New forum software and technical committee

[matt3o]

guys. we are just upgrading the software... you would probably not even notice.

[elecplus]

Argh! PLEASE do something with the tables! Never seen such a pain to fill in a table!
Uploading multiple pictures at a time would be nice too!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I do have to hand it to phpBB for making a complete toilet of a table syntax. Last time I think I just inserted a screenshot of Excel, as it was completely impossible to make any sense out of phpBB tables. I'd have thought that you'd be able to do something similar to the list syntax, but with tags for "begin row" and "begin cell" instead of "begin list item". Tables aren't easy no matter what (MediaWiki table syntax is pretty hard to follow for all its supposed simplicity) but a list-like syntax should at least make very simple tables fairly painless.

[citrojohn]

Hm. I just looked at tables for the first time. They are rather impenetrable, particularly if you just assume something simple will work... and haven't found the generator. What it needs is to assume some default values if the poster hasn't provided them. Really I (or any other HTML semi-literate who wanders along) ought to be able to do a simple table with just

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[table]
[tr][td]Cell1[/td][td]Cell2[/td][td]Cell3[/td][/tr]
[tr][td]A fourth cell[/td][td]Guess what[/td][td]And again[/td][/tr]
[/table]

I now understand why 7bit goes into monospace to do tables. Apart from aesthetic preference, of course.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

The code isn't too bad in theory (it's just a rip-off of HTML), but it's incredibly fussy. You're not allowed one iota of whitespace, and it doesn't take too much data before the no-whitespace requirement becomes unmanageable, so much so that you can't even figure out where this bad whitespace even is, and you want to throw the whole computer out the window. Probably one of Satan's side projects when there weren't enough newcomers around.

HTML of course allows whitespace anywhere and sort-of ignores it, but that causes a load of weird problems of its own if you want readable HTML and functional presentation. Even with template-driven/code-generated HTML I still expect it to be presentable and readable. (I'd like a CSS option to turn off the useless whitespace as required.)

Lots of trade-offs with tables!

[7bit]

Argh! PLEASE do something with the tables! Never seen such a pain to fill in a table!
Uploading multiple pictures at a time would be nice too!

Code: Select all

tables are super easy with [code]

[/code]

[HuBandiT]

Other than that, when I browse the marketplace, sometimes I wish there was a way to catalogue buy%ell offers, so that we can put in permanent offers/interests to buy/sell (rare) X, and be automatically notified when a matching offer for X is posted even years down the road. (And I'm not saying this would be easy, or would make sense in the world of people trying to move stuff fast.)

this would fucking awesome!

if there is genuine interest, please open up a topic for it at the proper place, and let's slowly percolate ideas.

[matt3o]

is operation "forum update" failed already? Where is my technical committee?!

[Belfong]

I really like Discourse but it does take some getting used to. It’s modern and works well on mobile. I’m not sure how easy it is to migrate though.

[pr0ximity]

In an effort to get this moving, what version of phpBB are we on currently? Are the DT-specific customizations available anywhere? A first step to upgrading would probably be running the latest locally with the DT plugins and styling, I'd imagine.

EDIT: Ahh I see in the previous page, 3.0.X is the current version. Is there an easy way for us to grab the custom plugins or whatever else is DT-specific to get it up and running locally and try a migration there?

EDIT EDIT: Here's a listing of 3.0.X tarballs: https://download.phpbb.com/pub/release/3.0/ not sure what particular patch version we're on, and apparently you can't find out without administrator rights.

It would also seem there are automatic patches between versions. If we're on 3.0.14, there is a premade patch to go from 3.0.14 to 3.2.latest. That seems like a worthwhile approach to explore, rather than attempting the earlier-mentioned manual diffing to create a patch ourselves:

https://www.phpbb.com/support/docs/en/3 ... /upgrade3/

[pr0ximity]

The upgrade docs from 3.0 -> 3.2 state: "phpBB 3.2 is not compatible with 3.0 and most of the previous files will need to be removed prior to upgrading."

So it sounds like we would basically need to re-write all of the styling and any custom plugins for 3.2. Styling doesn't sound very scary, so I suppose it will depend on what custom plugins we have and how many there are.

[matt3o]

we were able to convert the database and put a default theme over it, but we have to disable all the changes we made to the current version. Also we've found some issues in the formatting here and there and I wasn't able to pin point the problem.

The technical committee has been pretty lazy honestly, to that adds problem in my personal life and the upgrade basically stalled.... but it's still my top priority.

[pr0ximity]

Cool, glad to hear there's been progress. Is there a test environment up somewhere with the converted DB and default theme? I'd be happy to help trying to get any of the DT functionality or themeing ported over.

[chuckdee]

http://staging.deskthority.org/index.php

[JBert]

http://staging.deskthority.org/index.php

Heh, it looks like it is time to demolish that forum and pave over it with a new import / install, it seems to be infested with spammers.

