ADMINS... you guys really need to activate these new members

[TheLQ offline]

I agree with ccbtimewiz that a more heavy duty captcha with a custom list of questions would cut out 99.9% of the bots. And you complain that bots are getting past the blocks? Well thats probably because this is an ancient version of phpBB. The upgrade process might take 30 minutes at most, with most of that waiting for the upload to finish, the other checking for problems. Set a time when the admins can all be on at once to find bugs and fix problems quickly. Hell, even solicit help from us programmers that might be able to offer more information.

And you can never, NEVER stop spambots. One will always get through, and your screwed. Its just a fact of life.

Yes, we are aware that we are using an out-dated version of php. Could you all please stop bringing that up? Repetition won't get it fixed any faster. *sweatdrops*

I've said before on other threads that I am working on updating the php this forum runs on with Warton as neither myself nor any of the other Admins or Mods feel comfortable doing it by ourselves.

The forum will be updated eventually and we'll let everyone know ahead of time in case there is some expected downtime connected. Now can we please drop this whole "update the forum nao" thing?" I really hate to feel like a broken record explaining what is going on with forum updates over and over again so please stop making me do that. ^^; Thank you.

This is what you have been saying forever. PhpBB3 has been out for 3 years. Surely in that time Warton has had an hour that he could spend on this? I could understand your point if it had been a few months or even a year; but 3? Thats just a little long for something as easy as this.

[Mewberries151]

I agree with ccbtimewiz that a more heavy duty captcha with a custom list of questions would cut out 99.9% of the bots. And you complain that bots are getting past the blocks? Well thats probably because this is an ancient version of phpBB. The upgrade process might take 30 minutes at most, with most of that waiting for the upload to finish, the other checking for problems. Set a time when the admins can all be on at once to find bugs and fix problems quickly. Hell, even solicit help from us programmers that might be able to offer more information.

And you can never, NEVER stop spambots. One will always get through, and your screwed. Its just a fact of life.

Yes, we are aware that we are using an out-dated version of php. Could you all please stop bringing that up? Repetition won't get it fixed any faster. *sweatdrops*

I've said before on other threads that I am working on updating the php this forum runs on with Warton as neither myself nor any of the other Admins or Mods feel comfortable doing it by ourselves.

The forum will be updated eventually and we'll let everyone know ahead of time in case there is some expected downtime connected. Now can we please drop this whole "update the forum nao" thing?" I really hate to feel like a broken record explaining what is going on with forum updates over and over again so please stop making me do that. ^^; Thank you.

This is what you have been saying forever. PhpBB3 has been out for 3 years. Surely in that time Warton has had an hour that he could spend on this? I could understand your point if it had been a few months or even a year; but 3? Thats just a little long for something as easy as this.

Yes, but problems necessitating an upgrade didn't happen until late last year.

The php this forum runs on has indeed been "out-of-date" for three years, however the features on the new versions didn't warrant an upgrade when the old php was running just fine. There were also some problems involved in upgrading that would have led to possible membership loss, post loss, etc. that made upgrading not that great an idea.

However, with the recent text box, spam bot, and member permissions issues, an upgrade has become necessary to fix these problems. That happened back in...November I think of last year? So, no, it hasn't been that long, sorry. ^^;;

And you keep saying it will be "easy". I tell you it is not for someone like myself who has no clue how to do it safely nor really has the access to do so.

Warton has the know-how and the access, but he does also have a life outside of the Internet, and I'm not willing to overly pester him about getting it done at the expense of RL-complications. ...The problems aren't <i>that</i> severe anyway, just annoying. >_>;

[Jeremified offline]

I don't think Warton even comes around here anymore. His account and all his posts are deleted. Nhjm is MIA as well, seeing that I can't find him on IRC and his Twitter has been inactive for around 6 months.

EDIT: This was in response to Lord.Quackstar's post, not Mew's.

[Mewberries151]

I don't think Warton even comes around here anymore. His account and all his posts are deleted. Nhjm is MIA as well, seeing that I can't find him on IRC and his Twitter has been inactive for around 6 months.

EDIT: This was in response to Lord.Quackstar's post, not Mew's.

The account deletion was an...er...unfortunate occurence, that I'm not really at liberty to go into. ^^;

I have however, been in contact with him and I believe he is still in contact with Nhjm, so all is well on that end. ^^

...Now if only real life would stop getting in the way. ;

[TheLQ offline]

I don't think Warton even comes around here anymore. His account and all his posts are deleted. Nhjm is MIA as well, seeing that I can't find him on IRC and his Twitter has been inactive for around 6 months.

EDIT: This was in response to Lord.Quackstar's post, not Mew's.

