Server Software Upgrade

[russellw]

Good evening

As noted in the announcement made today, we will be upgrading our version of vbulletin from the current 3.0.3 to 3.5.4 in the early hours of tomorrow morning. This is a substantial upgrade with 16 individual upgrades, 30 file edits, 68 template edits and numerous other minor changes.

This is an interim step on the way to 3.8.x and it requires upgrades to other components like the Technical portal, Warning system, Parts Database, DTC Database and our other custom modifications.

Although the upgrade has been extensively tested I would expect that there will be some issues after it has been completed and some things may not function correctly but these will be prioritised and resolved as quickly as possible. Your patience during that time would be appreciated.

The forum will be taken off-line at 12.15 a.m Tuesday morning with the aim of having it back operational by 7.00 a.m at the latest but any updates to that will be provided via the home page closure message.

Cheers
Russ

[cs123]

Good luck with the all-nighter.

[Geez Louise]

Good luck Russ. Thanks for all the hard work you have put in. Look forward to using the site after the upgrade

[Road Games]

Can't wait to meet you sir ...

[FGII-XR6]

thanks for all the work you are putting in for us good luck with it all

[05_ENFORCER]

There is nothing I can add to this thread other than, good onya Russ, AND (the behind the scene crew/s, you know who they are) and the dedicated members of this forum.
I'll be here until around 0100 your time so if you get in the **** or need something let me know asap


Great stuff

[Dave_Obsession]

Good luck guys!!

[Rosscco]

Hope it all goes well

[russellw]

Ok - most stuff seems to be working ok.

I'll start the list of things that need to be looked at later today:

1. Link to the Tech portal - I've hacked it so it works for now but it needs fixing. OPENJ

2. It's not an issue but I'll mention it here before anyone else does - the Gallery categories are now not part of the forum sections. They were never supposed to be in the old version but we could never work out why and they weren't really in the way. The upgrade seesm to have resolved that anomaly. CLOSED

Back in a few hours.

Cheers
Russ

[EASYBOSS]

Great stuff Russ

Working very well here in NZ

[XRGhia]

Love the new stuff Russ!

Certaintly looks better, and it has multi-quote too

[block58]

Originally Posted by xrghiawagon

Love the new stuff Russ!

Certaintly looks better, and it has multi-quote too

Thanks for pointing that out. There has been so many times I could have used a feature like that before.

[russellw]

The major changes between 3.0.3 and 3.5.8 are:

Here is the list of major changes between 3.0 and 3.5

* Product/Plugin system with over 550 'hook' locations strategically placed in the code. Allows modification and extension of vBulletin without physical alteration of the vBulletin PHP scripts.

* Inline moderation allows multiple threads or posts to be have moderation actions performed without a visit to the admin or moderator control panels

* Completely rewritten message editor with ability to instantly switch between standard and WYSIWYG modes

* Thread title editing on forumdisplay

* Thread opening and closing on forumdisplay

* Super-Quick Reply on showthread

* Inline post edit on showthread

* Username suggestion for PM recipients and search by user

* Template History & Comparison for easy tracking of changes

* Database-based thread and forum read marking

* MySQL Full Text Search (we will have this disabled initially)

* Calendar events support start/end times

* Custom avatar and profile picture resizing

* Each attachment image type can be individually set to generate thumbnails or not

* Each attachment image type can be individually set to open in a new window or not

* Language chooser in footer

* New [attach] bbcode tag for placing attachments inline with messages

* New 'Can View Thread Content' permission

* New 'Can Upload Animated GIF' permission

* Attachment upload via URL in addition to local upload

* Forum description field no longer limited to 250 characters

* Image verification for sendmessage to avoid spam issues

* Improved registration image verification to out-fox those pesky bots

* Ability to preview signature edits

* Calendar event email reminders

* Skype integration (something else we'll leave off for the moment)

In addition we have added a couple of hacks:

1. A small thank you hack for posts available via a small link at the top of each post.

2. New forms for the Sales Yard - these still need a little bit of work but the basic concept is there. They don't currently enforce image uploading but we'll work on that.

