Why we upgraded to Xenforo 2.0

HMF

Site Founder
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Joined
Sep 22, 2010
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I know you guys think I am stupid and/or crazy to upgrade before the official release. But there are reasons. The first is that, when a major version is released, coders of the addons stop making upgrades to the version 1 addons. The second and most important is that I need to see what is going to happen to the site and the addons before they release the stable version. I need to see what custom work we need, I need to learn the new version, I need to check for bugs and server errors, and I may need to arrange for more space on the server.

We needed a new hard drive on the server that holds 4TB with version 2. That has been done. We were down a short time at 2 am the other night (that is when I had them do it).

We needed a custom registration script for version 2. I had to see what features it has as standard before I tell him what we want. He is on it. It won't be ready until next week because he is going out of town.

I located a couple of bugs that XF fixed, and a couple of bugs that the coder of the groups addon has supposedly fixed.
There is still some nonsense with the groups addon. He is working on it. I will have an update to install this evening when I get home from work. Groups are down until then because they are causing some horrific errors on the site.

The video library guy is not doing anything to update the video library as far as I know. I am going to have to make other arrangements.

I removed chat- no one uses or likes it. What about a shoutbox? Would you guys use that? Same coder, so it will be good.

Anyway, I wanted to know all this, so I can get everything running again as it was (as close as possible), then go back to sleep.
 
Shoutbox? worth a try. I'm not into either one, but worth a try.
 
Nels I like the new version just fine. seems a bit quicker to me also. Relearning how to navigate in the new software doesn't seem too bad either. A " roadmap" of new features would be nice but I seem to be able to poke around and find what I need. All the forum staff working behind the scenes sure take a beating when things change but I look at it as a learning experience and not a burden. Thanks for all you do!
 
I have no idea if something like this is possible for the next time, but I work in the technology industry and
the worst systems to work on are those which you have to make changes "live". We have other systems where we
can setup a sandbox version of the production system and work through bugs/issues. Sometimes when necessary
we recruit members of the user community to try the sandbox system before we swap over. The other advantage
of this is that if something is really messed up, we can typically swap back easily.

Again, I have no idea if what you are working with allows for this possibility, just a suggestion.
 
Nels--

Thanks for all your efforts. We members (especially those of us with limited computer skills) really appreciate what you've done with this site.

Bill Burton
 
+1 on the sandbox idea. When I used to work in software development and architecture, we learned the hard way to always run a stable version of our code with strict no access rules - as in no one touches that puppy, ever. All the upgrades and versions, and particularily, testing, ran in a development environment, aka sandbox, until ready for the actual upgrade. Sometimes the sandbox was as simple as a directory running on one persons hard drive. Other times we had people accessing the dev version for on line from different parts of the globe.

I wonder if perhaps there might be interest from the membership to set up a testing team - a group of members willing to do testing on potential new releases? Help identify bugs and glitches etc - for example maybe could have identified the runaway delete function that effects iPad users in the new release. Just a thought...

Glenn
 
I can appreciate the difficulty of trying to build a sandbox. A forum like this has a large database, a combination of data and files. Nels would need a copy of a portion or all of the database to test with any new software.

The add-ons are not easy. Different companies with their own release dates as Nels mentioned.

Thanks to Nels for the hard work getting the version 2 running.
 
Nels
I have no problems with the new system, I think it seems to be fast and clean looking. The only items on my want list
are to again list the users home locations and their number of posts like the old system had, although I'm sure that you have
a lot more important things to do.
 
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