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Updating a neglected IPB forum

olyclimber

By olyclimber
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olyclimber Enthusiast

olyclimber

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Hi there,  I'm working on a long neglected community forum setup and I have some questions. I'm getting up to speed on a few thing, though I have done a lot of configuration of our install,  our other guy (who is out of pocket at the moment) did a lot of this work.    Here are my questions:

1.  Does our license include the ability to set up a test instance of our forum software so I can test an upgrade?  Is there anything I need to do or configure to make that work?  So basically (at least for a short while, but preferably ongoing, have a dev and a prod forum to test changes.

2.  Our board is still on 4.2.9 (like I said, neglected).  I already had the custom app we use updated so it will support 4.7.  But my question is this:  are there significant changes or road bumps you guys are aware of for making such a big immediate jump in versions?  I'm also considering just backing up the whole thing and running the upgrade and restoring from backup if I run into issues, but obviously having a long term dev environment would be preferred.

3. i'm forgetting my third question! lol.  So I have more questions, but the above is a good start.

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Randy Calvert Grand Master

Randy Calvert

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4 minutes ago, olyclimber said:

1.  Does our license include the ability to set up a test instance of our forum software so I can test an upgrade?  Is there anything I need to do or configure to make that work?  So basically (at least for a short while, but preferably ongoing, have a dev and a prod forum to test changes.

Yes.  See:

 

5 minutes ago, olyclimber said:

2.  Our board is still on 4.2.9 (like I said, neglected).  I already had the custom app we use updated so it will support 4.7.  But my question is this:  are there significant changes or road bumps you guys are aware of for making such a big immediate jump in versions?  I'm also considering just backing up the whole thing and running the upgrade and restoring from backup if I run into issues, but obviously having a long term dev environment would be preferred.

In order to run the latest version of IPB, you need to be on either PHP 8.0 or 8.1.  4.2.x only supported 7.x.  So you'll need to make sure to have your PHP updated and that you have all of the dependencies installed.  

Use that script while running PHP8 to make sure you're not missing any modules, etc.  

Once done...  make sure all of your resources are updated for 4.7 (or disable them).  Download the IPB files from the client area and upload them to your site.  Then run domain.com/admin/upgrade.  Don't try to use the automatic updater as you will have problems because 4.2 won't run on PHP8 and 4.7 won't run on PHP7.   So just upload all of the 4.7 files once you're site is on PHP8 and do the manual upgrade process.  

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Jim M Grand Master

Jim M

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1 minute ago, olyclimber said:

We are doing a full backup of our server and have multiple copies of that.  Do you guys do a "IPB install only backup"?   What are you using for that?

You would want to talk with your hosting provider/server administrator what the best option for you would be. They would be able to provide any suggestions that would leave you in the best footing. Also, if you have many sites on the server, they would be able to tell you how to backup/restore each one separately (if available).

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Jim M Grand Master

Jim M

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2 minutes ago, olyclimber said:

OK...no we've got that covered pretty well.  Just the one site on that server.  I was just wondering if there was another just IPB specific utility!  

No, we do not. Many, many, many moons ago I think we had a feature that did this but it's one of those things where it really is a waste of our time where we could be improving the software in other areas because your server does it already and much more efficiently.

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olyclimber Enthusiast

olyclimber

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Questions: For determining if they will cause a problem with upgrading I'm checking in 3 places:

1. Applications

2. Community Enhancements

3. Plugins

I have questions in bold below.  The really important one for our forum is Advance Tags and Prefixes.

For applications, Adriano has already updated our core app. I have one other, this one:

Am I out of luck with this plugin since it has not been updated for 4.7?  We use it extensively on our site.

For Community Enhancements, we are just using GEOIP and SPAM Defense, and then third party the Google Maps enhancement.     

Is there a way to tell version info on these, or do I need to worry about them for the upgrade?

For the Plugins

We are using this one:

 and this one:

 

The former only says support for 4.4, the latter does support 4.7.

Am I out of luck on the one that only supports 4.4?

 

thank you!!!

 

 

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Jim M Grand Master

Jim M

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24 minutes ago, olyclimber said:

Am I out of luck with this plugin since it has not been updated for 4.7?  We use it extensively on our site.

If it is not compatible with PHP 8, it will break, unfortunately. The short answer is yes. The risk of running third party plugins on your community, unfortunately.

25 minutes ago, olyclimber said:

For Community Enhancements, we are just using GEOIP and SPAM Defense, and then third party the Google Maps enhancement.     

These are all ours or programmed by us so will be fine.

 

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teraßyte Grand Master

teraßyte

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6 hours ago, olyclimber said:

Worse case I can apparently convert to Radical Tags I guess. 

Yeah, a few sites I know that were using that application all converted to using Radical Tags instead.

 

As for Minimized Quote, it's now a built-in feature since version 4.5 so you can just uninstall the plugin.

Edited by teraßyte
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olyclimber Enthusiast

olyclimber

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We are on PHP 7.1.  Can we:

1. upgrade that to PHP 7.4

2. Upgrade from IPB 4.2.x to IPB 4.7.3

3. Upgrade from PHP 7.3 to PHP 8

4. Then upgrade to IPB 4.7.4

Is this a viable upgrade path?  Could we even just use the automatic updater this way? Or is there no way to specify upgrading specific versions using the auto-updater?

 

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teraßyte Grand Master

teraßyte

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Just now, olyclimber said:

 

We are on PHP 7.1.  Can we:

1. upgrade that to PHP 7.4

2. Upgrade from IPB 4.2.x to IPB 4.7.3

3. Upgrade from PHP 7.3 to PHP 8

4. Then upgrade to IPB 4.7.4

Is this a viable upgrade path?  Could we even just use the automatic updater this way? Or is there no way to specify upgrading specific versions using the auto-updater?

 

You can do this by uploading the 4.7.3 files manually (as long as you downloaded them before 4.7.4 became available).

The auto-upgrade in ACP always uses the latest version available so it would upgrade straight to 4.7.4 right now (soon to be 4.7.5).

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olyclimber Enthusiast

olyclimber

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8 hours ago, Marc Stridgen said:

It would be worth asking why you want to do it this way? If you are doing the manual upgrade path as you have to do anyway, it would make more sense simply to switch to PHP 8, manually upload files, and upgrade straight to the latest release

Just trying to think through all the paths.   But yeah, simplest is usually the best!

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