Announcement for upgrade of the forum software

[jeriddian]

Later tonight at around 1 AM, I am going to upgrade the forum software from version 3.6.8, patch 2 to the most recent upgrade 3.7.0. There shouldn't be any disturbance of service to the site, but if you happen to be on at that time things could get a little screwy-looking. So I would ask that people stay of the web site from 1 AM to 2 AM in order to let me do the upgrade and install a few more modifications in order to improve the site. Thanks for your cooperation and understanding.

[GhostWhiter]

I presume 1 AM to 2 AM Central Daylight Time?

[jeriddian]

I presume 1 AM to 2 AM Central Daylight Time?

That is correct. However, I've hit a snag with the dowload of the new software, so I will probably have to do this tomorrow night some time instead. Sorry about the delay.

[GhostWhiter]

I presume 1 AM to 2 AM Central Daylight Time?

That is correct. However, I've hit a snag with the dowload of the new software, so I will probably have to do this tomorrow night some time instead. Sorry about the delay.

No need to apologize. Anyone who takes a moment to think about it, would realize all of the work you must do in the background to keep this board running smoothly.

I'm the only one that keeps the wiki for my Linux group up to date (when I get a chance) and I know that can take half a night to update if I let it go for a few weeks. So I can imagine on a site as busy as this, your to-do list probably takes about an hour or so each night.

So let me say thank you jerridian for all of the work you do on behalf of all of us.

Good luck with the download & upgrade tonight. Don't forget to back up just in case.

[jeriddian]

I presume 1 AM to 2 AM Central Daylight Time?

That is correct. However, I've hit a snag with the dowload of the new software, so I will probably have to do this tomorrow night some time instead. Sorry about the delay.

No need to apologize. Anyone who takes a moment to think about it, would realize all of the work you must do in the background to keep this board running smoothly.

I'm the only one that keeps the wiki for my Linux group up to date (when I get a chance) and I know that can take half a night to update if I let it go for a few weeks. So I can imagine on a site as busy as this, your to-do list probably takes about an hour or so each night.

So let me say thank you jerridian for all of the work you do on behalf of all of us.

Good luck with the download & upgrade tonight. Don't forget to back up just in case.

Thank you, Ghostwhiter. I do appreciate your kind words very much. The snag I am hitting is the spell checker. The upgrade to 3.7 is likely going to wipe it out, which means I am going to have to put it back in. However, the way it was done before was haivng my partner do some heavy rewriting of the code to do it. I am looking into another spell checker first. Once I am sure I've got something that will work, that's when I'll do the upgrade. In addition, after the upgrade, I then have to upgrade the modifications I have on this board (the writers of those mods keep up with the versions of vbulletin pretty much and upgrade their mods accordingly, or at least most of them do.). Also I'll have a few new toys to put on the board thanks to improvements in the software. I'll keep everyone up to date as I go along. I expect it will actually be later this week before I can actually complete this process now. And yes, I will remember to back up.. Thanks.

[jeriddian]

I am now in Houston and we are goign through the process of upgrading the software. We have to upgrade the PHP and MySQL versions, but this has to be done through the server side, so we have to make a request tivket for them to do that. Once that is done (hopefully sometime later today), then we will proceed to upload the upgraded software for the forum. Be forewarned that when we do this. I will need to close the forum for about a couple of hours in order to complete the process. The upgrade cannot be done simultaenously with members accessing the forum. So if you log and find out the forum is closed, you will know this is the reason why. I can't tell you exactly when today, but be advised it will happen soon. It sholdn't take more than a hour or two to complete the process and get the forum back up online. Thanks for your patience, guys.

EDIT: At 4:50 PM to 5:00 PM CDT, I will shut the forum down temporarily. It should be offline for the next one to two hours.

[jeriddian]

Okay, everyone,

This took a little longer than I thought. It is now about 9 PM and I have completed the upgrade from Version 3.6.8 PL2 to 3.7.1 PL 1. I have managed to integrate most of the modifications I had in the past, so the forum should not look any different. This newer version has a reCAPCHA system which is a double visual human check which should discourage our spammers much more effectively now. Chances are they will never even get to register. Fortunately, the spell checker remains with us on the upgrade, so I will be investigating how to return that to the features. Everything else should be the same. If anyone sees anything funny on the forum that looks like a possible malfunction, just let me know and I will look into it and get it fixed. Thanks again for your patience.

[Ran Hakubi]

I did notice one thing. The members on-line and the new member thingy is now under the recent posted thingy.

[Rob]

The color palette for the text has been reset. I noticed this when I went to insert spoiler text into a post. Fortunately, the color codes are still in the post in General Announcements.

It's relatively minor, of course... just a slight inconvenience.

[Fireand'chutes77]

More serious - some of the smilies have changed. Can we get the old ones back?