Remove Upgrade Banner

[FZ]

I am being instructed in very BOLD red banner on every page of my site to upgrade to 4.4.0. 

I want to dismiss this notice but I can't and I am now annoyed. I will upgrade to 4.4.0 when I am ready to, not right now when I don't know what is going to break and then I have a thousand problems like my last upgrade. 

Happy to leave the upgrade banner in the ACP, but I don't want to see it on the front end. How can I get rid of it? 

(IPS, really?)

[Joel R]

The red security banner is non-dismissable and means that you've skipped some updates that include security updates.  

It only shows to administrators so as long as you can tolerate it, it won't impact the front end.  

[FZ]

I haven't missed any upgrades prior to this one (I learned my lesson in 3.4), but this front end banner is really very annoying. I can't believe it isn't dismissible. So now I must live with this until the theme designer confirms that his theme is compatible? And also all my other plugins and hooks, etc. 

 

[dragonfly411]

You can hide it with CSS 🙂 

Indeed very annoying, should pop-up once a day or so. We are also waiting on the theme update

[simonle]

34 minutes ago, dragonfly411 said:

You can hide it with CSS 🙂 

Yeah, I posted the CSS code earlier but I guess the IPS mods deleted it...

[Ramsesx]

52 minutes ago, dragonfly411 said:

Indeed very annoying, should pop-up once a day or so. We are also waiting on the theme update

Would be the best solution. 

 

4 hours ago, FZ said:

So now I must live with this until the theme designer confirms that his theme is compatible?

https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/427234-what-the/

 

[PoC2]

5 hours ago, Joel R said:

...means that you've skipped some updates that include security updates

Nope, not missed a single update of any kind – and still get the BIG RED (and non-dismissable) BANNER.

I too cannot upgrade this very day and have to wait a while.

The way it's implemented makes it more of a Bully Screen.

Not cool.

[FZ]

6 hours ago, simonle said:

Yeah, I posted the CSS code earlier but I guess the IPS mods deleted it...

Thank you for that. I have your message and CSS code in the email notification. Ha! IPS didn't think of that in their quest to control every aspect of our websites, did they? 😎

In my honest opinion, this is a terrible policy by IPS and I can't understand why they are so quick to annoy their customers. My last major upgrade saw me losing SparkPost API and that had a catastrophic effect on my community, hence my trepidation on upgrading early now. So far they have sent me an email about the upgrade, told me in the ACP and on every page of the site too. It's not necessary. I'll upgrade when I am satisfied that it is safe to do so.

[Kjell Iver Johansen]

I hate that banner myselve. This is the first time they force us to upgrade so early after a major realease.

The securitypatch could not as big a suprise for them.

They should have pushed that security patch out to the old version. That would have given us some more time to get apps and themes up to date..

[dragonfly411]

23 hours ago, simonle said:

Yeah, I posted the CSS code earlier but I guess the IPS mods deleted it...

They always do which is why I didn't share it 😞 

But it's very easy to find

[AutoItScript]

If you are silently deleting comments this often you know you are doing wrong by your customers. Our moderators alway leave a note to say why content is removed.

But anyway, open your theme. Click Edit HTML and CSS. Type "update" in the search. Do whatever comes to mind.

I was stuck on 4.2.x due to lack of testing time and usual life issues and this would have driven me INSANE.

[bfarber]

We do not promote, nor really want, clients to inform other clients how to "hide" security banners. In the event a major security issue comes up, it is imperative we be able to alert all of our users, and the upgrade banner is one way of doing so.

4.4.0 was not flagged as a security release. However, there were patches for 4.3.6 that were flagged as security patches, and subsequently if you were not on the very latest 4.3.6 patch, then the 4.4.0 upgrade available notice will be "red", because it also includes all previously released patches that you do not have installed. In other words, you must have missed a 4.3.6 patch if the banner for 4.4.0 is red.

[Joy Rex]

...and queue the inevitable angry customer who complains about not being notified more overtly about a security upgrade...🙄

[Kjell Iver Johansen]

2 hours ago, bfarber said:

4.4.0 was not flagged as a security release. However, there were patches for 4.3.6 that were flagged as security patches, and subsequently if you were not on the very latest 4.3.6 patch, then the 4.4.0 upgrade available notice will be "red", because it also includes all previously released patches that you do not have installed. In other words, you must have missed a 4.3.6 patch if the banner for 4.4.0 is red.

Good information there. I was not aware that there was a security patch available, and I was at the very latest version. Actually it would have been better to have the banner on 4.3.6 then, and not on 4.4..

I managed to upgrade my sites to 4.4 yesterday, so the banner is gone, The upgrades was perfect without any hickups but needen help from developer to get all things in place. 

[AlexJ]

And then their are some people like me - who will always wait for 2 or 3rd point release after major release for major bugs to get ironed out 🙂 Patiently awaiting 4.4.2  or 4.4.3. 

[PoC2]

On 2/28/2019 at 4:04 PM, bfarber said:

4.4.0 was not flagged as a security release. However, there were patches for 4.3.6 that were flagged as security patches, and subsequently if you were not on the very latest 4.3.6 patch, then the 4.4.0 upgrade available notice will be "red", because it also includes all previously released patches that you do not have installed.

This does not appear to make sense from my experience. I had all the latest patches on 4.3.6 and then the GIANT RED banner appeared with the release of 4.4.0. If there was a later security patch for 4.3.6 then my system certainly *did not flag it up at any time* before the 4.4.0 release. So does that mean that IPB is actually skipping/missing notifications of certain security patches?

