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Modernization Progress


tenjuna
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  • Site Owner

I will be using this thread from now on as the central place for announcing the progress of v4.6 site upgrade work.

 

Current status as of 10/9/2021: Working on site recovery and cleanup

 

Work list v4.6 (focusing on mods and layout):

 

Recover from v4.6 site live, go through all ACP settings

Clean up members and groups permissions and settings

Clean up forums permissions and settings

Forum arrangement, clean up pinned posts and outdated rules, info, etc

Figure out how to hack in the message export feature to control panel, see "dTrades History..." for SQL query

Build something for people to xfer FG to each other

Build something to fake the shop items (nameglows/colors, topic colors, etc)

Find new things to spend FG on

Build a separate section of the site for guilds to have private forums using Groups feature of IPB

Upgrade skin from bugs found...this is going to be a really major PITA *sigh*

Script to bounce member email addresses off SMTP to weed out the bad ones

Grand re-opening email/PM

Get v1 and v2 of site running again (v1 at http://happyfunbear.com - v2 at http://www.amerfs.com)

 

More to come once I think of stuff to add...suggestions are always welcome!

 

==================================================

 

Work list v4:

 

Find all files and database backups

Create web server platform

Harden server environment

Upgrade to IPB 4.6

Database repair and cleanup

v4.6 skin upgrade

 

Set up an old version 1 or 2 of IPB that is for nothing but arcade and lottery (It turns out Flash is dying off completely, so that is why no more support for Arcade or lottery mods)

Get c2oc.com set to blog

Twitch OBS platform install
Get tenjuna.com set to twitch

Re-install whatever mods that can be found and are useful

Install some kind of currency manager for forum gold

Work on adding paid mods

Fix existing name and topics glows/colors/mods

Fix nameglows to work properly on ff/edge (fixed topic colors and glows as well, edge looks to be too much trouble)
Fix avatar sidebar to display forum gold, TT shield, etc
Fix member groups, change gold members to something else and get Admin/staff back on board
Need new team icons, the ones we have are 8 years old

Revisit rearranging avatar area and add TT shield if possible

Fix Member Map tiles

Find some way to fix Chatbox sidebar template...it's FUGLY

 

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  • Site Owner

First test of the database merging process went very well. I was able to retrieve about a half-million PMs, 1200 members, and a few thousand posts. Not nearly as much as I thought, but the PMs were the biggest part of that purge that I regretted, so not all bad. I am still working on testing as I have found additional backups of the database, but I think it's pretty safe to say that there won't be much to gain.

 

I also started looking at potential mods, and found that there is no shop mod for IPB 4 anymore. I wasn't expecting to NOT find a shop mod, so yeah not sure what to do there. I guess I could always make most of the shop items free site features instead and convert our points to a virtual currency that people can use solely for trading. The only other choice is to stay with this version, which will require a lot of work. I am still mulling this over since I really do want to upgrade, so I will have to figure out how best to manage this change.

 

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Mumble server added:

 

servername: dtrades.org

port: 64738

 

=====

 

TeamSpeak server added:

 

servername: dtrades.org

port: 9987

 

Not doing a Vent server, you only get 8 ports for free...totally not worth the time to configure.

 

=====

 

Oh for the heck of it I started up a Discord server as well, kinda neat really.

 

https://discord.gg/014ALcu4THWZQiqpL

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Yay I was able to fix all of the broken emoticons in posts from before the v3 upgrade. That took a lot longer to figure out than it should have lol.

 

In fact, I just fixed about 63,000 references to the postabout.com URL that were driving me batty. Ugh I wish I still had those domains, it would make this a lot easier.

 

I have reached a breakpoint, databases are backed up offsite and I am doing something else for a while.

 

When I get back I will work on CS servers next.

 

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Will be working on credentialing for Epic training this week at work, so not much is going to happen until the weekend.

 

In the meantime I am experimenting with CounterStrike servers. The plan I had to use my main server was scrapped when I found out that the current version of the OS doesn't support Linux emulation. So I built up a new computer to handle the gaming server workload, just to find out I had not put a large enough hard drive in it, and that's kinda where I am now.

 

Once I rebuild to proper specs, it's just a matter of figuring out the tools to automate the build and tear down of servers on the fly, so I can make use of the Book-A-Server system again. It's been like 15 years since I have done this, so I have forgotten how most of it works. This is something I have been wanting to get going again since dTrades was migrated to PostAbout in 2007/2008, but things in my personal life were too chaotic to allow the time for it to happen...so this will be fun for me to get done.

 

I am not in a huge hurry for any of this, and since I still have to pay for the new skin to get redone, that's why there is a bit of a lull right now.

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Just ran a complete testing of the merge and upgrade procedures, going from the original site all of the way to IPB v4.1.12.3.

 

There are numerous steps to make it work, and it will take about 3-4 hours to complete now that I know what all is involved.

 

The good news is I was able to recover quite a large amount of lost data, the bad news is I probably also introduced a whole lot of orphaned data. I decided it was better to have a lot of data I didn't need than it was to spend time making the database super squeaky clean. I may revisit this in the future and try and enlist the help of Invision to see what all can be done there, but for now the server is so fast that the extra load is not really hurting any. This would be different if the site had a lot of traffic, but for now this is fine.

 

In any case, as soon as the developer finishes my small list of changes to the new skin, I will be upgrading the site.

