Planned Upgrade Ver 3.x To 4.x

[gav240z]

Hey Folks,

Just a heads up that I plan to run an upgrade soon (doing backups etc..)

 

More details here.

 

https://invisioncommunity.com/4guides/welcome/install-and-upgrade-r259/?_fromLogin=1#testinstall

 

The only item most members need to worry about is this.

 

User / Display Names
Usernames and display names have been merged in Invision Community. As the administrator, you may select which to keep during the upgrade process. Please note that this field will be the publicly displayed field for the user. 

 

At the moment it's possible to use a login name but have a different display name on the forum.

 

For example I could have gavin as my login name but gav240z as my display name.

 

These will be merged going forward, meaning I'll need to pick 1 field to keep whilst the other is discarded. My inclination is to keep username and if folks wish to change it after the upgrade that's ok.

 

To be honest very few members use this ability (or probably know it exists), but in the interest of giving everyone time to adjust for this in advance I wanted to call this out.

 

Upgrade hiccups.

 

I am going to tackle this when I have spare time (which is never) and I am expecting to run into at least 1 or 2 snags along the way. The forum may be down longer than anticipated and when we recover the look and feel may have changed, I am contemplating retiring the homepage part of the site along with the articles (features and news sections). I do want to migrate that across to the new software so it's all housed under the same roof and that will allow me to open up home page publishing to other members of the group (useful for events etc..).

 

The other unknown is how older style URLs will be handled, as part of the migration to this software I was able to map back the old historical URLs to map and redirect to the newer style URLs. This meant no broken links when clicking through old threads. I wish to retain that if possible moving forward but will need to look into this.

 

Once everything is upgraded and working smoothly the next step in the process may be to move to cloud based hosting - which may bring down the costs of hosting significantly and allow for future scalability and less restrictions around image uploads etc.

 

I'll post more announcements closer to the date of this all happening. I'm in the process of finishing a large backup (multiple gigs of attachments etc..). Hopefully things will go better than planned and the upgrade will run smoothly with no problems.

[PB260Z]

Good luck, certainly a significant piece of work.

 

Personally I don’t think everyone fully apreciates just how much effort you put in behind the scenes to keep the site running. I am sure everyone in this community will understand if you hit a few bumps during the upgrade.

 

Look forward to seeing the enhancements

 

Cheers

 

PB

[gav240z]

Thanks Peter, actually I feel like I've been lazy in terms of site maintenance, long overdue to do this upgrade. It's been a slow migration process, but it will eventually make things more simple. Having gone from 3 individual bits of software down to 2 and soon to 1. It will mean 1 database, 1 codebase, and 1 set of backup's to perform. Thankfully!

 

I know you've been itchy for some improved permissions on the site to perform certain tasks and I plan to make that happen after the upgrade.

 

Also just an FYI, but I just upgraded the version of PHP running the site (new version requires a higher version) and everything appears to be working fine so far (no hiccups) but if you notice any odd kind of errors or messages please let me know?

 

The database software version may also be upgraded shortly - but again I don't expect any major changes here as a result, will keep an eye on it and revert back if we have problems.

[Andrew_L26]

Awesome Gav, Thanks for all the work you put into the site! Looking forward to the upgrade as I'm sure it's going to make things a little smoother for users and much smoother for you to look after. As for the main website I don't think it would hurt to remove it so that it will be a little more coherent and easier to keep up to date.

Thanks again!

 

Andrew

[gav240z]

Planning to run some updates in the next 5 - 10 mins.

[gav240z]

And upgrade appears to have gone successfully..

Please let me know if you experience any issues?

[PB260Z]

Seems to be working - Well done

Layout is certainly different, need to learn my way around

cheers

 

PB

[gav240z]

Yes same here, will have to alter look and feel shortly. The whole software has changed as it's a bit rewrite but hopefully once everyone becomes used to it they will like it.

Testing from mobile looks better already.

[PB260Z]

Actually, looks like the “signatures” have disappeared.

ie the cars the user has, used to appear at the bottom

[gav240z]

Testing image upload from my phone.

[PB260Z]

Ah, the White/Blue special

[brent012]

37 minutes ago, gav240z said:

And upgrade appears to have gone successfully..

Please let me know if you experience any issues?

Mobile interface is good! Web one should look good too once the theme is altered.

Looks like it's still building the search index, so can't view unread content for example?

Any plans to add SSL by the way?

[gav240z]

4 minutes ago, brent012 said:

Mobile interface is good! Web one should look good too once the theme is altered.

Looks like it's still building the search index, so can't view unread content for example?

Any plans to add SSL by the way?

Yes still rebuilding stuff.

I like the mobile changes also! Much more user friendly.

I haven't really thought about SSL, but could look into it.

[brent012]

3 minutes ago, gav240z said:

Yes still rebuilding stuff.

I like the mobile changes also! Much more user friendly.

I haven't really thought about SSL, but could look into it.

You can get free SSL certificates from here: https://letsencrypt.org/

Not sure if they've backed down, but I believe Google were using it in the PageRank algorithm before, so it's got a lot going for it haha. (better page rank, doesnt get flagged in chrome/firefox as insecure, not sending login details unencrypted)

[Andrew_L26]

Looks good! Not sure about the black theme though...

[gav240z]

9 minutes ago, Andrew_L26 said:

Looks good! Not sure about the black theme though...

Just temporary.

[JDM-TOY]

Hi Gavin great upgrade, is there going to be a mobile site like the old one?

Cheers

Youhan

[gav240z]

6 hours ago, JDM-TOY said:

Hi Gavin great upgrade, is there going to be a mobile site like the old one?

Cheers

Youhan

The old mobile site was very basic in terms of function. The new mobile version is much more like the desktop but optimised for smaller displays.

Are you seeing something unexpected?

[JDM-TOY]

4 hours ago, gav240z said:

The old mobile site was very basic in terms of function. The new mobile version is much more like the desktop but optimised for smaller displays.

Are you seeing something unexpected?

Hey Gavin na the new site is working well for me just thought the.mobile site would be as basic as the previous one. 

[gav240z]

Yeah the old 1 was very stripped down. The new version is more like the Desktop and image upload now works which is a huge bonus as you can upload images directly from your phone.

There was a way to do it before but it wasn't intuitive.

The upgrade meant the old theme couldn't be kept, but I'm ok with that as it was a bit outdated, but it also reset a few settings and I'll need to go through everything again.

A lot of things have changed so it will take some getting used to. But I actually think the new version of the software works a lot better than before.

[Enzo]

Interesting, Thought that I had logged onto Hybrid Z for a while. Lol.

I had a couple of goes to log on, but you have done well.

Cheers

David.

[gav240z]

If you're having trouble logging in, it might be related to the Display Name / Username merge. I actually kept Display Name as the forum software recommended this during the upgrade.

Lurch had his Display name as "Lurch ™" so I've gone and manually set it to "Lurch".

If others are having issues logging in, you can message me via Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/36878942305/) or use the contact form on this site to reach my email. gavindoolan (at) gmail (dot) com.

[gav240z]

Just an FYI the login form says you can login with username or email, but I've found it doesn't work with email at the moment. I will need to investigate why that is.

[C.A.R.]

Thanks for the help Gav.
New layout looks good!

[gav240z]

I see your avatar is missing, but right now the site is building up it's cache and explains why it can be a bit slow to respond. Once it finishes building it's cache back up it should be faster but also all avatars should return.