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Breaking Skins with new Versions


Guest R0CKY

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Why is it that skins have to be broken with every new major version of IPB forums? This is extremely hard work on your customers.

On my forums I have 5 different skins that forum staff spent many many hours designing, bug fixing, and tweaking so that the visitors cold have a cool selection to choose from.

If I update to 2.2, yet again, I will lose all these really great designs. I see this as a major issue with IPB as it increases workload on a forum on a huge scale. Rather than a simple (and efficient) upgrade routine that takes 10 minutes, board admins are faced with weeks of work to redesign skins.

I have also noticed an apparent decline is 3rd party IPB skins sites, and the number of 3rd party skins available for download. This could be seen as a direct reaction to the repeated change in IPB skinning code, and we don't really want to see a decline in any aspect of IPB development.

If this is to continue I would really like to see IPB do some work on helping board Admins recover their existing skins with either an update tool or even manual instructions.

I hope this doesn't come across as a rant, I am trying to be constructive, but I do feel strongly that customers are being left out in the cold in this respect and the resources customers have to put onto skinning is becoming an overhead we could really do without.

Thanks.

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You are saying that their aren't a lot of skin for the new IPB you have to think, how long was IPB 2.1 out for? And how long has IPB 2.2 been out for?


I think that is part of it, but he is also saying how much time he spends on keeping his skins up to date and working.
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I'm afraid this is just the nature of how upgrades work. :blink: Just like when you upgrade to Vista, your third party software may not work properly. When you upgrade IPB, your third party skin may not work properly.

New javascript files are used that were not present in 2.1 - instantly, that breaks the skin. You need to load these javascript files, else portions of the site won't work. This isn't something we can change I'm afraid.

We released template difference reports, CSS difference reports, there is a differences tool in your ACP to compare changes in your skin from the default, there is an HTML converter for your custom skins - while skin updates are definitely a frustration a lot of customers share, unfortunately there is very very little room to improve how the skinning engine works with respect to upgrades. Suggestions ARE welcome.

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I'm afraid this is just the nature of how upgrades work. :blink:



Debatable point - an upgrade does not by it's nature break something else. It is the nature of your upgrades yes, but that is not the definition.

You can draw analogies or comparisons with other products, that's doesn't make it right, and for everyone you find, I can find one that doesn't break something. I've updated fraps countless times, and every time it upgrades with no issues. With the Vista analogy, you'll find the Microsoft have made efforts to ensure that Vista DOES work with many many third party applications, even if it means using compatibility mode.

New javascript files are used that were not present in 2.1 - instantly, that breaks the skin.



Breaking one thing for the advancement of another doesn't really help the end user.

This is a very real dilemma for customers, do we carry on paying for new licenses with our skins being destroyed on a regular basis, or do we settle for the stable version we have, and let our license lapse? When I see the work the staff on my site have put into the skins, weighing that up against having the most current version of the board is a tough call.

I would very much like to see IPB look into coming up with a more scalable skinning system, whether that is possible I don't know, but I do know I'd rather keep my skins than upgrade at the moment.
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With the Vista analogy, you'll find the Microsoft

have

made efforts to ensure that Vista DOES work with many many third party applications, even if it means using compatibility mode.



We try to make it as seemless as possible. We give you the option during the upgrade to revert customized templates (to ensure new needed code is added into your altered templates), and we also provide a list of all changed HTML and CSS when an upgrade is released.

Or course if your skin is missing new images, or new Javascript files, there is little that can be done about that.
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Rather than a simple (and efficient) upgrade routine that takes 10 minutes, board admins are faced with weeks of work to redesign skins.




When they released IPB2 they also released instructions for upgrading skins. You just need to make sure you do not revert your skins during the upgrade process.
The tools you need are here: http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?...t&p=1448864
Note that is from 2.1.7 to 2.0.0 - to go from there to 2.2.1 - you'll need to download the upgrade pack in your client area. If you did not come from 2.1.7 you'll need the upgrade packs from whatever version you were using to 2.1.7 - submit a ticket for those.

Provided that you follow the instructions provided in each upgrade pack before you upgrade your board every time, and no not revert your skins during the upgrade process - they should work fine.

But remember, your 2.1 skin doesn't contain the information that say the new portal needs, so unless you add that information to your skin, of course it isn't going to work.
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Thanks for the info Professor, I shall check that link out.