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This is probably the most fubar upgrade ever. I like what Invision was going for by rewriting everything, but holy crap upgrading to 4.x is a real pain in the ass.

 

In any case, I am slowly working on getting the site working correctly again. Invision has been less than helpful getting everything done, but we are slowly getting there.

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Ok I think the site is stable finally. I lot of "it shouldn't do that" type responses from Invision for all the broken crap the last 24 hours. Yeah, really...you think it shouldn't do that? Thanks Captain Obvious you saved the day.

 

Anyway, there are a few skin related items that I need to figure out. I don't think I am liking the font type or size so I am going to play with that. Beyond that the next things to work on is getting all of the settings for the site the way they should be. This new version is really dumbed down, so finding things is not nearly as easy as it used to be.

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5 minutes ago, sKai said:

Can we get the ability to modify the "Rank" thing again?

I know it was a shop purchase thing at one point, and then a thing for gold members to do indefinitely at one point.

I don't think "the Adulterate Practitioner" works for me ;)

 

Go to your profile then click Edit Profile, changing the title is in the first line.

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8 minutes ago, Joz said:

Can I have a glowy name?

 

If you had a glow before eventually it will glow again. In fact if you use IE Tab in Google Chrome you can already see the glows.

 

But I am working on changing the glows to a "-webkit-filter: drop-shadow" call in CSS. This is because the glow filter is no longer supported by any modern browser. Eventually I will get it working again.

 

Keep in mind it took me 2 months just to get the site to a point where I was at least happy with the way it worked. It will likely take another 2 months to get things finished.

 

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2 minutes ago, tenjuna said:

 

If you had a glow before eventually it will glow again. In fact if you use IE Tab in Google Chrome you can already see the glows.

 

But I am working on changing the glows to a "-webkit-filter: drop-shadow" call in CSS. This is because the glow filter is no longer supported by any modern browser. Eventually I will get it working again.

 

Keep in mind it took me 2 months just to get the site to a point where I was at least happy with the way it worked. It will likely take another 2 months to get things finished.

 

I'll pretend I understand what your computer-software speak means, but ok.

 

I've not heard of IE Tab for Chrome though, I'll have to look into that. I assume its something that helps chrome act as  IE for the purpose of some website code?

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Just now, Joz said:

I'll pretend I understand what your computer-software speak means, but ok.

 

I've not heard of IE Tab for Chrome though, I'll have to look into that. I assume its something that helps chrome act as  IE for the purpose of some website code?

 

It's basically a way to use IE version 8 within Chrome. That was the last version of IE that supported the glow visual filter. All of the visual filters were replaced with CSS 3 a long time ago:

 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6475498/what-replaced-visual-filters-in-internet-explorer-9

 

http://html5-demos.appspot.com/static/css/filters/index.html

 

 

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1 minute ago, tenjuna said:

 

It's basically a way to use IE version 8 within Chrome. That was the last version of IE that supported the glow visual filter. All of the visual filters were replaced with CSS 3 a long time ago:

 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6475498/what-replaced-visual-filters-in-internet-explorer-9

 

http://html5-demos.appspot.com/static/css/filters/index.html

 

 

Thank you for the knowledge.


/incoming youtube meta reference

 

maxresdefault.jpg

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36 minutes ago, Joz said:

Ew. lol.

 

Request for dark red glow, with black text?

 

It's just an example, so keep your ew to yourself lol. As for requests if you had a glow before, you will get the same settings you had before.

 

Since there doesn't seem to be a shop add-on for IPB anymore, I am not entirely sure how I am going to make this work yet.

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6 hours ago, tenjuna said:

 

It's just an example, so keep your ew to yourself lol. As for requests if you had a glow before, you will get the same settings you had before.

 

Since there doesn't seem to be a shop add-on for IPB anymore, I am not entirely sure how I am going to make this work yet.

 

 

Signatures are mostly eye-cancer anyway. Heck, I'd vote to leave them out (at least, for now.)

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Just now, tenjuna said:

 

Lol I know, I still haven't even installed D2 because I know my free time is doomed if I do.

 

I know that pain. Competitive for Overwatch just launched last night so that's been my time drain and I bought DOOM on Steam with the big summer sale they have going on...so no free time here.

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I just had a mad genius idea. If I can figure out a way to fake out the database, I can build an old version 1 or 2 of IPB and use the arcade, lottery, and shop mods for those versions in order to be able to use them again.

 

It's going to be fugly as hell, but it's better than the static web pages I was going to build. Plus it will give you dirty bastards something to use your FG on.

 

I cannot believe these mods do not exist for version 4, but hey any port in a storm.

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1 minute ago, tenjuna said:

I just had a mad genius idea. If I can figure out a way to fake out the database, I can build an old version 1 or 2 of IPB and use the arcade, lottery, and shop mods for those versions in order to be able to use them again.

 

It's going to be fugly as hell, but it's better than the static web pages I was going to build. Plus it will give you dirty bastards something to use your FG on.

 

I cannot believe these mods do not exist for version 4, but hey any port in a storm.

 

That'd be pretty great, I like that idea.

 

Maybe a lottery system as well if it's not to difficult, just for some fun.

 

 

Weird that a newer version of IPB doesn't support featurs from an older one

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  • tenjuna changed the title to Modernization Progress

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