How are you preparing to upgrade to 4.5?

[Jordan Miller]

Hey IPB fam,

I am super excited for the 4.5 update. Everything I've read (and seen in Alpha) looks and sounds awesome. However, I've also noticed I feel a little apprehensive surrounding the release. I realized what it was.

I'm nervous to upgrade because of the third-party plugins, applications and themes my forum depends on. I would hate to experience any major bugs or temporarily take the forum offline to fix things in the event something breaks. Anyone else feel the same?

Everything I have enabled in my forum (in my opinion) are features and functions that serve a purpose. Anything I don't use on a daily basis is disabled or has been deleted.

That leads me to my question: what are you guys doing to prepare for the update? Are you reaching out to plugin/application developers for updates? 

I'd love to hear from you guys regarding what the best method of practice is 😊 

Edited May 2, 2020 by breatheheavy

[Bluto]

Best method... wait until the devs release updates for 4.5.  Everyone is different.  Every developer is different.  Some devs will wait until 4.5 is released, some are working on that now.  It all depends.

Research each one of the plugins and look at the dev support threads and see what's up.  That's what I do.  Also, I'm sure there will be some stuff that will work just fine.

[Rhett]

If you are using third party items you will need to wait for each one to be updated for 4.5 or confirmed the current version is working with 4.5.  Since 4.5 hasn't been released at this point, nobody is working on updates just yet, once developers get their hands on beta versions they can start developing and testing for any needed changes. 

If you are not using any third party items, then once the final version is released, you can upgrade without issue!  

If you have a very large site or items of concern, and are self hosted, you can always do a test install to test your upgrade process and third party items before doing your live community if needed. 

The final golden rule, always do a backup of the database and file system before upgrades, things can sometimes go wrong, so it's always nice to have a quick restore as an option rather than freaking out if your community is troubled with an upgrade issue.

 

 

[SC36DC]

35 minutes ago, Bluto said:

Best method... wait until the devs release updates for 4.5.  Everyone is different.  Every developer is different.  Some devs will wait until 4.5 is released, some are working on that now.  It all depends.

As excited it would be to gain some of the new built in features that comes with the IPS 4.5 update, if your forum is running on 3rd party plugins/applications and is heavily dependant on them, then you basically will have no choice but to wait until each developer of those plugins/applications have provided an update that is compatible with 4.5. Even then, there still may be issues. So I will definitely be waiting to update to 4.5 until my theme and plugins/applications have all been updated. 

[Bluto]

ey?

Quote

Best method... wait until the devs release updates for 4.5.

 

[Fosters]

1. Create a staging/test instance with a copy of your current installation
2. While you said that you're using everything, once you've upgraded your test system to 4.5, just review your list of installed apps and plugins and see if you can just remove all the stuff which won't be necessary with 4.5 or if it contains some data which should be imported to 4.5 to not lose any important data. I have quite a huge list of apps and plugins which will become deprecated once IPS 4.5 is here and I've already started looking and planing the post 4.5 alpha phase, to provide ASAP upgrade routines for club pages, referrals, while other apps like my default guest language, just aren't worth the additional work to see if I'll be able to import the setting.. 
Also subscribe to all the files and support topics if you haven't already, to keep updated about the upgrade notices from the 3rd party devs;)

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is => Staging System is a must have, if you don't want to have your board down for days; and that each of such bigger IPS upgrades is also a great opportunity for housekeeping to remove some unused ballast 🙂

[SJ77]

Are we expecting that a lot of stuff Won’t be compatible?

[Adriano Faria]

1 hour ago, SJ77 said:

Are we expecting that a lot of stuff Won’t be compatible?

Honestly, we (3rd-party providers) simply don’t know yet. They always create a topic with dev changes so we know exactly what to do and which resources may be a problem but they just didn’t yet. Shouldn’t be so far.

But we don’t know yet. That’s the “status” today.

[Daniel F]

4 minutes ago, Adriano Faria said:

They always create a topic with dev changes so we know exactly what to do and which resources may be a problem but they just didn’t yet.

It's coming with the first available release. It would be probably pointless to release such a topic ( or any of the new already prepared new dev resources) yet because things still change.

[Adriano Faria]

2 minutes ago, Daniel F said:

It's coming with the first available release. It would be probably pointless to release such a topic ( or any of the new already prepared new dev resources) yet because things still change.

It can be handy as some like to discuss new features, best way to implement, etc., also we would know which resources should get more attention and start to work on them now to ensure it’s in compliance with all new marketplace rules, for example. 

But I guess first Beta shouldn’t be so far according to this:

Thank you.

[Daniel F]

On 5/2/2020 at 11:11 AM, Adriano Faria said:

and start to work on them now to ensure it’s in compliance with all new marketplace rules, for example.

A good start which can already be done, would be to ensure that existing MP rules are followed, for example that none of the core database table is changed.

I've picked 3 random files from https://invisioncommunity.com/profile/114025-adriano-faria/content/?type=downloads_file and well... while other MP devs started to implement this change months ago to their existing apps, 2 of the 3 random apps which were recently upgraded, were still adding columns to core_members.