This business of "reverting" skins is always a stumbling block for me when upgrading. At that point in the upgrade process, you are faced with 4 options regarding skins. There is some explanatory text, but unfortunately it serves only to confuse me more.

For users with customised skins, when upgrading, whcih of the four options should they choose, is there an easy answer?

Thanks.

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I am not sure exactly what all options say - but the one I normally go for is something along the lines of 'revert IPB default skin ONLY'


Same here. After doing that, the skinner can use all the resources provided by IPS to update their skins. Some people will prefer to start from scratch, of course.
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I generally do not revert any customizations on a major upgrade. When you upgrade to 2.2 a new default skin is inserted, so you don't even need to revert changes to the default skin (and as such, you skip the entire step).

The problem is if you DON'T revert the changes, any new additions/changes to the template will not be reflected in the skin set(s) you don't revert.

For custom skins, you are better off not reverting the changes, and then using the provided difference reports, or running your own difference report in the ACP, to see what has changed and what you may need to add/remove/change in your custom skin.

It's not that we LIKE creating work for our users...if there was a way to completely retain custom skins and have no ill effects during the upgrade, we'd do it - however I do not know of any way this will be possible when updating to a new major version.

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I have to agree with ROCKY.

I own a forum that is of fairly large proportions and I've had a lot of issues with script kiddies taking shots at the site, so I try to keep it upgraded whenever a new upgrade comes out.

I don't have a lot of time for this though. Every time IPB comes out with an upgrade they require you to simply rewrite the files you have already, and this rebuild your skins. I have quite a few skins that are heavily modded and every time I upgrade I am forced to spend several hours rebuilding each one, reinstalling the mods, and then debugging any issues. Then I have to manually add the new features to those skins that are not working.

This is time consuming, frustrating, and causes downtime, which causes my inbox to pile up with E-Mails from members.

What I would love to see is a tool to make upgrading skins easy and painless. Obviously some mods won't work, thats understandable, but if just the skin itself didn't have to be remade each time, it would make life so much less painful.

Also, for all those minor upgrades where you have to replace like 5 files, I would love to be able to just get a difference report or instructions on how to mod the file. That way a simply upgrade doesn't entail reinstalling 5 different mods.

I'm not ranting, but it is very frustrating to go through this process every few months when an upgrade comes out and I've all but stopped upgrading my IPB because its just getting so tedious to do this same process for every little upgrade that comes out.

In conclusion, I think if IPB included some tools to make upgrading a little more pain free for webmasters, they would be going in the right direction.

Don't get me wrong, I like new features and things, but for me, spending 6 hours for an upgrade to add a few new fancy features is becoming tedious and not worth it anymore.

I would like to see those things happen in the future if possible. It just makes life easier.

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I have to agree with ROCKY.



I own a forum that is of fairly large proportions and I've had a lot of issues with script kiddies taking shots at the site, so I try to keep it upgraded whenever a new upgrade comes out.



I don't have a lot of time for this though. Every time IPB comes out with an upgrade they require you to simply rewrite the files you have already, and this rebuild your skins. I have quite a few skins that are heavily modded and every time I upgrade I am forced to spend several hours rebuilding each one, reinstalling the mods, and then debugging any issues. Then I have to manually add the new features to those skins that are not working.



This is time consuming, frustrating, and causes downtime, which causes my inbox to pile up with E-Mails from members.



What I would love to see is a tool to make upgrading skins easy and painless. Obviously some mods won't work, thats understandable, but if just the skin itself didn't have to be remade each time, it would make life so much less painful.



Also, for all those minor upgrades where you have to replace like 5 files, I would love to be able to just get a difference report or instructions on how to mod the file. That way a simply upgrade doesn't entail reinstalling 5 different mods.



I'm not ranting, but it is very frustrating to go through this process every few months when an upgrade comes out and I've all but stopped upgrading my IPB because its just getting so tedious to do this same process for every little upgrade that comes out.



In conclusion, I think if IPB included some tools to make upgrading a little more pain free for webmasters, they would be going in the right direction.



Don't get me wrong, I like new features and things, but for me, spending 6 hours for an upgrade to add a few new fancy features is becoming tedious and not worth it anymore.



I would like to see those things happen in the future if possible. It just makes life easier.




