zane eastwood
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Well as people may know the current board is phpBB(Version 2), I know people have been shooting around the idea to upgrade to the newest version of phpBB(Version 3). Yesterday I dove in to the matter a little bit and it seems like its going to be a bit of work. I am willing to go ahead in the process to keep testing with an older backup of the database to see what the issues are going to be. Currently as you can imagine, the database is very large. This has set one flag so far being that the forums will have to be shut down for a period of time since I am not going to be able to run it live. Which means I will have to close the forums, download the database, install it locally, convert it, re-upload it, load the newly converted database into the newest version of phpBB(3). This process may take an entire day… or longer. Which leaves us with 2 options, close the forums for a day or play time machine and just load the database with the most current backup and lose a day on the conversion to phpBB(3). If anyone has a better solution that they have had actually work I would love to hear it.
Also if we have any skinners in the community I’d love to see a contest for best Brickfilms phpBB3 Skin.
Thanks in advance
-Zane
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Errol
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Can you close the forums down and keep the chat open?
I think a day is fine if there is a heads up. The forums have been down for days and _NO_ heads up!
If there’s an announcement on the front page, no prob! 
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zane eastwood
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“Errol” wrote: Can you close the forums down and keep the chat open?
I think a day is fine if there is a heads up. The forums have been down for days and _NO_ heads up!
If there’s an announcement on the front page, no prob!
Unfortunately the chat would go down since its tied to the phpbb database.
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Aled Owen
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Zane, I have previously created a skin for Brickfilms.com on phpBB3 and I would be happy to try it again, so you can recruit me for that.
Upgrading would mean upgrading the site and chatroom too, this will take some time but if you recruit a bunch of people to help we could work on it while this version of the site (Version 2 it is at currently) is used and then close the site down for a day to make the real conversion.
phpBB3 comes with a convertor to upgrade phpBB2 to phpBB3, so that’s okay. The problem is with upgrading the site database, shouldn’t be too hard because there isn’t much to be changing (theoretically). The site would need to be changed, that would take some time, but you can hire people with knowledge of phpBB3 and phpBB2 to help with that.
For the day the site is making the conversion, you should just put an “Under Construction” sign up while the conversion is taking place. You could make a tempory IRC chat for the chatroom replacement.
-Aled
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Errol
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“zane eastwood” wrote: Unfortunately the chat would go down since its tied to the phpbb database.
No worries, really, because there hasn’t been too many people in there anyway.
If people have access to stuff, then they should be fine.
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zane eastwood
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“Aled Owen” wrote:
phpBB3 comes with a convertor to upgrade phpBB2 to phpBB3, so that’s okay. The problem is with upgrading the site database, shouldn’t be too hard because there isn’t much to be changing (theoretically). The site would need to be changed, that would take some time, but you can hire people with knowledge of phpBB3 and phpBB2 to help with that.
The converter crashes, because the database is too large.
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Errol
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I think a skin contest would be great!
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Aled Owen
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“zane eastwood” wrote: [quote="Aled Owen"]
phpBB3 comes with a convertor to upgrade phpBB2 to phpBB3, so that’s okay. The problem is with upgrading the site database, shouldn’t be too hard because there isn’t much to be changing (theoretically). The site would need to be changed, that would take some time, but you can hire people with knowledge of phpBB3 and phpBB2 to help with that.
The converter crashes, because the database is too large.[/quote]
Ah…
Should be a proper program for it.
-Aled
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badgerboy
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I’m all for this idea. Just have a temporary IRC chat open so we can check for updates on the progress (you would set the topics as the updates).
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Stevie Collins
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I say no way, I love phpBB2, please don’t upgrade it, I beg you, please keep it as phpBB2.
-Stevie Collins ~ Candidate for Minister of Film Contests
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badgerboy
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“StevieCollins” wrote: I say no way, I love phpBB2, please don’t upgrade it, I beg you, please keep it as phpBB2.
-Stevie Collins ~ Candidate for Minister of Film Contests
Please explain why you wouldn’t want to upgrade. It has everything phpBB2 has, only more.
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An Old Ore
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My vote: I say keep the current phpBB2 forum as it is and lock it totally so that it’s read-only and move it to something like brickfilms.com/forum_archive or something. There’s loads of good information in there and it’s worth keeping, but it’s a white whale – trying to keep it might be more effort than it’s worth.
Then (or before) instal the new phpBB3 (or vBulletin or whatever) forum and start with a blank slate. Keep the current memberlist (if possible) so that people don’t need to re-register and have everybodies names changing.
If it’s possible, I’d edit the old forum in order to pull good information out. Sections like the voice requests wouldn’t be needed, as would most of the Community and Feedback bits. The Post and Review should be kept, along with the technical support threads. Like I said, too much good stuff to just throw away, but too much dross to try and keep it all active.
I’m active on another site that used V2 and was forced to move to V3 prematurely to combat spammers and they are having loads of difficulty skinning the new version. Not sure how much that’d going to affect us here, but I’d be more in favour of either a completely new skin or a similar one based on the current theme but isn’t exactly the same.
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Aled Owen
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I’ve built a Brickfilms.com skin for phpBB3 before (deleted it though  ) and it took about a day to build. Shouldn’t be difficult.
-Aled
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Brickfield
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I’m worried about losing all of my posts, will they stay or will they go?
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