Results matching “boardmod” from Ye Olde Rad Blog III

After years of searching, I finally found a new template for the Rad Community forums. Named midnyte, it's (as you might expect) » dark.

A template consists of set of files that style a bulletin board (aka 'online forum'). All templates include (among other things) a CSS file & an accompanying set of graphics.

Our old template was based on a much older version of YaBB (our forum software) .. so old, in fact, that I don't even recall which version it was based on.

I liked the way the old template looked, but it kept getting increasingly outdated with each additional update to our forum script .. thereby introducing an increasing number of compatibilty problems (which made me jump thru increasingly difficult hoops).

Actually, it was problems encountered following last week's upgrade that sent me scurrying to find a contemporary template (one based on YaBB 2.4).

Upgraded the Rad Community Forums to the latest version of YaBB (» v2.3.1), which was released in Jan.04. Had to wait until the mods I use were upgraded to Y.231-compatible.

No matter how many times I perform this upgrade, I always get antsy .. about the prospect of losing 40,000 posts (which would suk gigantic goose eggs).

A tech from our ISP come out today (to install wired connections, using the home's pre-existing electrical wiring). But I didn't know he was here (cuz he was working over in the main house).

Immediately after transferring some 15,000 files (to complete the upgrade), I launched the forums to test-n-see if everything was working hunky-dory.

At that very moment, the ISP dude here disconected our wireless gateway, which gave me a bizarre error I'd never seen before .. something like » "Dude, your gateway is completely trashed. Better contact your Internet Service Provider for help."

I panicked. The thought ran thru my head » "Oh my God. I screwed up the forums so bad that they trashed my router gateway .. (which is physically impossible, if you think about it) .. but you know how disorienting untimely error messages can be .. when you're already on edge.

Quick shout-out to Peter S. (who lives in Baltimore). He helped me create a Perl script to change permissions (CHangeMODe) for the files-n-folders (located on the Rad server) that pertain to upgrading (actually installing) YaBB .. something that's been occurring with greater frequency.

Peter read where I wrote (on Jan 6th):

The worst part of "upgrading" YaBB (actually » installing) is chmod'ing all the files (setting file permissions .. to either 755 or 666). There are nearly a thousand files which need permissions set. Tedious maximus. Takes a while. (I hate it.)

I say "he helped me," but actually, he did most of the work himself, leaving only enough undone to help me learn some basic Perl scripting techniques.

We've been trading emails off-n-on (as time permits) the past few weeks. Now I have a script that works perfectly. It will save me untold hours of mind-numbing tedium. So I'm pretty stoked.

The boys at YaBB released a new version of their forum software » YaBB 2.3.1. I installed a copy of this new script to a temporary directory .. see here » Y.231 temp (« this link will go away when the upgrade is complete).

I used a slightly different cookie at the new forum, so it shouldn't ruin your login at the current Rad forums.

The safest way to 'upgrade' the forums .. is to install a NEW copy of the most recent version (to a new/temporary directory) .. and configure everything at/for the new forum (.. while the old forum is running unaffected).

After everything at the new forum is hunky-dory, I'll put both forums in Maintenance mode (which takes them out of service), and then copy (via the cp command from the Linux shell) the files located in /Members and /Messages .. from old to new.

I think we have about 1,500 members and nearly 40,000 posts (in some 5,000 threads). Takes a while to copy all those files.

Friday the 13th. Updated the forum script last night .. to YaBB v2.2.2 (released June 5th).

Stayed up 'til 1AM. Kinda tired this morning. (Would never chance it on an unlucky day like today, so I wanted to finish last night.)

This is the fastest-ever I upgraded the forum (a few hours), which included installing a few mods (manually), such as the Quick-Reply mod.

Normally it takes a few days to dial-in everything. I've done it so many times now that I know the drill. (Hasn't always gone well.) Or maybe it was the Puttanesca I made last night.

Only made one mistake .. copying (via Linux command line) /Members and /Messages files (from old- to new-script directories) to wrong directories. Dang.

I copied these folders *inside* pre-existing folders .. instead of first deleting (or renaming) the destination directories. That mistake cost me an hour or two. (Takes a while to delete 15,000 files .. even on a fast server.) Next time I'm just going to MOVE the files (instead of copy-n-delete).

I transferred 2 months worth of daily entries (Dec 2007 + Jan 2008) to individual blog entries, using (older) Movable Type v3.35, since that was the version I was using when those entries were made.

It's much easier to reference (via linkage) a particular event .. such as the upgrade to YaBB v2.2 (which did not go well) .. or the Bug's 3rd birthday (which did) .. when I have a daily entry to link to (instead of monthly).

Back in December & January is when I was researching VPS servers, and didn't have time to convert the daily entries to blog entries...

.. after Lunarpages (you might recall) booted us off the server (end of November), and I was worried they were gonna turn off the lights and pull our plug.

But now we're all caught up. (Took me all day, tho. Tedious maximus.) Only the last 2 days don't have blog entries.

Blog entries are also better for search engines, since each page can indexed individually (with its own title).