The account deletion was an...er...unfortunate occurence, that I'm not really at liberty to go into. ^^;

I have however, been in contact with him and I believe he is still in contact with Nhjm, so all is well on that end. ^^

...Now if only real life would stop getting in the way. ;

I did not realize that thought of upgrading was not started until November, so sorry about that. Real life is now a valid issue.

Who actually owns this hosting account? I thought for a while it was LC (or whatever his name is now), but it seems that warton owns it.

With the upgrading, phpBB is a well designed, easy to use software, much more polished than other programs. If you do complete backups, you could actually test it yourself by backing up everything, upgrading (simple copy, paste, and run its config script), see if it works; and if it doesn't restore the backups and wait for someone that would be more comfortable doing it. That's the easiest option which, depending on your internet speed, might take 20 minutes to an hour. And if something goes horribly wrong, you have backups! Safe, fast, secure. Heck, some of the programmers here that aren't mods might be able to help you.

Note that all i am trying to do is provide help, not attack or badger you so much that i get the door.

[TheAppleFreak]

I don't think Warton even comes around here anymore. His account and all his posts are deleted. Nhjm is MIA as well, seeing that I can't find him on IRC and his Twitter has been inactive for around 6 months.

EDIT: This was in response to Lord.Quackstar's post, not Mew's.

The account deletion was an...er...unfortunate occurence, that I'm not really at liberty to go into. ^^;

I have however, been in contact with him and I believe he is still in contact with Nhjm, so all is well on that end. ^^

...Now if only real life would stop getting in the way. ;

I did not realize that thought of upgrading was not started until November, so sorry about that. Real life is now a valid issue.

Who actually owns this hosting account? I thought for a while it was LC (or whatever his name is now), but it seems that warton owns it.

With the upgrading, phpBB is a well designed, easy to use software, much more polished than other programs. If you do complete backups, you could actually test it yourself by backing up everything, upgrading (simple copy, paste, and run its config script), see if it works; and if it doesn't restore the backups and wait for someone that would be more comfortable doing it. That's the easiest option which, depending on your internet speed, might take 20 minutes to an hour. And if something goes horribly wrong, you have backups! Safe, fast, secure. Heck, some of the programmers here that aren't mods might be able to help you.

Note that all i am trying to do is provide help, not attack or badger you so much that i get the door.

As I posted in BKO, if we ever decide to do an upgrade, we might want to go with vBulletin. I'm a member of several other forums (ex. PokéCommunity and MyDellMini) and their vBulletin systems work like a charm. Also, there appears to be some nais converters, which could possibly prevent us from having to start a clean slate if we do make the conversion. Not only that, but I like the wide variety of skins available, and I think it might actually be easier to make new, customized skins than phpBB.

If you'd be willing to put the stake of over 1000 members in the hands of a 15 year old hacker, I'd be glad to help with any converting/upgrading process.

[TheLQ offline]

I don't think Warton even comes around here anymore. His account and all his posts are deleted. Nhjm is MIA as well, seeing that I can't find him on IRC and his Twitter has been inactive for around 6 months.

EDIT: This was in response to Lord.Quackstar's post, not Mew's.

The account deletion was an...er...unfortunate occurence, that I'm not really at liberty to go into. ^^;

I have however, been in contact with him and I believe he is still in contact with Nhjm, so all is well on that end. ^^

...Now if only real life would stop getting in the way. ;

I did not realize that thought of upgrading was not started until November, so sorry about that. Real life is now a valid issue.

Who actually owns this hosting account? I thought for a while it was LC (or whatever his name is now), but it seems that warton owns it.

With the upgrading, phpBB is a well designed, easy to use software, much more polished than other programs. If you do complete backups, you could actually test it yourself by backing up everything, upgrading (simple copy, paste, and run its config script), see if it works; and if it doesn't restore the backups and wait for someone that would be more comfortable doing it. That's the easiest option which, depending on your internet speed, might take 20 minutes to an hour. And if something goes horribly wrong, you have backups! Safe, fast, secure. Heck, some of the programmers here that aren't mods might be able to help you.

Note that all i am trying to do is provide help, not attack or badger you so much that i get the door.

As I posted in BKO, if we ever decide to do an upgrade, we might want to go with vBulletin. I'm a member of several other forums (ex. PokéCommunity and MyDellMini) and their vBulletin systems work like a charm. Also, there appears to be some nais converters, which could possibly prevent us from having to start a clean slate if we do make the conversion. Not only that, but I like the wide variety of skins available, and I think it might actually be easier to make new, customized skins than phpBB.

If you'd be willing to put the stake of over 1000 members in the hands of a 15 year old hacker, I'd be glad to help with any converting/upgrading process.