 

[FZ]

The executive decisions taken by IPS management at times leave me baffled. They truly do. It's almost as if they seem determined at all costs to upset their paying customers as regularly as they can. 

[PoC2]

I do find IPB/IPS/Invision Community and their staff to be generally great. All these quips are relatively minor in comparison to some I've had with other software.

Who here remembers PHPNuke? 😁

[AndyF]

I did post a half sensible "this might just suit everyone" possible solution to this after giving it some thought, however it was (like this reply) in a P-2-P topic it was not 100% likely to be seen for sure.

22 minutes ago, PoC2 said:

Who here remembers PHPNuke? 😁

Only if I *have* to 😁

[Maksim]

Don't get the red banner but do get the regular upgrade banner.  Seeing it in Admin CP is fine, but seeing it on the front end, is quite annoying.

As others, generally wait until 1 or 2 versions after major upgrade and LOTS of testing before upgrading.... especially when you have plugins or mods that you are not sure will work and need other people with those mods to upgrade first and fix the MODS before the base software.

[AlexJ]

On 3/2/2019 at 3:59 PM, Maksim said:

Seeing it in Admin CP is fine, but seeing it on the front end, is quite annoying.

+1. I wish they would show on front end just once and rest in Admin CP. 

[FZ]

I managed to free up some time today to tackle this dreaded upgrade.

I didn't get very far. The first screen told me I had to upgrade my PHP version to 7.2 or higher. I am able to change the PHP version on my hosting cPanel, which I did. Doing that caused the entire website to stop working. So I changed it back to what it was (7.0) then I started getting more banners in ACP telling me that the display_errors parameter in PHP should be turned off. 

I went back into cPanel to make this change. What happened next is that all I see when trying to look at my site now is an "internal server error". 

This sort of thing is why I don't want to upgrade my site constantly. It sucks away time from me that I can't afford to give up. I am not a server admin or a software developer, nor do I run this website as a full time job. Why must I be caught up in this upgrade maelstrom every few months? 

I know where IPS is going with the way they are driving upgrades these days. They are steering us to use their cloud so that they are in complete control of both the software and the environment it runs on (i.e. host with us or get used to these annoyances). The problem with that option is that IPS is not charging a realistic price for their service, otherwise I would certainly consider use it. In fact I'd go so far as to say that their cloud service is ludicrously over-priced when compared to any other sort of dedicated or shared hosting service. In my case it is literally 10x the monthly cost of my 100GB hosting service. 

Obviously IPS are in business to make a profit but the nature of this undismissable upgrade banner, coupled with the fact that the upgrade is not a straight forward effort for the average person using self hosting, only serves to erode my confidence in where they are going. I came extremely close to walking away from the platform when the SparkPost API was dropped (for what many of us thought was not a compelling enough reason). Here I am again. 

[steve00]

42 minutes ago, FZ said:

I managed to free up some time today to tackle this dreaded upgrade.

I didn't get very far. The first screen told me I had to upgrade my PHP version to 7.2 or higher. I am able to change the PHP version on my hosting cPanel, which I did. Doing that caused the entire website to stop working. So I changed it back to what it was (7.0) then I started getting more banners in ACP telling me that the display_errors parameter in PHP should be turned off. 

I went back into cPanel to make this change. What happened next is that all I see when trying to look at my site now is an "internal server error". 

This sort of thing is why I don't want to upgrade my site constantly. It sucks away time from me that I can't afford to give up. I am not a server admin or a software developer, nor do I run this website as a full time job. Why must I be caught up in this upgrade maelstrom every few months? 

I know where IPS is going with the way they are driving upgrades these days. They are steering us to use their cloud so that they are in complete control of both the software and the environment it runs on (i.e. host with us or get used to these annoyances). The problem with that option is that IPS is not charging a realistic price for their service, otherwise I would certainly consider use it. In fact I'd go so far as to say that their cloud service is ludicrously over-priced when compared to any other sort of dedicated or shared hosting service. In my case it is literally 10x the monthly cost of my 100GB hosting service. 

Obviously IPS are in business to make a profit but the nature of this undismissable upgrade banner, coupled with the fact that the upgrade is not a straight forward effort for the average person using self hosting, only serves to erode my confidence in where they are going. I came extremely close to walking away from the platform when the SparkPost API was dropped (for what many of us thought was not a compelling enough reason). Here I am again. 

I assume you did not backup everything before trying the upgrade ?

If you did then replace the backup and all should be back how it was

[FZ]

IPS upgrader didn't actually do anything other than report the PHP version being wrong. So this isn't something that can be restored because basically the PHP configuration on the server has been changed and now we have to figure out what options cPanel changed that will allow the old version of the site to run again. I'm not happy...

[bfarber]

If you use the AdminCP autoupgrader, it should stop you from continuing if your environment does not meet the basic minimum requirements (which, by the way, is PHP 7.1 for the latest version, NOT PHP 7.2). Further, in our client area where you download the software, we have placed a notice that your hosting environment must be on PHP 7.1 to ensure those who manually download in order to update their site are aware as well.

I'm truly sorry that you ran into trouble attempting to upgrade, however if you are gong to self-host and manage your own server, then you need to be prepared to do so. I'm in no way trying to sound rude here (I know reading text online does not always convey intent well, so I just wanted to clarify). It's just the same as if you were going to handle your own vehicle maintenance instead of letting an auto shop do it, but aren't familiar with how to use a wrench (you can put me in this bucket fwiw). This is precisely why we offer a Community In The Cloud service - to take that burden off of the shoulders of those who don't wish to (or aren't capable of) dealing with these things.

 

The "disabled_functions" warning in the AdminCP is just a warning, a recommendation, not a requirement.