I'm Off topic

But is there not a way to modularize IPB
So you could fix one issue mostly security
without the entire board being replaced each time ??
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i think the single biggest issue with ipb is when skins go bad, you've kinda fixed it by making the acp skin separate but the amount of times i've had problems cus a skin can't load is ALOT. I'd like to see something like maybe revert to master skin if skin your trying fails to load, thinking about this i know its hard for trying to get an error back or seeing if there is a white page loaded but a solution would be a nice.

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I have to agree with ROCKY.



I own a forum that is of fairly large proportions and I've had a lot of issues with script kiddies taking shots at the site, so I try to keep it upgraded whenever a new upgrade comes out.



I don't have a lot of time for this though. Every time IPB comes out with an upgrade they require you to simply rewrite the files you have already, and this rebuild your skins. I have quite a few skins that are heavily modded and every time I upgrade I am forced to spend several hours rebuilding each one, reinstalling the mods, and then debugging any issues. Then I have to manually add the new features to those skins that are not working.



This is time consuming, frustrating, and causes downtime, which causes my inbox to pile up with E-Mails from members.



So.. Perhaps the upgrader should scan the changed files on the system, update them if they haven't been modified, and if it has been modified.. Provide a report saying "here's what changed in this file" so that you could manually go in and change it? Something like that?

Oh yeah.. That's what the skin upgrader already does, and everyone whines about that. Remember that the upgrade process DOES upgrade your skin... It upgrades the template bits you haven't changed automatically. But, rather than create a complete CF with your edits, it skips the modded bits and you can upgrade them via the differences report..

What I would love to see is a tool to make upgrading skins easy and painless. Obviously some mods won't work, thats understandable, but if just the skin itself didn't have to be remade each time, it would make life so much less painful.

You mean something like "This is your template bit.. This is what it should look like"? Silly me.. I thought that was called the difference report.

Now, the sarcasm aside.. Come up with an answer.. Think about it, and then throw how to implement your suggestion out there. This is not a situation where it's too difficult to do, it's a situation where you can't author something that basically needs AI to tell what some crackhead has done to their skin.

You talk about Windows upgrades not breaking third party apps.. Two things on that... First, ever see that big-ass list of programs that "May not work right" when upgrading to XP or Vista? Second.. I can see how this would be possible... IPS should take the Microsoft route.. You can't modify nothin'. If you can't modify it, then nothing would be lost in an upgrade.. Just like Microsoft.


Also, for all those minor upgrades where you have to replace like 5 files, I would love to be able to just get a difference report or instructions on how to mod the file. That way a simply upgrade doesn't entail reinstalling 5 different mods.



I used to provide these over at ipsbeyond.com, but there's no appreciation for it. I'm sure someone picked up where I left off and provides the manual updates... But look at 2.2.0 to 2.2.1.. That's a buttload of files to do manual instructions for.. go find yourself a compare program, keep track of edited files, and compare the modded file to the new file. It's what I do. Plus.. I wouldn't trust 75% of the owners of forums to successfully change a $ to a % sign in a file that only contained "$"... Lord have mercy, if someone told me they tried to patch their files to upgrade from 2.2.0 to 2.2.1... After I got done laughing at them... No, wait.. I'd NEVER stop laughing at them.


The long and short of this is that the people who bring this up just don't understand how the software works. Any software, really. If you did, you wouldn't bring the point up because you'd have realized that it canna be done. Of course, the other option is to stick with one skin and not add any new links, features, anything to it..

Personally, i'd love to see 90% of the web population of today manage to succesfully turn on a DOS machine.. Windows has made the world soft. Back in the good old DOS days where you had to know how to type something... Memorize hundreds of commands and their switches.. Know how to write a highly-technical .bat file. Install and run PCBoard.. Wildcat.. RBBS... When 'the internet' was BBSes that could have 1 person online at a time, unless someone was just effing rich and had 2 phone lines coming in dedicated to their BBS. When a Compaq Laptop weighed 20 pounds and had a built-in CRT.. When the color palette was 2.. Green and Black.
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Well I hate to break it to you, these aren't the day of DOS anymore and not everyone who runs a website has an unlimited supply of time to memorize 50 billion commands and codes.

Difference reports are nice, but what would be even nicer is if you could have a system that replaces unmodded files with newer versions for an upgrade and generates an individual difference report for the modded files so you can edit them yourself.

