The DescentBB upgrade

For questions, special requests, or any complaints concerning the Descent BB.

Moderators: Krom, Lothar, Richard Cranium, KoolBear

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KoolBear
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The DescentBB upgrade

Post by KoolBear »

I have been working on the new style/template... well actually that's not an entirely correct statement.

The style that the original DBB Theme was based on \"subBlack\" has not been updated to work with phpBB v3.0+, at least I cannot find where it has been.

So I am porting another theme to look similar to what we have all come to expect.

There's many many features that are in the newer version of phpBB that we will be switching over to. One of the best features for you the user is instead of a simple profile you will have your own control panel. I am sure you've seen these on other boards. I just wanted to highlight it here.
Image

I am currently working on the main theme and plan on port over the DBB Green theme that I currently use here instead of the tried and true default blue on black theme.
Image

If time permits I would be happy to setup 1 possibly two alternate color schemes based on the current DBB and install other themes you can look over some of them that are available here... http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewforum.php?f=73

Let's see how things go time wise, it's a considerable effort underway, Richard Cranium is upgrading the server, Krom will be posting over the data and I will handle the theme work.... Anyone have experience and want to assist in developing alternate color themes to compliment the \"blue on black\" that is the current DBB default?

Kindest Regards,
Mike

KB
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Post by Jeff250 »

That looks fine. I'm not very artistically picky. I also wouldn't want to see perfecting the theme stall any upgrade.

From your profile screen shot, it looks like this upgrade might finally settle two ongoing debates regarding signatures and profanity censoring. We could enable signatures globally and let people disable them in their profiles if they don't want to see them. Likewise, people could just swear in the clear, and people who don't want profanity censored could just disable the censorship in their profiles.
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Post by KoolBear »

Progress has been made, Richard has implemented the server upgrades.

Krom will be working on practice runs of the database merge.

I am wrapping up the DescentBB default theme. Everything is nearly complete, the view topic page is my focus right now.

If all goes well we may try to implement the upgrade this weekend.

Check back for more details as the weekend approaches.

KB
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Re:

Post by Richard Cranium »

KoolBear wrote:Progress has been made, Richard has implemented the server upgrades.
To be a bit more accurate I have been testing the upgrade process off line on another server for the PHP and PHPBB portions but not the Database. The longest portion of the upgrade is going to be the database migration and hopefully Krom will be able to give us some estimates on the amount of time after he runs through a few test runs on another off-line test server.

Once we start the actual upgrade we will need to take the DBB down until the upgrade is complete.

RC
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Post by KoolBear »

well that's what I meant ;) basically that we are doing it and progress is being made.
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Post by Foil »

I, for one, am pumped that this is happening. We owe many thank-yous to you guys.
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Post by Alter-Fox »

x2
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Post by Krom »

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Post by d3jake »

I feel like my moving from a 500MHz with a Voodoo2 to a 2.0GHz single core and a NVIDIA FX 5600 is happening all over again. Except this time it's a forum, and I'm not doing any of the work. :D
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Re:

Post by KoolBear »

d3jake wrote:I feel like my moving from a 500MHz with a Voodoo2 to a 2.0GHz single core and a NVIDIA FX 5600 is happening all over again. Except this time it's a forum, and I'm not doing any of the work. :D
LOL, I sure hope that's what we end up with. I know this script right now is nearly a dead horse, one that I feel we can't beat any longer!
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Post by Jeff250 »

Keep up the good work.
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Post by Richard Cranium »

Progress has been made on the upgrade. The first run has revieled some things (not too many) that need to be done before we do the live upgrade. Once we have everything scripted we will most likely do another test run on an offline replica of the site to double check thing.

So far it's looking good. Many thanks to Krom for working out any backend db issues and to KoolBear for designing the new frontend templetes!
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Post by Krom »

There was only one forum post that broke the converter and had to be fixed for everything to work, and the looser responsible for it was: Dakatsu. Congratulations, you earned a spot in the conversion hall of shame! ;) :P

(All the other fixes were unrelated to user posts.)
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Post by KoolBear »

We all owe Richard and Krom our gratitude.

Thank you for your efforts to date!

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Re:

Post by Richard Cranium »

Krom wrote:There was only one forum post that broke the converter and had to be fixed for everything to work, and the looser responsible for it was: Dakatsu. Congratulations, you earned a spot in the conversion hall of shame! ;) :P

(All the other fixes were unrelated to user posts.)
LOL, here we go! I can just see the hate PMs now.
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Post by woodchip »

Will the upgrade reduce the loading times which at times can be a minute or more. Thanks for the work you guys do.
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Post by Sergeant Thorne »

Awesome! Sure appreciate the time you guys are putting into this. Love that theme.

What's the deadline for coming up with an alternate theme?
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Post by Krom »

Sergeant Thorne wrote:Awesome! Sure appreciate the time you guys are putting into this. Love that theme.

What's the deadline for coming up with an alternate theme?
Make it fast; I'm pretty sure I've got everything set so we could do it as early as this weekend if everyone else is ready.

I've got one suggestion already: http://www.stsoftware.biz/phpbb30_style.hermes.html (blue is fine)
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Post by KoolBear »

Sergeant Thorne wrote:What's the deadline for coming up with an alternate theme?
Offer recommendations I will have a few to choose from. They can be added a anytime, so no hurry.

