Planned outage due to VBulletin 4 Upgrade

[TracyP]

Starting on 1/27/2012 at 00:01 North Carolina Woodworker will be getting a face lift so to speak. Our founder Steve Coles along with other admins will be upgrading us to V Bulletin 4. V Bulletin 3 has reached it's end of life for upgrades and support. This upgrade will cause a down time of the site for a minimum of four days. This is a major upgrade that may take more than the planned time. We will keep you all posted as we are back live. I ask everyone to exercise patience and use this time to spend in the woodworking shop that you enjoy.
Thanks to all of you for your patience and understanding as we strive to move forward.

Thank You From The Staff Of North Carolina Woodworker.

 

[MarkE]

Four days. OUCH.

I don't know what I will do for four days without NCWW.

 

[TracyP]

Four days. OUCH.

I don't know what I will do for four days without NCWW.

Work in your shop so you can be one of the first posters on the new version:gar-Bi

 

[JackLeg]

Four days. OUCH.

I don't know what I will do for four days without NCWW.

Go to NCWW on FaceBook! It won't be affected! :wsmile:

 

[TedAS]

It sounds like a huge job!

Thanks to all of the staff for working to keep this site up and running:icon_thum

 

[MarkE]

Work in your shop so you can be one of the first posters on the new version:gar-Bi

Now that's an idea.

 

[SteveColes]

This is a very major upgrade and it will take a long time. It is our intention to keep the site down only as long as necessary (4 days??) to bring back major functionality, the new look and feel and some of the new functionality.

The rest of the upgrades and changes will then be slip streamed over the next few weeks. I hope to provide more specifics a few days before start the upgrade.

 

[Glennbear]

Since unlike my daughter who is a website designer for a major bank I have few web skills hence I have a question. During the down time what will appear when one attempts to access the site? I would hate to leave Google searchers with the impression we have ceased to exist. :dontknow:

 

[Bryan S]

Since unlike my daughter who is a website designer for a major bank I have few web skills I have a question. During the down time what will appear when one attempts to access the site? I would hate to leave Google searchers with the impression we have ceased to exist. :dontknow:

I thought the same thing after Barbara told us about it yesterday. Of course I was in the car heading down the road when I thought about it. :BangHead:

 

[cpw]

Four days!?! I might end up on Methadone.

Thanks to the Admins for taking care of us. :icon_thum

 

[SteveColes]

Since unlike my daughter who is a website designer for a major bank I have few web skills hence I have a question. During the down time what will appear when one attempts to access the site? I would hate to leave Google searchers with the impression we have ceased to exist. :dontknow:

That is a very good question. That has always been a problem. if I put a nice message explaining that we down pending planned maintenance and do it in such a way that all external links go to that message, then the people working on the site will go to the same place. But I have been thinking about it and I'll do what I can to make it work, at least partially.

 

[Rob]

Put a link at the bottom that will re-direct admins where they need to go. Anyone that clicks on it that shouldn't wouldn't be able to log in, and the admins should, or you could do a hidden link.

 

[tryingtokeepmyfingers]

Four days. OUCH.

I don't know what I will do for four days without NCWW.

Ditto

 

[ehpoole]

That is a very good question. That has always been a problem. if I put a nice message explaining that we down pending planned maintenance and do it in such a way that all external links go to that message, then the people working on the site will go to the same place. But I have been thinking about it and I'll do what I can to make it work, at least partially.

I'm not familiar with the specifics of vBulletin so the following is offered along with the proverbial "grain of salt."

Have you all considered building the new v4 site under a virtual server (perhaps on a different port) while you get everything installed and worked out. It is generally, then, a trivial matter of a directory move (or copy if you prefer) and possibly a few tweaked variables to take the new version live with minimal downtime. Usually, the result is an hour or less of downtime for users.

With respect to the issue quoted above, don't forget that you can configure referrals based upon either IP address or HTTP authentication (set denies before allow, then explicity define the allowed IPs), so that admin IPs (or users) are allowed through and all others are referred to an "Under Re-construction" page where, presumably, there would be regular status updates as to how the upgrade is progressing and the anticipated ETA.

Regardless, I wish you all the best on your upgrade. We all thank you for your dedication.

 

[tryingtokeepmyfingers]

I say you should change the site over to a WIKI type format I think it would build a better database/archive to help everyone cause information for projects, tools, tips, howtos, could all be made more accessible but it is not my site but I have been thinking this for the last couple months

 

[SteveColes]

Put a link at the bottom that will re-direct admins where they need to go. Anyone that clicks on it that shouldn't wouldn't be able to log in, and the admins should, or you could do a hidden link.

Good idea.

 

[TracyP]

I placed a top banner to enhance visibility of the site outage. I think that should draw attention to the outage before it happens.

 

[ehpoole]

I say you should change the site over to a WIKI type format I think it would build a better database/archive to help everyone cause information for projects, tools, tips, howtos, could all be made more accessible but it is not my site but I have been thinking this for the last couple months

Wiki's make for great How-to documentation, but are lousy when it comes to conversation and debate. I think an argument could be made for adding a How-to Wiki to NCWW, but I would hate to see NCWW become exclusively Wiki oriented. The real challenge would be finding a way to somehow integrate two very different concepts in such a way that user's don't naturally partition themselves into one group or the other.

Just my $0.02.

 

[SteveColes]

Wiki's make for great How-to documentation, but are lousy when it comes to conversation and debate. I think an argument could be made for adding a How-to Wiki to NCWW, but I would hate to see NCWW become exclusively Wiki oriented. The real challenge would be finding a way to

somehow integrate two very different concepts in such a way that user's don't naturally partition themselves into one group or the other.

Just my $0.02.

Part of the upgrade will include a wiki integrated in vb4. The idea is t provide a woodworking wiki encyclopedia. There will be a more formal article structure, and a WIP
Log available for those who are willing o that.

But the forums will still be the primary methodology.

 

[tryingtokeepmyfingers]

Part of the upgrade will include a wiki integrated in vb4. The idea is t provide a woodworking wiki encyclopedia. There will be a more formal article structure, and a WIP
Log available for those who are willing o that.

But the forums will still be the primary methodology.

Cool this should help a lot

cause Woodworking forum part is so general and breaking it main sub categories like Turning, Cabinetmaking .. ect..when it is applicable I think with be helpful to everyone