Upgraded the Rad Community Forums to the latest version of YaBB (» v2.3.1), which was released in Jan.04. Had to wait until the mods I use were upgraded to Y.231-compatible.
No matter how many times I perform this upgrade, I always get antsy .. about the prospect of losing 40,000 posts (which would suk gigantic goose eggs).
A tech from our ISP come out today (to install wired connections, using the home's pre-existing electrical wiring). But I didn't know he was here (cuz he was working over in the main house).
Immediately after transferring some 15,000 files (to complete the upgrade), I launched the forums to test-n-see if everything was working hunky-dory.
At that very moment, the ISP dude here disconected our wireless gateway, which gave me a bizarre error I'd never seen before .. something like » "Dude, your gateway is completely trashed. Better contact your Internet Service Provider for help."
I panicked. The thought ran thru my head » "Oh my God. I screwed up the forums so bad that they trashed my router gateway .. (which is physically impossible, if you think about it) .. but you know how disorienting untimely error messages can be .. when you're already on edge.
••• today's entry continues here below •••
I've had problems upgrading the forums before, so I know how ugly a server hiccup can get. Anyway, everything appears to be working fine (once the ISP tech restarted the gateway/router). Lemme know if you notice any quirks.
Note that the boys at YaBB claim » "All members will have to verify (and save) their avatars, signatures and URL links (found in user profile)." Tho my avatars appear to be working fine.
While in the upgrade mood, I also upgraded the blog (Ye Olde Rad Blog III) .. to Movable Type 4.24, which was released a few days ago. No problems there. Beautiful upgrade.
I'm getting good at (and becoming more confident) using command-line commands from the Linux shell on our VPS. Makes webmaster-life so much easier. I've never before upgraded both the forum and blog in the same day. I used to spend days on just the forum.
YaBB and Movable Type are both Perl-based scripts. The Rad forums now have more than 5,000 threads .. with some threads logging more than 100,000 page-views. Given 40,000 posts, that averages to ~8 posts per thread. Ye Olde Rad Blog III, on the other hand, contains ~100 entries.
It always feels good to have the latest versions of YaBB and Movable Type installed.
Related thread in the Rad forums titled » Wired connections: Using the home's pre-existing electrical wiring