3. The multi-quote hack which is used via the small icon next to the Quote button at the bottom of each post. Basically you click on this icon for each post you want to multi-quote and then on the last post click the actual Quote button and all the selected posts are added as quotes to a new post.

4. A few other minor hacks to make admin functions simpler.

Cheers
Russ

[Scott]

Originally Posted by russellw

In addition we have added a couple of hacks:

1. A small thank you hack for posts available via a small link at the top of each post.

Hey Russ, I've noticed this around the forum today - what does it do? (beyond put a thumbs up in the post)

[NickyN]

When I logged on earlier this is what I noticed.

1. Clicking on last page of any thread took me to the first post and that's the only post seen. To read any responses from other forum users I had to look at the box above the first post where dates and times of every response was listed.

2. When I tried to create a thread to ask about this I was logged off.

I'm glad the forum is back to normal with the addition of multi-quotes which is a great addition..... hopefully what I encountered earlier was just a glitch?

Thanks to all for the hard work and upgrades, I'm sure there's more than multi-quotes that we'll start to notice and a lot of behind-the-scenes that we'll never know of.

edit: Beat me to posting by a minute. And yup, ^^^^^ major changes!

Reps have been gone for a bit now.... or is this just hidden?

[Geez Louise]

Originally Posted by NickyN

When I logged on earlier this is what I noticed.

1. Clicking on last page of any thread took me to the first post and that's the only post seen. To read any responses from other forum users I had to look at the box above the first post where dates and times of every response was listed.

Hi NickyN

I also had this issue and it was the mode that viewing the forum was set to.

If you change your viewing mode to Linear you will see the forum as normal without the little box ontop

To change the mode, it is at the top of the thread, right hand side - display modes.

It is also in your UserCP -> Edit Options -> Thread Display Options. You can change it to Linear - Oldest first, in there.

Cheers
Col

[NickyN]

Originally Posted by Geez Louise

Hi NickyN

I also had this issue and it was the mode that viewing the forum was set to.

If you change your viewing mode to Linear you will see the forum as normal without the little box ontop

To change the mode, it is at the top of the thread, right hand side - display modes.

It is also in your UserCP -> Edit Options -> Thread Display Options. You can change it to Linear - Oldest first, in there.

Cheers
Col

I just checked thread display options and it's already set to linear. I haven't changed anything in my userCP.

I haven't been able to log in for 10 hrs (since I last posted here). Figuring I'd try something different, I ticked the "remember me" box and was finally able to log in. I've never had to do this before.

But now that I'm here I'm not having the same problem viewing posts... maybe that's because I wasn't "really" logged on before? I mean, I knew I wasn't logged on b/c I never saw the welcome msg to me. However, I noticed my name as logged in on the bottom of the main page.

Thanks for your msg trying to help me out tho, I appreciate it.

[DJM83]

No moderator tags?
Edit its there but when looking in the Focus area i didnt see it.

[Riksta]

Awesome work

Thanks for all your time and effort Russ.

[flappist]

"quotation marks"

[flappist]

Originally Posted by flappist

"quotation marks"

t "quotation marks" f

[FGII-XR6]

sponsor banner links working but not opening in new window

[GavL]

Seems that threads are being ordered by latest reply in the sales yard intsead of order by created date.

And when you get a vBulletin Message, it is showing the code block instead of the user's name:

vBulletin Message

$bbuserinfo[username], you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

1.Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
2.If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account.
3.If you are trying to vote on a poll, you must be a member for at least 10 days before you can vote on polls.
4.If you are trying to post in the For Sale area, this area has a minimum post requirement before it can be used.

[russellw]

Originally Posted by GavL

Seems that threads are being ordered by latest reply in the sales yard intsead of order by created date.

And when you get a vBulletin Message, it is showing the code block instead of the user's name:

They are but that should be fixable. The error message must be form something old as in 3.5 $bbuserinfo[username] is replaced with $vbulletin->userinfo so I'll need to track down the template with that in and fix it!

Cheers
Russ