Update Has Broken CiC Site

[Bill Edwards]

Had a working site until nagged to point of frustration to upgrade and now I can't access my site or admin page 😞

Main access page:

Admin page:

My site was working very well for us and I was happy to stay on the previous version, but the nag screens turned into nagging emails. I just wish we could have stayed as we were. It's getting tedious now with too frequent upgrades. "Upgrade", seems to be mis-named. From working to inaccessible doesn't seem to be an "upgrade" 😞

[Smokey-Rev]

Do you have a backup of your forum? You should always back up your database & files before performing any upgrades. 

[Gary]

Hi @Bill Edwards,

I do apologise in advance that you are encountering these errors.

I have just created a ticket for you. One of our team members will be in touch with you shortly to sort this out.

[Marc]

It does need to be noted here that while I appreciate there is a notice about an upgrade, this is a notice showing only to yourself, and there is nothing forcing you to immediately update.

I have disabled all 3rd party items on your site, which has corrected the issue there. You have many items which are not currently up to date, and is likely what is causing you issues

[Bill Edwards]

1 hour ago, Marc Stridgen said:

It does need to be noted here that while I appreciate there is a notice about an upgrade, this is a notice showing only to yourself, and there is nothing forcing you to immediately update.

I have disabled all 3rd party items on your site, which has corrected the issue there. You have many items which are not currently up to date, and is likely what is causing you issues

 

There should be an option to permenantly hide the upgrade notice. I was happy with my site, the way it was running, it's peformance etc. It was doing what we needed it to do - now it isn't. That isn't progress. I ignored the message for over a week, then came an email urging me to upgrade. That is nagging! I went CiC because I wanted a working forum, this is just aggravation I don't want or need - now  the 3rd party party add-ons we need and our users expect are gone, either leading to a poorer forum or a load more work and expense, it's not what I need right now.

The upgrade process told me some add-ons were incompatible and would be disabled. At no point was I informed that upgrading would break the forum requiring intervention from Tech Support! At the last upgrade the process disabled our 'sort by first letter of topic' add-on, but the upgrade did finish. I consulted the author who said it WAS compatible, I reabled it without issue and it's worked since.

Sorry, but if this is to be a monthly occurance then CiC ISN'T the simple solution to our problems I wanted and I will need to seek a solution elsewhere 😞

[Marc]

Very sorry to hear you feel that way. I would however point out that we cannot know for certain if an upgrade will break your site. The notifications are actually optional to be received by email. Click the bell icon in the right of your admin CP, and deselect that email option. The dismissing of notices in the admin CP, you can do, but it will eventually reappear. The exception to this is security updates, which you cannot dismiss. I would point out however that only admin can see these.

CiC is a great solution, however unfortunately if you are looking for software which has no upgrades and can guarentee 3rd party items wont break it, then CiC is not something that is going to resolve that. 

[Randy Calvert]

NOTHING can guarantee it when you use third party resources. You’ve got a bunch of cooks in the kitchen. Eventually something is not going to turn out right. 

[Bill Edwards]

That may be so, but yesterday I had a fully functional, useful forum and today I do not and the only change is the IPS mandatory update 😞

[Jim M]

6 minutes ago, Bill Edwards said:

That may be so, but yesterday I had a fully functional, useful forum and today I do not and the only change is the IPS mandatory update 😞

That would be correct. If you do not update your third party add-ons, they can become incompatible thus cause errors which could take your community offline, unfortunately. If you have third party add-ons, you need to review these prior to upgrading the core platform. We try to take all precautions possible with warnings and such but ultimately, this is your responsibility before clicking the upgrade button to ensure it is all compatible.

[Smokey-Rev]

If your forum works when add-ons/plugins are disabled. I would go through one by one and re-enable each add-on and see which one is causing your site to break, then remove or update that add-on/add-ons accordingly.

[Bill Edwards]

18 minutes ago, Smokey-Rev said:

If your forum works when add-ons/plugins are disabled. I would go through one by one and re-enable each add-on and see which one is causing your site to break, then remove or update that add-on/add-ons accordingly.

 

I'm doing that, but I am already $30 and 2 hours down - time and money I can't afford and will have to re-evaluate if this is to be a monthly occurance

[Randy Calvert]

Normal updates don’t cause this many problems typically. However there are HUGE differences between PHP 7 and 8. 

PHP7 is no longer supported by PHP itself… as a result, IPS had to move to it to protect customers. The IPB software is fully compatible with PHP8. 

The third party resources you installed however were not. And that ultimately was your problem.  

Given that the normal monthly updates don’t all have that big of a chance, it should not be a regular occurrence. As a best practice however before applying updates… if moving between major versions such as 4.6 to 4.7 to in the future 4.8, you may want to confirm with whatever third party resource developers that you’re using that their resource is compatible with the latest version. 

[Marc]

It does need to be reitterated here, you press that button once you are ready. And one part of being ready, would be to check any 3rd party items to ensure they are compatible.

It is also worth noting, the issue isn't likely that you updated the software. The issue is more likely that you hadnt updated your 3rd party items, unfortunately.