Krom,

I grabbed your theme it and will start working on it.

We could roll out the default theme... but man everyone will tell me about every little image that isn't right. I would love to but not sure my skin is thick enough ;) I'll try to see if I can wrap it up tomorrow though give me till noon. After that if you and Richard really want too ...

KB
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Post by Krom »

Thx KB, if you need any help just let me know. All you should need to do is unzip it into the styles directory and punch install on it in the admin control panel. (Although if you wanted to replace imageset/site_logo.gif with something else I wouldn't blame you since I did the same thing on my forum... :P)

I'm running yet another test conversion (the one I ran last night completed flawlessly :D).
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Re:

Post by Thenior »

woodchip wrote:Will the upgrade reduce the loading times which at times can be a minute or more. Thanks for the work you guys do.
It's pretty much instant for me? I'm on a spotty 1.5/Mb connection too.
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Post by Ryujin »

I was starting to worry about this board with the editing of posts timing out for weeks on end there.

I'm glad to see some some progress. Keep it up!
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Post by KoolBear »

Hy Ry, good to see you ol'friend!
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Post by Krom »

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Post by Isaac »

Not to go off topic, but the whole mysql database for descentbb.net is a little over a gig? (y/n)
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Post by Krom »

Yes, however SQL databases are horribly inefficient at space usage, compress it into a zip file and it is under 70 MB.
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Post by Jeff250 »

Krom, do you have an opinion on phpbb fulltext vs. MySQL fulltext search?
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Post by Krom »

Jeff250 wrote:Krom, do you have an opinion on phpbb fulltext vs. MySQL fulltext search?
Not available on MSSQL.
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Post by Richard Cranium »

More progress has been made with the DBB upgrade. We have not set an official date yet but it could be as early as this weekend, assuming Krom, KB, and I are all available at the same time AND KB has completed the theme packs.

RC
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Re:

Post by Jeff250 »

Krom wrote:
Jeff250 wrote:Krom, do you have an opinion on phpbb fulltext vs. MySQL fulltext search?
Not available on MSSQL.
Oh, for some reason I thought we were going with MySQL... probably Isaac's post. :P

phpBB3's fulltext search sounds a lot like what we already have in v2. Hopefully they fixed it since then.
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Post by Krom »

Jeff250 wrote:Oh, for some reason I thought we were going with MySQL... probably Isaac's post. :P

phpBB3's fulltext search sounds a lot like what we already have in v2. Hopefully they fixed it since then.
If it isn't fixed by the upgrade, I'm going to beat RC over the head with the database server till it is fixed. ;)
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Post by Richard Cranium »

Krom wrote:If it isn't fixed by the upgrade, I'm going to beat RC over the head with the database server till it is fixed. ;)
Ouch, that thing is heavy.
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Post by Richard Cranium »

OK... All of the DBB traffic is being hosted by the server with the updated install of PHP. It looks like things are working to me but I haven't tested everything and the current version of PHPBB we are running isn't fully supported with this version of PHP so there may be some issues.

Just let one of us know if you find something.

RC
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Post by Top Gun »

Sweet, meta redirection when you click on View Newest Post. That's fun.
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Post by KoolBear »

Top_Gun what is wrong? I ask because when the DBB went down last month I changed something @ godaddy, I wonder if it's something I did. or is it here on Richards end?

Everyone I need you to run amok on

http://www.6dofbb.net/forums/index.php it's a test board.


Register and set your theme to DescentBB and try out the themes, once you've test driven it drop me a message in the feedback forum so I can work on these items.

I have also installed some other themes there let me know if you like any ... these other themes will need a DescentBB logo but will work fine for now without it.

We might try to do this upgrade this weekend so please check it out and let me try to fix it before the weekend.

Krom,
I have another zip file for the test board too but Richard has me locked out of here again.

Richard,
Need to login Bro!
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Post by Richard Cranium »

KoolBear wrote:...but Rchard has me locked out of here again.

Richard,
Need to login Bro!
Oops. More fall out from the upgrade on the server side.
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Re:

Post by KoolBear »

Richard Cranium wrote:
KoolBear wrote:...but Rchard has me locked out of here again.

Richard,
Need to login Bro!
Oops. More fall out from the upgrade on the server side.
No big thing, I was going to clean up the main template here though :P

Looks like an upgrade or two ago lost some of the hacks that were in place, matter of fact is all the benefactor data still in the database?
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Post by Spidey »

Done.

I wanted to test the edit function, well you know why I didn't.
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Post by KoolBear »

well .........., speak up :)

DOH, cause I have to approve posts!!!!! Ok sorry Spidey let me see where to turn that off
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Re:

Post by Top Gun »

KoolBear wrote:Top_Gun what is wrong? I ask because when the DBB went down last month I changed something @ godaddy, I wonder if it's something I did. or is it here on Richards end?
No, there's nothing wrong per se. It's just that I now see a white page with the usual "If your browser doesn't support meta-redirect click here" message at the top for all of a half-second when I click on View Newest Post. I assumed it was just because of RC's PHP update.
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