Site update

[Mike Davis]

The board of directors held a meeting Thursday evening 5:30 January 31.

All members were present except Michael Mathews and Hank Merkle who were on the telephone.

We discussed the problems with the site, went over the following document that Ron provide and decide to move to the Zenforo as soon as possible without any further patches on the present Php software.

Ron will add expected dates of completion and keep us updated with progress.

[FONT=&amp]WHAT HAPPENED WITH MAIN SITE:[/FONT]

1. Unannounced update of main site
2. DNS was apparently misconfigured and we hadn’t noticed
3. Updated apache had different security levels than our own site that blocked certain things
4. RWS changed the way the firewalls work, cutting me off from the site. We also lost Root password for a while.
5. The new PHP seems to crash from time to time in PhotoPost (think it’s memory).

[FONT=&amp]WHERE WE ARE:[/FONT]

1. Existing site, mostly restored. Still have a couple of lurking bugs.
2. Have installed XF and “auto imported” most of our existing forums and photo content over as a test.
3. Have installed the XF 2.0 for development testing. 2.1 just announced
4. I moved the DNS from RWS to GoDaddy.

[FONT=&amp]WHAT WE NEED TO SWITCH:[/FONT]

1. Forums
2. Photos
3. Advertisements
4. Our extra fields
5. Our registration process
6. Articles

[FONT=&amp]NEEDED AFTER SWITCH (in rough order)[/FONT]

1. User levels
2. DQ (before the end of the month)
3. Payments
4. Raffle
5. Voting
6. Classifieds
7. Better Article System

[FONT=&amp]PLAN:[/FONT]

1. Update AWS site with ZF2.
2. Write advertising system.
3. Test out import (especially moving articles
4. Bring up test site for evaluation
5. Setup “new” site. