Forum Update!

We’re now running the first “real” release of PHPBB3. Thanks to the hard work of Emily Boegheim, I was provided with a PHP script to import forum details and messages from the very first PHPBB3 beta 1 into PHPBB3 RC7. I had a bit more work to do in fixing an error with pre-existing BBCODE tags (would cause pages to error and load blank), and then running the conversion from RC7 to the most recent (first) live release, but I think I’m about done.

  1. All users will have to sign up again – sorry. Users did not import.

  2. The messages did import with user names attached, but they’re not actually associated with forum accounts. I might be able to re-attribute your old messages to your new account, but I haven’t checked into how yet. I’ll probably try it with mine, first, to see if it’s possible. But at least the original messages are all there.

  3. Due to the UBBCODE bug, I was getting an error “Call to a member function bbcode_second_pass() on a non-object in … viewtopic.php on line 1242, referer: … viewforum.php”. It took a while to fix this. Ultimately, I had to run SQL commands to “alter” UBBCODE stored in messages. The result is that the messages load now, but you will see the ubbcode tags in old posts instead of what the codes represent (i.e, the “bold” tag instead of bold text, the “italics” tag instead of italics text). This is fixable by me just editing the message(s) in question and re-saving, but since there are so many old posts, I might not get through them all right at once.

FYI, here are the SQL commands I had to run on the PHPBB3 beta1 data that was imported, in order to “chop” the PHPBB code and get past the error:

update phpbb_posts set post_text = replace(post_text, concat(":",bbcode_uid,"]"), "]"); update phpbb_posts set bbcode_bitfield=""; update phpbb_posts set bbcode_uid="";

Essentially, what this does is turns tags like [ b:12345 ]bold[ /b:i12345 ] into [ b ]bold[ /b ].

  1. I’ve enabled forum avatars, but only by uploading. There’s a size limit. I can enable remote linking and gallary avatars if there’s a big enough demand.

  2. This version seems slower than the first beta. It’s definitely heavier, visually. I’m afraid it’s going to be a turn-off to some visitors, especially those who were already on the fence about the forum. I notice that when I revisit page, all the images (sometimes dozens of them) are re-loaded. The whole thing just seems too heavy. I’d like to get a more streamlined, simple “skin” customized for the forum to fix that, but probably won’t happen right away.

Let me know if you encounter any problems!

Okay, it looks like I can link your old messages to your new username. I’ll try to do it as I see familiar names re-register, but if I forget you, just let me know!

Okay, I figured out how to bring the original style setting back, so now the forum should look just like it did before I upgraded, more or less. Basically, I have changed the default style to “subsilver 2”.

If anybody wants to use the new style (the one I was talking about earlier), just click “user control panel” from the top of the main page, go to the “board preferences” tab, and select “prosilver” from the “my board style” dropdown list. Voila. The new style. It looks slick, but to me it feels awkward and seems to load slower. I like the original style better.

Can you link old PMs to the new account?
If not, it’s not a big deal as I only had one which I had saved.

Offhand, probably not. But I could probably query the text from old PM’s and send to you. Is this your same username?

Yes, it’s the same username, but don’t worry about it. I just verified I have it saved to my local computer. dfisher was kind enough to help me out with an Inform coding issue I was having and I just wanted to make sure I didn’t lose it. Thank you for the offer though.

I only had a few posts before the upgrade, so it’s not a big deal if you don’t link those posts to this account. Now that I’ve found this place, I’m sure I’ll be posting more often. :slight_smile:

Edit: Never mind, it looks like you already took care of linking my old posts to this account. Thank you!

Yep, I linked your old posts. It looks like PM’s in the other forum don’t have usernames in the messages table. It’s probably linked by ID or something. I’m sure there’s a way to match them up, but it will take some figuring-out. If anybody really needs something from a PM in the old forum, just let me know and I’ll try to figure it out.

Thanks Emily and Mike (and anyone else I’m missing) for bringing this through! I appreciate it.

