Forum Upgrade
Posted: 06 June 19 8:57 am
Our forum software was originally released by phpbb in May 2009. That means it's now 10 years old and very out of date. So much so that some functions are no longer working (e.g. URL and IMG tags).
Your development team have been looking for an upgrade path over the last 2 or 3 years but as we have customised the original software all of the various paths and methods we have tried have failed.
We have taken a strategic decision to proceed forward with no customisation of the forum software in order to upgrade to the latest forum software version. This means the appearance of the forum will change (rather dramatically), there will be no links back to your geocacher details and the 100, 500 and 1,000 rewards icons will no longer display.
It does mean, however, that we get improved user authentication, the ability to use the full software capability of the forum including all tags and the ability in the future to upgrade to newer versions with fewer upgrade issues which means a more maintainable system.
So far the development team have undertaken the following activities to prove the migration path to get the new software up and running.
- Test installation has been upgraded
- Requires major change to timezone handling due to changes in the new forum software
- Bugs in upgrade disallow Global Moderators to post without posts going to approval queue
- Forum data conversion software confuses migration of timezone offets to new timezones (all users to be encouraged to update their timezone)
- 5 stage internal conversion process to unload the GCA specific user data, drop the columns, do the migration, add the columns, add the data, correct timezones.
- New authentication process in the forum software changes GCA login (internal, no external issues) to require substantial amendments to hashing algorithms.
- Upgrade all date handling internally to handle new timezones.
- Allow internal switching between old and new forum software to allow for rollback.
- Forum DB now splits user data across multiple table, so internal GCA changes to cater for additional table joins / updates / inserts
- Implementation guide complete, to be reviewed
- Testing still in progress.
- Backup process to be created
Your development team will require an hour or two to complete the work and we'll let you know when that will be. We also need to co-ordinate the team across two states to ensure that the front end and back end developers are available at the same time for backup and restore in the event of a failure.
Thanks for your patience over the years with the poor performing software, but there is a light coming up over the horizon.
Your development team have been looking for an upgrade path over the last 2 or 3 years but as we have customised the original software all of the various paths and methods we have tried have failed.
We have taken a strategic decision to proceed forward with no customisation of the forum software in order to upgrade to the latest forum software version. This means the appearance of the forum will change (rather dramatically), there will be no links back to your geocacher details and the 100, 500 and 1,000 rewards icons will no longer display.
It does mean, however, that we get improved user authentication, the ability to use the full software capability of the forum including all tags and the ability in the future to upgrade to newer versions with fewer upgrade issues which means a more maintainable system.
So far the development team have undertaken the following activities to prove the migration path to get the new software up and running.
- Test installation has been upgraded
- Requires major change to timezone handling due to changes in the new forum software
- Bugs in upgrade disallow Global Moderators to post without posts going to approval queue
- Forum data conversion software confuses migration of timezone offets to new timezones (all users to be encouraged to update their timezone)
- 5 stage internal conversion process to unload the GCA specific user data, drop the columns, do the migration, add the columns, add the data, correct timezones.
- New authentication process in the forum software changes GCA login (internal, no external issues) to require substantial amendments to hashing algorithms.
- Upgrade all date handling internally to handle new timezones.
- Allow internal switching between old and new forum software to allow for rollback.
- Forum DB now splits user data across multiple table, so internal GCA changes to cater for additional table joins / updates / inserts
- Implementation guide complete, to be reviewed
- Testing still in progress.
- Backup process to be created
Your development team will require an hour or two to complete the work and we'll let you know when that will be. We also need to co-ordinate the team across two states to ensure that the front end and back end developers are available at the same time for backup and restore in the event of a failure.
Thanks for your patience over the years with the poor performing software, but there is a light coming up over the horizon.