The Def Guide to Zzap!64

I've been reading the install docs for phpBB3 and it seems pretty straight forward to install and then convert over the old board to the new one and do a bit of .htaccess writing to redirect any links to threads in the old forum to the new one etc.

So I might actually try it tonight. Apart from a different layout etc. you shouldn't notice anything too different, but you most likely will need to log in again. Hope you all remember your passwords.... otherwise there's the password forgotten link.

I will be backing up the database and all files so if anything goes wrong, it's no problem to go back to this old version.

*puts on copper armour and walks out into thunderstorm*

This is going to go well...

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Well I was quite worried about the server transfer and that went surprising smoothly so let's hope this isn't the opposite

What's the worst that can happen? Mort's S&M photos being displayed publicly?

Well, there was a problem with a memory limit, which was solved and it seems everything converted over okay. Nice to see the avatars still here!

It'll take a while to get used to things and the latest messages bit in the front page of the site probably don't work any more and the review ZzapBack comments mightn't work but I'll get onto them bit by bit.

I'll have a look at what style templates are around as well since I'm not a big fan of this one.

If anybody notices anything weird / broken, please let me know.

Ta

I have a lot more info and control over users with this new version. Bit depressing when I see how many users haven't logged in, in a long time.

I can prune users by various criteria so I think I'm going to go ahead soon and delete all users who have posted 0 times and never visited the site since they registered (this would be spam sign ups for the most part or people who signed up and then forgot about it).

Maybe after that I'll delete users who never posted and haven't logged in for the past 5 years or so. It'll be interesting to see how many users are left after that

Although I'm not 100% confident of the stats since it says one particular user hasn't had any activity since 2008, yet their latest post was a couple of weeks ago...

Anyway, enough of messing with the new board, I'd better be off to bed.

I'll put back in the Zzap Rrap logo above for my next step.

Couldn't get used to the new style at all, so I have installed a new one that looks quite like the old one

Yuk!

/me hates phpbb3...

:)

Emm, what's this "warn user" button do that I see beside your name?

It had to be done, the years old version must have been fairly insecure at this stage and I also wanted to be able to do more to stop the spambots.

Yeah, I understand! ;)

It's a solid upgrade, with lots of new features and security additions/improvements; I just hate/hated having to 'relearn' where it was 'storing' everything. I could mod phpbb2 with my eyes shut, but phpbb3 took more work... grumble...

I had to do a lot of automated message creation etc. with it for a project in work a year or two ago so I know my way around it better now. Good to see proper validation on the pages as well.

Small update to the latest version today. Everything was reporting as present and correct and my mods (with the Zzap logo) are still here so that's good.