I'm sure a lot of forum owners were a little upset when they upgraded all their skins and mods to work with IPB 2.2.0, only to see 2.2.1 released shortly after.

For those of us who don't live on the internet, its time consuming and irritating to have to funnel several hours of time in for every stupid upgrade that comes out, or pay someone to do it.

For instance, everytime I upgrade I have to reinstall the mod "Who Was Online?", because the PHP files get upgraded and then when the templates call for functions in the PHP files, they aren't there.

If you look at the list of features IPB added to 2.2.0 and 2.2.1, how many of those features make upgrading easier? They are almost all eye candy features and more administrative tools, but there isnot enough attention givin to upgrading.

I have a friend who is still running 2.0.4 because he got sick of the tedious process involved with every upgrade.

As for Windows, you can't really compare. IF a program stops working it takes 5 minutes to uninstall it and download and install a newer version. It doesn't take 6 hours.

I've been using XP for 5 years and from my experience, 99% of upgrades don't cause any programs to stop working, and less than half require a reboot. So there is no comparison.

At any rate this topic is about making upgrading skin sets easier, not for ranting about how "90% of the internet population couldn't power up a DOS machine".

By the way, you forgot to cite your source on that fact. :)

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Ya'll have to realize that there are also people like me who are to complain if support for new web technologies is not worked in quickly enough. If you're in this for the money, you do need to know 50 million commands and codes and want more to be added so you can learn them before everyone else. Web technology is not static. It's constantly reinventing itself in order to be competitive. Php6 is going to break a lot of existing web aps, but the internationalization support is going to make it important to upgrade. That's just how the web software ecosystem works.

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...



Difference reports are nice, but what would be even nicer is if you could have a system that replaces unmodded files with newer versions for an upgrade and generates an individual difference report for the modded files so you can edit them yourself.



Do you mean like we did here? :) We try to do this when it's feasible. It is NOT feasible when upgrading from 2.1 to 2.2. But, as you can see, when upgrading from 2.2.0 to 2.2.1, you can manually patch your files from the diff reports provided. We have no way of knowing what files you've modified - so you either have to manually patch all files (or know yourself which files you can safely overwrite with the new default copies), or deal with reinstalling your mods.

I'm sure a lot of forum owners were a little upset when they upgraded all their skins and mods to work with IPB 2.2.0, only to see 2.2.1 released shortly after.



Well, most unfortunately, we're not going to stop releasing updates so the forum owners who've modified their boards won't have to apply the patches. ;) If you don't want to take the time to do this when an upgrade is released you have two options
  1. Don't upgrade
  2. Don't modify your board

If you look at the list of features IPB added to 2.2.0 and 2.2.1, how many of those features make upgrading easier? They are almost all eye candy features and more administrative tools, but there isnot enough attention givin to upgrading.



2.2.1 ONLY fixed bugs - no new features were added whatsoever.

For 2.2.0, it's a completely new version. I'm sorry that some older technologies (skins and mods) are no longer compatible with the new software, but, it is comparable to Windows (despite you saying it's not) - when you upgraded from Windows 98 to 2000 most applications were not compatible. When you upgraded from XP to Vista (or when you do upgrade) many applications won't run, but some will.

Likewise, many modifications won't work, but some will. Skins, however, mostly are not compatible because the entire skinning engine was overhauled to add more features (nested if/else statements, foreach loops, better php function support in if statements and so on) - so, while it's unfortunate you have to upgrade your skin for it to work on 2.2, we can't NOT add new features and funcitonality just because it will break some older skins.

It's the nature of upgrades - no one forced anyone to upgrade to 2.2 remember :)

I have a friend who is still running 2.0.4 because he got sick of the tedious process involved with every upgrade.

As for Windows, you can't really compare. IF a program stops working it takes 5 minutes to uninstall it and download and install a newer version. It doesn't take 6 hours.



I've been using XP for 5 years and from my experience, 99% of upgrades don't cause any programs to stop working, and less than half require a reboot. So there is no comparison.



Yes, however, when you install a program in Windows it doesn't modify Windows files. If you installed a component, it worked perfectly fine when upgrading from 2.2.0 to 2.2.1 - you have to compare apples to apples here.

