Technology Upgrades Progress

[harp28]

Maybe if people would stop including every pic when they quote a post, the database would be a lot smaller. Seriously, it's not hard to edit out the pics. Unless it's a lot harder using a phone. I wouldn't know about that. Is there a 'quote text only' option available? That would be handy.

Just thought I'd get that in before I get smote (smited ? smitten?)

[bogey1]

Agreed. Even though I did it yesterday. But I agree. Especially the 11 pic posts.

[danp]

For those following along, great news: Sometimes a bigger hammer is in fact the best way to solve a problem.

I just did a test upgrade of a staging system using a database server with 32GB of RAM and 8 CPUs and the process that was taking 5 hours/step previously took about 5 minutes/step.

I am moving forward with further testing but hope to deploy a vB4 update within the next week.

Red Alert downgraded.

[danp]

OK everyone, I have largely completed a vBulletin 4 upgrade in my test environment and everything so far seems to be going just fine. As such I am starting to schedule the timing of the production system upgrade as follows:

1. Monday, May 25th: There will be a series of small downtimes as I prepare the current production environment for the upgrade.
2. Tuesday, May 26th: Beginning early in the morning the forum will be disabled. Based on test upgrades, I expect that the forum will be down/disabled for most of, if not the entire, day.
3. Wednesday, May 27th: The forum should be back up and fully functional on vBulletin 4.

What we gain:

1. An up-to-date system that is officially supported by vBulletin.
2. A mobile style for visitors on smaller devices.
3. A likely fix for the problems we've been having with PayPal/Subscriptions since upgrading to 3.8

What we lose:

1. Calendar/Event Discussion Threads: The plugin we used to do this is no longer supported and has no vB4 equivalent. I will look for a future replacement, but we can't hold off the upgrade just for this feature
2. The PAFOA-branded design. Because the forum is now mobile-compatible, we have to drop the PAFOA branding which is not. I hope to redesign the PAFOA website to also support mobile in the future and we can bring it back.

As far as I can tell, aside from some things moving around, all the same functionality we know and love is still there. I hope you'll all be patient as we work out the kinks of the upgrade so if you see anything not working right, please post in this thread once the upgrade is complete.

Thanks for everyone's patience.

[R L Suehr]

OK everyone, I have largely completed a vBulletin 4 upgrade in my test environment and everything so far seems to be going just fine. As such I am starting to schedule the timing of the production system upgrade as follows:

1. Monday, May 25th: There will be a series of small downtimes as I prepare the current production environment for the upgrade.
2. Tuesday, May 26th: Beginning early in the morning the forum will be disabled. Based on test upgrades, I expect that the forum will be down/disabled for most of, if not the entire, day.
3. Wednesday, May 27th: The forum should be back up and fully functional on vBulletin 4.

What we gain:

1. An up-to-date system that is officially supported by vBulletin.
2. A mobile style for visitors on smaller devices.
3. A likely fix for the problems we've been having with PayPal/Subscriptions since upgrading to 3.8

What we lose:

1. Calendar/Event Discussion Threads: The plugin we used to do this is no longer supported and has no vB4 equivalent. I will look for a future replacement, but we can't hold off the upgrade just for this feature
2. The PAFOA-branded design. Because the forum is now mobile-compatible, we have to drop the PAFOA branding which is not. I hope to redesign the PAFOA website to also support mobile in the future and we can bring it back.

As far as I can tell, aside from some things moving around, all the same functionality we know and love is still there. I hope you'll all be patient as we work out the kinks of the upgrade so if you see anything not working right, please post in this thread once the upgrade is complete.

Thanks for everyone's patience.

Will the threads in the events section be moved somewhere or will they be deleted. I have two group shoot threads going right now. If they are going to be deleted I need to back up some of the info in them so I can start new threads somewhere when the upgrade is completed.

[HiredGoon]

How many terabytes of server space does it take to hold all of streaker69's rep power???

[Noah_Zark]

How many terabytes of server space does it take to hold all of streaker69's rep power???

The servers operate on Streaker's rep power.

Noah

[Lee-online]

This site has come along way since Dan started it. Who would have ever thought it would become this big, have this amount of members and need this much work to keep it running.

I look forward to the vBulletin upgrades.

[danp]

Will the threads in the events section be moved somewhere or will they be deleted. I have two group shoot threads going right now. If they are going to be deleted I need to back up some of the info in them so I can start new threads somewhere when the upgrade is completed.

They will not be deleted or moved, and based on my testing you can still use the threads to discuss the event.

What will go away in the future is that threads will not be created for new events added to the calendar and there won't be links between the calendar events and the threads that were created in the past.

This is very unfortunate, but I was unable to find any working, reliable solution to this problem. We have to upgrade to vB4 because vB3 is no longer supported

[R L Suehr]

They will not be deleted or moved, and based on my testing you can still use the threads to discuss the event.

What will go away in the future is that threads will not be created for new events added to the calendar and there won't be links between the calendar events and the threads that were created in the past.

This is very unfortunate, but I was unable to find any working, reliable solution to this problem. We have to upgrade to vB4 because vB3 is no longer supported

Ok, not a problem then.

I just didn't want to loose who was coming and such. If I and others can still post in them, then there's no need to start from scratch again.

Thanks

Rob