[matt3o]

OKAY!

Let's try this again.

I'll be working on the server update on and off today. I believe the previous approach was wrong.

The first thing to do is to clone 1:1 what we have now, disable all plugins we have and only then make the upgrade.

So today I'll try to do that. If anyone is around I'm also on discord ( https://discord.gg/3fbCdA ).

I'll keep you posted

[matt3o]

Documenting everything I'm doing:

1) rsync from current server to staging (**** for security reasons). "w" is the wiki and we don't want that.

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rsync -zrp --exclude 'w' -e 'ssh -p****' ****@server.deskthority.net:/****/www/ /****/www/

2) get the latest database backup, change the db name and push it to the new server

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sed -i 's/old_db/staging_db/g' backup.sql
mysql -u user -p staging_db < backup.sql

3) access to myphpadmin and change any occurrence of `deskthority.net` with `staging.deskthority.org` in the phpbb_config table

4) download a copy of php3.0.13-PL1 from https://download.phpbb.com/pub/release/ ... 13-PL1.zip

5) extract the base prosilver style and copy it to the styles directory. from the ADM panel make it the default style and deactivate all the others.

At this point you should have a pretty vanilla working phpbb forum at staging.deskthority.net. For some reasons though the .XMOD tab in the admin console is not visible.

[matt3o]

Next to remove all extensions:

6) In the admin console: system > administration > module management > [disable all mods] and clear cache

7) Go to system > general tasks > language packs > [delete everything except British english]

8) check phpbb_ext and phpbb_modules tables for left overs

Time to upgrade:

9) download latest phpbb, unzip and delete config.php file and images/ files/ and store/ directories

10) move to the installation directory and delete everything apart from the above files (beware of the additional directories like the wiki and the stats)

11) move everything from the new forum directory to the installation directory

12) go to staging.deskthority.org/install and do an upgrade

If all went well you should have a working upgraded phpbb.

You can check it at staging.deskthority.org
user: dtstaging
password hint: My name is _______. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
(no spaces)

Contrary to our previous install everything seems to be working now.

[matt3o]

So it seems we have to run some regex on the database to zero all the mods that have been made in the past. I'll keep you posted.

Also, our beloved duck master found a nice theme we could use as a scaffolding for the new forum https://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/styl ... e/demo/3.2

[matt3o]

Let's move to fixing the quotes.

13)

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update phpbb_posts set post_text = regexp_replace(post_text, '[[](quote=("|")[^&"]*("|"));p=([0-9]*)(:[a-z0-9A-Z]*)?[]]', '[\\1 post_id=\\4\\5]') where post_id > 169635;

That is what I came out with very quickly. It should convert from our own quote system to phpbb3.2's. I start from id 169635 because I believe that's where webwit updated the software.

14) Now it's time to reparse all bbcodes

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bin/phpbbcli.php reparser:reparse

Now. For some reason some of the quotes didn't actually render properly and at the moment I have to clue why that happens.

I've also updated the theme to the one we found. It looks half decent but it surely need some updates.

PLEASE check and report! (details at point #12)

[matt3o]

not one single feedback? :/

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Welcome to the Club.

[kbdfr]

not one single feedback? :/

[…] You can check it at staging.deskthority.org
user: dtstaging
password hint: My name is _______. You killed my father. Prepare to die. […]

If only you had chosen such a password that the password hint would be e.g.
"quousque tandem abutere, ______" or "Delenda est ________",
I would have been able to access the site.

[matt3o]

really?

Spoiler:

Screenshot_20170831_094807.png (127.99 KiB) Viewed 11536 times

[kbdfr]

I didn't want to do a Google search with such keywords like "kill" and "die",
which the algorithm would understand as an expression of interest,
thus exerting a corresponding influence on the results of future searches.

Spoiler:

To be honest, I wanted to again criticize the ubiquitous use of war, violence and similar references.

[seebart]

I didn't want to do a Google search with such keywords like "kill" and "die", which the algorithm would understand as an expression of interest, thus exerting a corresponding influence on the results of future searches.

105.jpg (95.07 KiB) Viewed 11513 times

[matt3o]

I built a script to fix the not-parsed "quote" bbcode. All needed to do is to run it as the very last step.

Now I guess we need to fix the theme a bit and reintroduce the "spy" and whatever is needed.

Honestly, we end up with a pretty messy database... but what could you do?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

All I will say is, don't bring back the abominable bump hammer mod. It seems to permanently clobber the timestamp on the most recent bug and whoever came up with that abortion should be shot. And then hanged. And shot again.

[matt3o]

both webwit and I are pretty busy these days so things are proceeding slowly. Also the technical committee bailed on us so we are alone.

sooner or later it will happen. be patient.

[chuckdee]

- recreate all the current functionalities on the new platform

What mods are currently used, and are they supported on the new version of phpbb? Has that been checked?