Upgrading forum software Monday AM! You'll have to reset your password after.

EDIT: the upgrade is set for this Monday morning (October 4). Approximately 7:30 AM (EST / UTC-5).

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Just a very early heads up for everyone:

We're planning to upgrade the forum platform from phpBB to vBulletin at some point in the near to medium future. Testing will begin next week (which won't affect you at all).

Why the change?

Well, phpBB is a good free forum platform, no doubt. But vBulletin is worth the money, from our experience. It's easier to administer, and has some really good plugins that phpBB is missing.

Also, once we've made the change, we're planning to integrate a garage feature - a much better way to show off our rides. (I think there was a garage on AveoClub at one point before Tim (daox) and I got involved, wasn't there? Not sure why it disappeared.)

But aside from that bonus, you won't notice a huge change. All the usernames/postcounts/threads/posts/attachments etc. will be preserved.

Just wanted to let you know what's coming down the road for the site. I'll post updates in this thread when we're getting closer.

i dont remember a garage feature, but it is a good idea, we need it lol

:-k

Oh. Well maybe it was just something that Matt tested out - there were directories and database fields in there that definitely looked garage-related.

Well, that would be cool.

Update:

Been testing the upgrade process. It appears to work fine - all the posts/threads/user stats transfer over. But there are a few hiccups:

1) PASSWORDS: This is the biggest hiccup: we will all have to reset our passwords to log back into the forum once it's switched to vBulletin. If you put in your existing password, it will tell you it's wrong.

Passwords are encrypted in phpBB and vBulletin, and they can't simply be copied over from one to the other.

Before we do the upgrade, we'll make sure you know in advance how to reset it. We'll post info, send PMs and email a link (don't want anyone to miss it!) to a page that you can use to reset your passwords.

2) AVATARS: For some reason avatars don't transfer to the new user profile, so you'll have to set that in your user CP (control panel) after you log in.

That's about it for now, still want to do more testing before we announce a switchover date/time.

great idea to switch to vbulletin we are running that on ot vw site that i mod and it is truly great and the garage feature ROCKS!!!!

Cool - what's the URL of the VW site? I'd like to see their garage.

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FYI: the server problems that happened over night and this morning were not related to the planned vB migration. Just a coincidence. We're still testing out vB and will make an obvious announcement before we actually do the switch.

I'm excited about having a garage feature!

I'm not sure what that is, but sounds interesting...

Anyone interested in looking around the vBulletin version of the forum before we do the official switchover? (Still testing... looking to switch maybe later this week/early next.)

It might help to have some extra eyeballs to spot any issues we may have overlooked.

Just reply in this thread if you want to. If there are any takers I'll post info on how to access it tomorrow.

dont add to much, i stopped going to some cobalt forums cause they added just way to much and made it to complicated it made me stop going there.

Don't worry - it's not going to be too different from what you're used to.

Sure I do quality assurance for a software company so I might be able to help you out. Shoot me a link with what you have going on and I can try to help you break it :D

OK, for anyone wanting to have a look:

To get in, request a password from the test forum. (Does NOT affect your password on the live, phpBB forum.) Your password will be emailed to you: aveoforum.com/forum/login.php?do=lostpw

Couple of notes:

1) The test forum isn't sync'ed with this one. It contains what was on it the last time I did a test import, last week.

2) The test forum is wearing the default vB theme for now. We'll be changing that over.

3) Your avatar will be missing.

If you notice anything else, let us know! Feel free to try this out, anyone.

If you notice anything else

Signature issue resolved on the test vB forum - was just a permission setting.

So far its very general but the biggest issue for me is the color scheme. something that will help differentiate between the poster and his/her post. Some type of line in-between the two would be convienent

Thanks for checking it out.

Colours & design issues ... the ultimate goal is to use a skin/theme that's as close as possible to the current one.

To get things started, we may just plop our current header at the top of the vBulletin theme until we're sure all the functional things are OK.

Getting this rolling again:

We're aiming to do the switch to vBulletin 1 week from today. Probably do the work on it Sunday night.

Will post details later this week.

Everything's lined up for doing the switch on Monday morning at approx. 7:30 AM (EST / UTC-5).

The forum will be closed to posting for a couple of hours while this happens.

Reminder: AFTER we switch over, you have to reset your password before you can log in again.

Info about how to do that will be posted, and we'll email everyone as well.

Bump - pushed the upgrade ahead to Monday AM. (Decided that's better than messing around with it on Sunday night.)

wouldnt that be pushing it back not ahead?
8-[

Pushing ahead, pulling back... I dunno. #-o

Monday morning it is, though!

I'm all reset, and avatar uploaded! Oh yeah!

i don't like the switch
it's hard to identify the new posts and it's full of advertisements everywhere

Thanks for the feedback and keep it comming.

Hang in there if you don't like what you see. We're still going through quite a bit of stuff and making tweaks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by trempus

i don't like the switch

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No pain, no gain! :P

I mean... what Daox said.

Truth is: there are a few things in the new software that I don't even like, which I've been chipping away at. It's not a small task.

But most of it I do like. And it's a better, more flexible platform for the future of the forum.

Quote:

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it's hard to identify the new posts

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I've added a new link similar to one in the old software: "Active Topics" appears top left of the page. Clicking it shows topics/threads with new posts in the last 48 hours.

Quote:

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and it's full of advertisements everywhere

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That's easy to fix: just log in. You don't see any ads in the header or in posts if you're logged in.