Since Windows does NOT alow you to skin it at all basically, there is no comparison there. However, if it did allow you to skin it, I'd guarantee your XP skin wouldn't work on Vista. :thumbsup:


At any rate this topic is about making upgrading skin sets easier, not for ranting about how "90% of the internet population couldn't power up a DOS machine".



By the way, you forgot to cite your source on that fact. :)



I agree completely. I'm still waiting for suggestions on the technical aspects of HOW though. :) It's easy to say "make upgrading skins easier" when you don't have to explain how to do it. ;)
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Sorry for the phpBB comparisons in the following, but it's the only other forum system I know in-depth (and I'm not praising them....I bought IPB for a reason ;) )

It's kind of difficult to compare, but what happens in a phpBB upgrade where new features are present (say the Update checker) if you don't update your template is that the new functionality simply isn't displayed.

I think a major reason there are complaints about updating skins is because you have to either waste time with the process in IPB. C&Ping into the AdminCP to update the skins or edit them directly there, which is a pain that (I, at least) want to deal with as little as possible. phpBB made it easy (OPEN foo.php FIND $bar = 'xxxx'; REPLACE WITH $bar = 'yyyy';) so you just open up the file in an HTML editor and change what you need with it. Also for, say inserting the javascript would just have to put in {JAVASCRIPT} and then the tempate engine would parse that...if you need more javascript then the basic you're on your own, right?)

Now If I could wedge phpBB's template system into IPB I'd have a perfect (as far as software is concerned) piece of software.


Sorry if that didn't make sense at all :unsure: but perhaps I made a point somewhere?

In summary: I think it's the whole templating system is the problem. I'd rethink it for IPB 3. Maybe what we need is to generate a consensus on how it should work, and after we have that we can all help getting it implemented.

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I like that type of system. Isn't it possible to have an option in the upgrader to simply NOT display options in a new skin.

For instance, the new profile system. The skins on my forum are 780 pixels wide, so the profile is totaly distorted and looks like crap if I upgraded.

Is it not possible to have a checklist during the upgrade where you can uncheck features you don't wish to be added to certain skins?

I can think of some new features in IPB 2.2.x which would not work out all that well with my existing skin sets and would cause issues beond just rebuilding the skins around 2.2.x.

To back onthe Windows analogy, it would be like running a program that requires a high resolution with a monitor that doesn't support that resolution, so you could resize the window to fit the resolution.

Its that way with the profile feature. Sure I think its a cool feature, but not cool enough for me to remake all my skins to fit around it.

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@ACIDSTEALTH: To IPS's credit, you could just turn off the new Profile in the ACP, and then mess with the skin at your leisure. Oh, and I like your site, big fan of the anime series at least.

As far as it looking bad on fixed-width, I wonder if submitting that as a bug would do any good (I mean, I know it's not the default skin, but if it's fixed and looks like crap no matter what the skin, it still is a skin issue.) Just a thought.

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Unfortunately, the bug report would get marked working as intended. We designed it around our CSS - if you have a separate skin, you'll need to refactor the profile a little (maybe only use 2 columns, or something like that). You can only fit so much data in a screen, and if you shrink the width further, you can only fit less data. That's a separate discussion though.

As for the skinning engine....I'm still eager to hear ideas that would be possible to implement on a technical nature. :)

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How do other forums handle their skinning engines? Is it roughly the same process that IPB uses? I can't recall any of them myself that doesn't require similiar modifications. I kind of prefer the skinning of Wordpress, or pMachine/Expression Engine. You can have almost anyone design your site and just insert tokens or functions where the content will go. The content being labeled with classes or id's that you can skin as necessary.

It would be nice to be able to just edit a css file. A zen garden like approach.

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I agree that having to do skins in the web editor is pretty damn obnoxious. For the longest time I thought there had to be a way to do them in a regular text editor and it just wasn't documented. I'd much rather script emacs to do all the edits on all the skins at once.

Now that the ACP uses that ajax crap instead of of <textarea> none of the extensions for using external editors work. It's a pain in the ass.

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Now that the ACP uses that ajax crap instead of of <textarea> none of the extensions for using external editors work. It's a pain in the ass.


Don't you mean "It's a pain in the ass for those that choose to use an external editor"? They work just fine if you don't. I don't see how it's IPS's job to ensure their ACP stuff is accessible to whatever external editors people might choose to use. I don't understand why one would even want to use an external editor for this, the stuff in the ACP works, doesn't it?
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