*cringes

Why on earth would someone want to buy vBulliten when phpBB does mostly the same thing? They share the same look, idea's, general points, almost everything. And do you really think someone is going to spend $195 (the cost of a vBulliten forum license) on a site that's probably loosing members faster than new ones come in? Honestly, i think there is fewer than 50 active members on this site.

vBulliten is good, but phpBB has its advantages. Its completely open source, so bugs can be fixed very easily. If you think that leads to more problems, vBulliten is closed source so the large programming population can't easily find bugs, and the bad guys can simply torrent it. phpBB has craptons of addons, mods, hacks, skins, etc; much bigger than vBullitens. While vBulliten might be slightly more polished than phpBB, its not enough to merit its cost.

</rant>

With providing help, mewberries still hasn't responded to my offer to help out. I think its because of trust issues, and the fact that actually doing it would require ftp and mysql (i assume) access. Thats a little too much power to hand to one of us.

[SearchingLyoko offline]

Well... I suggest we just stay the same.

The newbies idea rocks like a fat guy dancing in a Leota---what the gravy was I just about to say?????

I feel that MY85 doesn't like me.

That is all.

[Negi Springfield offline]

Hey, I have had a good bit of experience installing forums. Especially phpBB. I could probably walk you through the upgrade in chat. I don't know if you are looking for help or not, but if you want me to help, or walk you through it or anything, I would be more than happy to help.

[Tangent128 offline]

@Quackstar: I doubt AppleFreak was aware of the cost involved; most BBs are free, after all.

In general, changing any forum software (even phpbb2 to 3) is a bit of a dicey process. The database has to be translated correctly, and if the new forum uses a different markup (or even different BBcode tags), the posts will likely end up garbled.

If any upgrade is attempted, it would be best to first announce a maintenance window during which posts may be lost, make a full database backup at the beginning, make sure the backup is safe, then perform the upgrade process.

[SearchingLyoko offline]

I say we don't do it.

Btw, I plan on sending people to this site soon.

[Mewberries151]

@Quackstar: I doubt AppleFreak was aware of the cost involved; most BBs are free, after all.

In general, changing any forum software (even phpbb2 to 3) is a bit of a dicey process. The database has to be translated correctly, and if the new forum uses a different markup (or even different BBcode tags), the posts will likely end up garbled.

If any upgrade is attempted, it would be best to first announce a maintenance window during which posts may be lost, make a full database backup at the beginning, make sure the backup is safe, then perform the upgrade process.

That is precisely what I intend to do and why I will not be doing the upgrade myself (short of providing a secondary back-up of LF). ^^; I do not trust myself to do it correctly and do trust that Warton, NHJM, and LC will do a fine job.

I've already posted the reasons why switching to Vbulletin is out for those who know where to find it, but the reasons Lord Quackstar outlined (particularly the price) are the prime reasons why it is O-U-T, out. Sorry guys. (Also, @ Lord.Quackstar, no worries about the upgrade thing. Tangent explained my reasoning way better than I could anyway. ^^; )

I say we don't do it.

Btw, I plan on sending people to this site soon.

...

You do realize that part of the reason we're updating is to fix problems <b>you</b> and other members have brought our attention to, yes?

Or are you suddenly changing your mind as to whether or not the problems are a big enough deal? :\

[SearchingLyoko offline]

I was referring to the whole switch to these wierd new forum things.

Fixing the glitches I am all for.

[ccbtimewiz offline]

Forum conversion is not difficult at all.

It really depends on how you want to go about this. If you're going to change from phpBB2 to phpBB3-- you make a clone of the current database and run database conversion tools. You hook up the database to a test site (or localhost as I like to use), and then test out the forum. Ensure all posts and topics are fine, that all the members exist, etc.

At that point, you'd just swap the live one with the local one. I do a lot of conversions for forum software that this process takes about an hour or so, depending on the size of the forum. And trust me, LF is not a big forum.

All depends on what you want to do with the site. I've been trying to convince the entire TL crew to help update LF properly (and I even got LC far enough to run a local copy of LF using phpBB3, but a character-set issue occurred and he didn't bother to fix it).

If I may make a suggestion, you could always try using SMF-- see their features, and see one specific review comparing a phpBB experiance to SMF. Likewise using SMF's SSI you could update the homepage with some live forum content, or even configure the homepage to utilize the forum's database.

[Negi Springfield offline]

I wouldn't go with smf right now. They are having some er...problems.
ccbtimewiz, since you work alot with smf you probably know what I am referring to when I say recent problems.

[ccbtimewiz offline]

I am well aware of the problems, but that's irrelevant to the actual software. The software itself is fine.

The problems lie within the team structure, and a reforming process has started up, causing a lot of questions and concerns to rise.

[TheLQ offline]

SMF looks boring. And conversion from phpBB to any forum is much more risky then from phpBB2 to phpBB3. I personally hate SMF do to many of its design features. But its up to the admins to decide on what to choose.