Looks like everything else works, somehow, except for the old logins being disassociated with the individual posts. It’s good to be back, with an alternate forum style, too (I’m currently running Prosilver just to see how it looks like. I just hope the bold, italics, and underline work.

EDIT: And so they do :wink:

I’ve been running some SQL to re-associate old posts, and it seems to be working pretty well. I didn’t recognize your user name, so I haven’t run it for you yet (sorry). Did you have posts on the old version under this username, or a different one? I should be able to hook them back up.

great, we had luck on our French forum ifiction.free.fr/taverne because we didn’t loose the users :slight_smile:
Now on this forum I’m using the prosilver theme because I like it better than the old one.

Maybe I just had bad luck with ProSilver, but it seemed to load really slowly and graphics caching seemed really wonky. Maybe I’ll try it again after a fresh reboot.

Had you posted any messages here before, under the same or a different handle? I can link them back to you.

Not that I had many posts here but if you get a moment could someone link me to my old account?

:smiley:

Weird.

After this forum update, it seems I’m not able to send private messasges. Every time I try, I get a connection error from the browser, and I’ve tried just about everything I can think of - clearing my web cache, cookies, etc. I’ve even made certain that the link I see in the status bar of the browser is the correct link, and it certainly looks like it is.

Edit: Oh yes, forgot to mention that I’ve tested it with both Subsilver 2 and Prosilver; both error out on me.

Just tried to PM you and I get the same error.

hello, I’ve posted with the same name, but not that much. Don’t bother linking them back, unless it’s really quick and easy to do it. (ex : IF-Comp 2007: Looking for Beta-Testers - #5 by farvardin)

For my part I don’t see any difference of loading between the two themes…

farvardin and rotter, you should be linked in now.

For posterity, here’s the SQL I’m running to link in all the old posts:

To determine the user’s number and color:

select user_id, user_colour from phpbb3_users where username="someusername";

Usually, the color is blank unless you’re admin or a moderator or something. I think I’ve handled all of that, otherwise you’d need to adjust the below queries to update the user’s color too. Anyway, to link in the old posts based on the user_id found (change 64 to whatever the real user_id is) and the original username of those old posts:

update phpbb3_forums set forum_last_poster_id=64 where forum_last_poster_name="someusername"; update phpbb3_topics set topic_poster=64 where topic_first_poster_name="someusername"; update phpbb3_topics set topic_last_poster_id=64 where topic_last_poster_name="someusername"; update phpbb3_posts set poster_id=64 where post_username="someusername"; update phpbb3_users set user_posts = (select count(*) from phpbb3_posts where poster_id = phpbb3_users.user_id) where user_id=64;
That seems to do the trick. For users that don’t match, though, I’ve been running an initial step to make the username in old posts match the new username (before linking the posts):

update phpbb3_forums set forum_last_poster_name="new_username" where forum_last_poster_name="old_username"; update phpbb3_topics set topic_first_poster_name="new_username" where topic_first_poster_name="old_username"; update phpbb3_topics set topic_last_poster_name="new_username" where topic_last_poster_name="old_username"; update phpbb3_posts set post_username="new_username" where post_username="old_username";
Strangely, all the username fields are case-sensitive, so “Username” isn’t the same as “username.” Anyway, if anybody cares, that’s what I’m doing to link in posts. :slight_smile:

As for the PM issue, I’ll check the server log and see if anything shows up. I don’t know what would be going on there yet.

This is the error from the logs (sanitized for path/ip/id/security info). Incidentally, I upgraded from a 2.0.22 PHPBB for another of my sites to 3.0.0 this weekend, and I’m not having this issue with private messages:

b[/b] The answer is here: phpbb.com/community/viewtopi … &p=3373999

It should be working okay now.

Nicely done! :slight_smile:

So far, that’s everything I’m aware of… except for the bbcode issue for existing posts (where I have to edit and re-save posts that show bbcode instead of the style it represents). Other than that, I think we’re in good shape! And now we can keep current with new releases, etc.