So forums did not get nuked from orbit.
The upgrade went as well as could be expected on Thursday night, processing the gudzillion database objects through half a dozen release versions including the major schema change of 1.5.x to 2.0.x with only one easy-to-fix glitch - which of course happened as soon after I fell asleep at 2:15am and so we lost two hours.
Last night's install of the two UI.X Themehouse themes and configuration of the forum nodes went equally well (notwithstanding the usual matrix of unix folder permissions I had to navigate without resorting to chmoding the entire install base to 777*) - with the exception of Search, which is still not functioning @Sandy.
* FYI: for those of you who are not server geeks, this is a very, very bad thing to do for system security.
Before you all barrage me with reports of broken stuff, please observe the following notes;
1. There are now three themes (instead of the previous two).
The default Xenforo theme for XF2 is good enough to make available. The three themes are;
- Xenforo (this is the 'lightning bolt' theme)
- Light (system default)
- Dark
If you liked the Active Topics 'lightning bolt' icon on mobile devices, then the XenForo theme is the only theme that has it.
I liked it too so I'll be exploring how to implement that feature with a custom template for the other two themes in time. Changing themes is in the bottom left corner of every forum page - or via your preferences.
2. Forum Search is borked for the time being.
Back in 2017, we upgraded to the official XenForo enhanced search that runs on an AWS Elasticsearch instance, this is why the default site search has no meta index after 2017 (@Sandy and other geeks). I wasted two hours last night trying to re-initiate a connection to the AWS instance and gave up in order to move on. I'm unlikely to resolve this inside a few days as I won't be able to get back to the screen for a while (+1 has returned home from work conference). Unfortuantely I did not take note of the original configuration and so it is lost, and I have to work out the nuance of AWS IAM for elasticsearch all over again.
Use the site search on homepage if you want decent search results in the interim, but be mindful that it is basically a wrapper on Bing and has not access to Apre topic threads.
3. Emoji's are a bit of a mess.
Too many libraries after the upgrade. I've moved classic UBB to 2nd position in the list of libraries. The reason some of you are having issues is that you need to refresh the cache of hundreds of little icon files - and the first time you use it they need to all load in again, this can be glitchy on older mobile devices and tablets. I will clean this up in time, but it ain't no priority.
4. Media Embeds - Expansion pack is not yet installed.
Linked media embeds is limited to a handful of usual suspects such as Twitter & YouTube etc. The expansion pack is a third party app (@crackson) and I have not upgraded to the XF 2.0 release yet. Expect that sometime this week.
5. Miscellaneous Nuances and Features are missing
There's five years of countless custom UX and small detail things that all had to get tossed with the bathwater. It's going to take time to put it all back. Known knowns are;
Custom mashead navigation with global Ski items such as Cams is not yet rebuilt
Ads are missing for regular members (sadly still a necessity)
Chartbeat & Google analytics tags
Many system cache's need rebuilding - you will find glitches in historical posts everywhere.
Fee based Gold & Silver features & upgrade steps need reconcilling
Stripe payment gateway is missing
yada yada..
But why??
For those of you wondering why we are going through this pain for seemingly little gain, the answer is two-fold at heart.
a) Not updating underlying systems is a both a security risk and a path to obsolescence. The weatherzone forums were abandoned primarily because they hung on to the old UBB.Threads platform for many years too long and the upgrade path became unavailable and waaaaaaay too expensive for a corporate.
b) The leap to verion 2.0 will reduce the cost of running the joint by between $200-$350 US per month because I can ditch the coupled Dynamic Image Server that enabled mobile responsive images for the 100,000 odd uploaded images. Not only does it cost less, but the whole platform has improved performance. Win:Win as they say.
Feel free to complain and report bugs.
All that said, I can't fix what I don't know about and only 1000 pair of eyes will find all the glitches and bugs... so please, report away
The upgrade went as well as could be expected on Thursday night, processing the gudzillion database objects through half a dozen release versions including the major schema change of 1.5.x to 2.0.x with only one easy-to-fix glitch - which of course happened as soon after I fell asleep at 2:15am and so we lost two hours.
Last night's install of the two UI.X Themehouse themes and configuration of the forum nodes went equally well (notwithstanding the usual matrix of unix folder permissions I had to navigate without resorting to chmoding the entire install base to 777*) - with the exception of Search, which is still not functioning @Sandy.
* FYI: for those of you who are not server geeks, this is a very, very bad thing to do for system security.
Before you all barrage me with reports of broken stuff, please observe the following notes;
1. There are now three themes (instead of the previous two).
The default Xenforo theme for XF2 is good enough to make available. The three themes are;
- Xenforo (this is the 'lightning bolt' theme)
- Light (system default)
- Dark
If you liked the Active Topics 'lightning bolt' icon on mobile devices, then the XenForo theme is the only theme that has it.
I liked it too so I'll be exploring how to implement that feature with a custom template for the other two themes in time. Changing themes is in the bottom left corner of every forum page - or via your preferences.
2. Forum Search is borked for the time being.
Back in 2017, we upgraded to the official XenForo enhanced search that runs on an AWS Elasticsearch instance, this is why the default site search has no meta index after 2017 (@Sandy and other geeks). I wasted two hours last night trying to re-initiate a connection to the AWS instance and gave up in order to move on. I'm unlikely to resolve this inside a few days as I won't be able to get back to the screen for a while (+1 has returned home from work conference). Unfortuantely I did not take note of the original configuration and so it is lost, and I have to work out the nuance of AWS IAM for elasticsearch all over again.
Use the site search on homepage if you want decent search results in the interim, but be mindful that it is basically a wrapper on Bing and has not access to Apre topic threads.
3. Emoji's are a bit of a mess.
Too many libraries after the upgrade. I've moved classic UBB to 2nd position in the list of libraries. The reason some of you are having issues is that you need to refresh the cache of hundreds of little icon files - and the first time you use it they need to all load in again, this can be glitchy on older mobile devices and tablets. I will clean this up in time, but it ain't no priority.
4. Media Embeds - Expansion pack is not yet installed.
Linked media embeds is limited to a handful of usual suspects such as Twitter & YouTube etc. The expansion pack is a third party app (@crackson) and I have not upgraded to the XF 2.0 release yet. Expect that sometime this week.
5. Miscellaneous Nuances and Features are missing
There's five years of countless custom UX and small detail things that all had to get tossed with the bathwater. It's going to take time to put it all back. Known knowns are;
Custom mashead navigation with global Ski items such as Cams is not yet rebuilt
Ads are missing for regular members (sadly still a necessity)
Chartbeat & Google analytics tags
Many system cache's need rebuilding - you will find glitches in historical posts everywhere.
Fee based Gold & Silver features & upgrade steps need reconcilling
Stripe payment gateway is missing
yada yada..
But why??
For those of you wondering why we are going through this pain for seemingly little gain, the answer is two-fold at heart.
a) Not updating underlying systems is a both a security risk and a path to obsolescence. The weatherzone forums were abandoned primarily because they hung on to the old UBB.Threads platform for many years too long and the upgrade path became unavailable and waaaaaaay too expensive for a corporate.
b) The leap to verion 2.0 will reduce the cost of running the joint by between $200-$350 US per month because I can ditch the coupled Dynamic Image Server that enabled mobile responsive images for the 100,000 odd uploaded images. Not only does it cost less, but the whole platform has improved performance. Win:Win as they say.
Feel free to complain and report bugs.
All that said, I can't fix what I don't know about and only 1000 pair of eyes will find all the glitches and bugs... so please, report away
