

Gee, I left this entirely in the hands of the vBulletin guys and Jake Bunce did the conversion. I have not changed a single setting since, yet almost every single thing works just as before. Wonderful!

(Already I see a "Tags" block just above this quick reply box that is wasting space and adding to scrolling distance - it will have to go unless it has a definite benefit . . )

[Gerald D]

Brad, are you volunteering to do those MySql dumps for me? :)

[Gerald D]

Irfan, the linked video may come one day. But I must admit that I find the typical CNC builder's video to be of poor quality and very boring :o

[javeria]

G' are you talking about JR's videos :D

[Gerald D]

Are you calling JR a "typical CNC builder" ?

Don't answer that!

Again, because some of us (me in particular) have very expensive and slow internet access, we cannot waste our precious quota on viewing videos. Generally I cannot take part in a discussion based on a video content, because I don't bother to view most videos.

(Our broadband speeds are also poor, which means that all youtubes have big delays in them)

[sailfl]

Gerald,

A round of "Yip, Yip, Horray for Jake and the VBulletin guys. They did a great job on the conversion.

That was the easiest conversion I ever worked on!

What is the tag box used for?

Does anyone use the Quick Reply box? That takes up a lot of space. I always just hit post replay.


Gerald,

The photos in 4:1 Transmission thread are not appearing when I view the thread... might be a size issue but I thought you might like to know about it.

I wish you could add the "New Posts" button at the bottom of the thread so I could go directly to the next new post.

[isladelobos]

I like the albums function in the user control pannel

[Gerald D]

Nils,

It was also the easiest upgrade for me - ever! Okay, I did have to pay them $210 and give them access to absolutely everything, but the result speaks for itself. These vBulletin guys are totally professional.

Strange that those pics are not visible to you. Anyone else with pic viewing problems? (Make sure that you are logged in first - maybe you got logged out during the upgrade).

A "New Posts" button at the bottom makes a heck of a lot of sense! Could you perhaps check http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/index.php and http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/ to see if anyone else has implemented that?

[Gerald D]

Ros, can you tell us what the albums function will do?

[isladelobos]

I'm still seeing a problem when editing an reply.

When click on manage attachments, are not our previously added files, only see option to add new.

I think this is a future revision in the vbulleting reply thread attachements manage.

[isladelobos]

Yes Gerald.

In the User Control pannel see in the left in Networking, the Pictures & Albums (http://www.mechmate.com/forums/album.php?u=5321)

We can add our photo albums.

[Gerald D]

Who can view those albums? Where?

[isladelobos]

http://www.mechmate.com/forums/album.php?u=5321

I like the idea to add albums from the constructors, but the isp space and the data transfer ammount increases.

[Gerald D]

Oops, I am not happy with that!

I logged out, but I could still see your pictures. That means that 20 search engines will visit those pictures every day, and they can be linked to outside sites. Which means we pay for hosting them while other people view them. Will have to look for a way to tidy that up, or remove it altogether . . . .

[isladelobos]

We see in the cp (user control pannel) this:

5335

You can remove the link.

[Gerald D]

I would be happy with albums if:

1. They are only visible to registered, logged in, members

2. There is a way of copying all of the pics already on the forum into albums of the people who posted them.

[bradm]

Gerald, I'm happy to help figure out how to make those dumps happen. It appears that vbulletin has a built in database dump, or you can use phpmyadmin if your hosting provide allows it. Then, the remaining challenge is copying the resulting file (and ideally the other files for attached images and documents) back to the machine of your choice. You probably have some facility to do this. Just send me a message if you're interested.

[J.R. Hatcher]

Gerald and Irfan, why are you two picking on my videos ..... just because they are a little under HD quality, then to use the word boring. not only :o but also :confused: I will try to do better on the next one. I'll think about hiring a director, but then I'll have to charge admission.:rolleyes: Oh well.

[sailfl]

Gerald,

I will look into the "New Post" button thing.

I agree about the photos - only for registered logged people can see.

[Gerald D]

I have disabled those albums for now. Have looked up albums on the vB forums and they seem to be quite problematic.

[sailfl]

Gerald,

As you know it is some time difficult to search on these forums. Espically when you know the right terminalogy. I did a serch on New Post and it was a mess.

I also registered and then I found this:

"If you have this question, then please note that to be able to post in the support forums you first need to be a licensed customer and register for Priority Forum Support. To do this, please go here: "

To use their support forum you have to be a registered user of the software, which I am not.

I would suggest you contact your contact or post a question on the support forum.

I gave it a try.

[Tester]

Second Navbar At Bottom Of Thread (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=98853)

[Gerald D]

Doesn't work in version 3.8

[jhiggins7]

Gerald,

I'm noticing that the "time-stamp" on Forum entries, such as when I last logged on, is not my local time. I thought I remembered from the previous version of the software, that the time entries were my local time. Did I remember this wrong?

[Gerald D]

I always recall seeing local times everywhere. Anyone else seeing strange times?

[jhiggins7]

Gerald,

Looks like it's 2 hours behind. It's currently 10:35 AM here, but the time-stamp will be 8:35. My computer time is set properly.

[Gerald D]

John, is that also the time stamp you see on the posts?

[jhiggins7]

Yes, your post is time stamped 8:39 and my current time is 10:48.

[jhiggins7]

Gerald,

I'm currently in the Eastern time zone. So 1 hour of the difference may be because my Profile is set in the Central time zone. An additional hour difference could be because of Day-light savings time. We set our clocks one hour forward in the spring. I don't know how VBulletin sets time, but if it's from the Profile address and if VBulletin doesn't recognize Day-light Savings Time, all the difference would be explained.

I'm going be away from the computer for several hours. See you later.

[Gerald D]

John, I changed your settings. See http://www.mechmate.com/forums/profile.php?do=editoptions Hope it is right now?

[jhiggins7]

Gerald, I see it. Thank You.:) Looks good.

[Gerald D]

. . . . . .
What is the tag box used for?
. . . . . . . . .
I wish you could add the "New Posts" button at the bottom of the thread so I could go directly to the next new post.
. . . . . . . .

Tags have been disabled

The navbar has been copied to the bottom of the thread (replaces the tag box). That has the New Posts, etc.

[sailfl]

Gerald,

Okay. I like the NavBar at the bottom. Now direct moving from one new post to another. Thank you very much!!!! I feel like a Captain of an upside down right driving airplane!

I would like to see quick reply tossed but that is me. You can add Quotes added to the toss. Both of those would free up lots of space.

[Gerald D]

I don't get your issue with quick reply?

There is a box permanently under each thread, which is the reply box I use the most.

And there is a button, bottom right of each post, which just takes you to the aforementioned box.

[sailfl]

Gerald,

I guess it is me - my weiredness.

I have a post "replay button" directly below the last thread. This is the button I always use when I replay.

Then there is the new NavBar and then there is the Quick Reply Box and then the <<Previous and Next buttons>>.

I realize now that with the new NavBar, the quick reply box can stay. I never use the quick reply box.

Too much time on my hands.........

Thanks for the new changes, it is nice to have input in the forum.

[Gerald D]

And I have never used the Previous & Next links - havn't scrolled that far before.

[Gerald D]

When I type a reply, I like to have the last post visible, and that's why I generally avoid the big Post Reply button bottom left.

[sailfl]

Gerald,

You are making forum writing much easier. You gave me my New Posts and now I am starting to use Quick Reply. It is good to try new things.

You make it too easy for users to do quotes. You could stop it easily by removing the option in quick reply.