[Adriano Faria]

Yes, I started to do it in the most selled ones as you already might know. Of course still there are a few out there, as I have almost 200! Will done. 😂

[Jordan Miller]

On 5/1/2020 at 8:35 PM, Bluto said:

Best method... wait until the devs release updates for 4.5.  Everyone is different.

This is what freaks me out 😅

I imagine it'll be a few weeks or months after 4.5 officially debuts before I can upgrade because of the third-party apps and plugins. 

On 5/1/2020 at 11:58 PM, Fosters said:

1. Create a staging/test instance with a copy of your current installation
2. While you said that you're using everything, once you've upgraded your test system to 4.5, just review your list of installed apps and plugins and see if you can just remove all the stuff which won't be necessary with 4.5 or if it contains some data which should be imported to 4.5 to not lose any important data. I have quite a huge list of apps and plugins which will become deprecated once IPS 4.5 is here and I've already started looking and planing the post 4.5 alpha phase, to provide ASAP upgrade routines for club pages, referrals, while other apps like my default guest language, just aren't worth the additional work to see if I'll be able to import the setting.. 
Also subscribe to all the files and support topics if you haven't already, to keep updated about the upgrade notices from the 3rd party devs;)

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is => Staging System is a must have, if you don't want to have your board down for days; and that each of such bigger IPS upgrades is also a great opportunity for housekeeping to remove some unused ballast 🙂

This is solid advice. 🙏 Thank you!!

[SC36DC]

1 hour ago, breatheheavy said:

This is what freaks me out 😅

I imagine it'll be a few weeks or months after 4.5 officially debuts before I can upgrade because of the third-party apps and plugins. 

Also don't forget, just because the update is out, does not mean we have to upgrade to it right away. I will probably wait until some of the minor tweak, bug fix updates get released, and for the plugins I use to all get updated for 4.5, then at that point, I will clone my site (Cloudways makes this extremely easy to do) and test things out on a test installation. Hopefully I can do it this way. 😕 Good luck with everything moving forward though, exciting times for sure. 4.5!!

[Adriano Faria]

1 minute ago, SC36DC said:

Also don't forget, just because the update is out, does not mean we have to upgrade to it right away. I will probably wait until some of the minor tweak, bug fix updates get released

That’s true. They usually release the .1 after a week or so with fixes. Probably worths to wait. 

[Bluto]

No need to get stressed, it'll all work out in the end.

Edited May 4, 2020 by Bluto

[VaBeach_Guy]

I just created my board in mid-April, well, my second board. Will there be significant changes in the new version from the most recent version? 

[Jordan Miller]

1 hour ago, VaBeach_Guy said:

I just created my board in mid-April, well, my second board. Will there be significant changes in the new version from the most recent version? 

[Joy Rex]

Another thing to do in the interim while waiting for any updates to your addons is review what addons you have any if you still need them, or if 4.5's functionality has replaced it (a good example is an addon I use that truncates nested quoted replies so it isn't as long - that's now built into 4.5 by default. I won't likely need that addon anymore.

[VaBeach_Guy]

1 hour ago, breatheheavy said:

My first board was started way back in 2003 and I did a ton of customizing on that, both with addons and the skin. It seemed like every few months, there was an upgrade and that would break a lot of my addons and my skin. After a few rounds of that, I just stopped upgrading. 

This new board has no addons, and the skin is customized, but only slightly. 

Is this new upgrade worth upgrading to, feature wise? I really don't want to get caught up in that vicious upgrade cycle again. 

[Jordan Miller]

1 hour ago, VaBeach_Guy said:

My first board was started way back in 2003 and I did a ton of customizing on that, both with addons and the skin. It seemed like every few months, there was an upgrade and that would break a lot of my addons and my skin. After a few rounds of that, I just stopped upgrading. 

This new board has no addons, and the skin is customized, but only slightly. 

Is this new upgrade worth upgrading to, feature wise? I really don't want to get caught up in that vicious upgrade cycle again. 

I had the exact same thing happened to me a number of years ago. I didn't upgrade, then paid the price big time when something broke. No one could help me because everything was outdated. 

My advice is definitely upgrade when you can (versus just not at all). 

[bfarber]

If you're not using third party addons and have minimal theme edits, upgrading to 4.5 shouldn't be too difficult for you.

[PoC2]

This what I do:

For major dot upgrades (e.g. 4.4.x=>4.5.0) I will back up the database and file structure first (as mentioned above). I would usually wait until 4.5.1 is out (to resolve any initial release niggles).

For minor upgrades (dot dot), I will just hit the upgrade button when it's out.

Having run forums for more than 20 years, I now run vanilla installations. It's a life-saver.

[Morrigan]

I'm a power user and I'm crazy (ask anyone)! I do nothing to prepare other than back up before I press the big and pretty "Upgrade" button. Then I spend the next 4 hours fixing my theme.

It's a wonderful life!

I rarely run into critical issues that keep my site down when I do any update and I tend to run betas ( @bfarber has found bugs in my database from 2 or three major point versions ago lol). I would say while I love all of my third party apps none are integral to keeping my site running consistently so disabling them while I wait for updates isn't a super big deal to me.

[SC36DC]

While all the new features of 4.5 are great, look incredible, I can't wait to start messing with them, there is no way I would even think of upgrading until ALL of my 3rd party apps/plugins have been updated to work with 4.5 ...