forums: May 2009 Archives

After years of searching, I finally found a new template for the Rad Community forums. Named midnyte, it's (as you might expect) » dark.

A template consists of set of files that style a bulletin board (aka 'online forum'). All templates include (among other things) a CSS file & an accompanying set of graphics.

Our old template was based on a much older version of YaBB (our forum software) .. so old, in fact, that I don't even recall which version it was based on.

I liked the way the old template looked, but it kept getting increasingly outdated with each additional update to our forum script .. thereby introducing an increasing number of compatibilty problems (which made me jump thru increasingly difficult hoops).

Actually, it was problems encountered following last week's upgrade that sent me scurrying to find a contemporary template (one based on YaBB 2.4).

Upgraded the Rad Community forums .. to » YaBB v2.4 (released a few weeks ago). The boys at YaBB have adopted a new, fast-n-furious (3-month) release cycle, which keeps me hopping.

The 'upgrade' process begins with a new/fresh/clean install of the new version .. to a new/unique directory.

I then configure the new version to make it look like the version currently in-use.

After everything looks hunky dory, and appears to be working correctly, I place both (old & new) forums in Maintenance mode and copy all the member-accounts and posts (» folders labeled /Members and /Messages) .. from old to new directories.

That's always the trickiest part, cuz there are so many files to copy (more than 15,000). Our old Shared hosting server choked on this file-transfer. The forums contain ~5K threads with 40K posts (which I'd hate to lose).

Our new VPS however, seems to be handling the load much better. And I can now work from the (powerful) Linux shell (command line).