Invision Community 4: SEO, prepare for v5 and dormant account notifications By Matt Monday at 02:04 PM
acarlsson Posted February 7, 2021 Posted February 7, 2021 (I have searched the community but it's too hard to find the relevant information. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack.) Background: I am the manager for a non profit hobby site called "aslsweden.com". We have had IPB since 2003 at forum.aslsweden.com. IPB was transformed to Invision Community 2016, but I never had the time to upgrade. IPB 3.4 have worked good since, even though the plan have been to upgrade eventually... Three weeks ago my current data center got bankrupt, so I had to move my servers. They are currently in a temporary location, but now it's time to move on. I rent a VPS on Digital Ocean, installed with Plesk. The main site is moved, but the forum is not. I started to move the forum site today, but quickly realized that it won't work. Due to SSL stuff and other things the IPB site is not reachable at the moment. The old site is installed on a Mac Mini and I have access to it, but my knowledge is somewhat limited. Once in a time I managed to setup the server and sites etc, but I am very uncertain about many things. And I don't know how to create databases with SQL on the new server for example... Even if I am quite techy, Websites, Apache servers and web is not my expertise. I am willing to try though, and could probably fix this with a written guide. (I did that 2003 at least 😝 ) MIssion: Move our forum to the new Plesk server, with IPB3.4 or Invision Community. Thoughts: What is the best way to proceed? - Move the IPB3.4 installation to the new server? - Move the IPB3.4 installation and also upgrade it to Invision Community? - Throw away internet and go back to using paper and pencil? 😉 I have mailed Invision and inquired them about the price for a Community license, but if that is too much money I must have the option to stay put with the 3.4 solution. My current thought is to move the IPB3.4 to the new server (following some guides I found), and fix the upgrade later. But that may be stupid? Thoughts? Ideas? Comments? Thanks, Andreas
Joel R Posted February 7, 2021 Posted February 7, 2021 You can contact third party migration people like @ASTRAPI @Makoto or @DawPiwho can probably help you migrate and upgrade. acarlsson, ASTRAPI, DawPi and 1 other 2 2
Makoto Posted February 7, 2021 Posted February 7, 2021 I'd certainly be happy to help you migrate! You're more than welcome to send me a message here if you'd like to discuss pricing. acarlsson 1
CoffeeCake Posted February 7, 2021 Posted February 7, 2021 3 hours ago, acarlsson said: I have mailed Invision and inquired them about the price for a Community license, but if that is too much money I must have the option to stay put with the 3.4 solution. No need to wait! Pricing for IPS 4 is here: https://invisioncommunity.com/buy You might consider the IPS hosted cloud version (no more worrying about servers) or continue being self-hosted. Either way, upgrading is likely a good idea (not sure if you have a choice in the IPS cloud thing), however you may need to consider customisations and the like that will likely need to be redone.
acarlsson Posted February 8, 2021 Author Posted February 8, 2021 (edited) 15 hours ago, Paul E. said: No need to wait! Pricing for IPS 4 is here: https://invisioncommunity.com/buy You might consider the IPS hosted cloud version (no more worrying about servers) or continue being self-hosted. Either way, upgrading is likely a good idea (not sure if you have a choice in the IPS cloud thing), however you may need to consider customisations and the like that will likely need to be redone. Yes, I saw that. However, paying $45 per month for a hobby site is not doable. I paid that amount per year before, to host it on my own servers... 😬 Since I already have a license (albeit old), I was hoping that Invision could give me a good deal. Edited February 8, 2021 by acarlsson
Joel R Posted February 8, 2021 Posted February 8, 2021 6 hours ago, acarlsson said: Since I already have a license (albeit old), I was hoping that Invision could give me a good deal. If you have a self hosted license, you only need to pay renewal to get latest version. With that said, you will find that IPS is much aggressive through its company policies, systems, and reminders about renewals on the updated version 4.x. This is a company that wants its renewal money every six months.
acarlsson Posted February 9, 2021 Author Posted February 9, 2021 (edited) I have moved all files, and the database, to the new server. I get an error 500 when I visit, and this in the error log: AH01071: Got error 'PHP message: PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function set_magic_quotes_runtime() in /var/www/vhosts/aslsweden.com/forum.aslsweden.com/initdata.php:382\nStack trace:\n#0 /var/www/vhosts/aslsweden.com/forum.aslsweden.com/index.php(21): require_once()\n#1 {main}\n thrown in /var/www/vhosts/aslsweden.com/forum.aslsweden.com/initdata.php on line 382' Here is where my experience is lacking... 😞 The old server had PHP 5.2, now I'm at 7.4.15. Can that be the cause? Edit: I commented out the "set_magic_quotes", but I also have a lot of other errors. It's obviously something else. Edited February 9, 2021 by acarlsson
Nathan Explosion Posted February 9, 2021 Posted February 9, 2021 (edited) If your site is still at 3.4.x then you can't be using PHP 7.x at all. Use PHP 5.6 If you are then upgrading, you will need to flip PHP to 7.4 before you start the upgrade. Edited February 9, 2021 by Nathan Explosion acarlsson 1
acarlsson Posted February 9, 2021 Author Posted February 9, 2021 Thanks Nathan, Then the question is if I can upgrade to IPB4 without having the current site reachable? (I'm not particularly interested in downgrade just to upgrade 😝 )
Nathan Explosion Posted February 9, 2021 Posted February 9, 2021 You can upgrade whenever you want...but don't upgrade if the site isn't working.
CoffeeCake Posted February 9, 2021 Posted February 9, 2021 5 hours ago, acarlsson said: Then the question is if I can upgrade to IPB4 without having the current site reachable? (I'm not particularly interested in downgrade just to upgrade 😝 ) Yes, so long as you have a copy of your 3.x database available, you can upgrade to 4.x using a 7.x branch of PHP. The upgrader for 4.x expects the same prerequisites that 4.x does. You can use the IPS4 compatibility check tool to confirm your server is ready for the upgrade and has all necessary extensions, permissions, etc. Make sure you have a backup of your 3.x incase you need to restart or something goes wrong, you can start over.
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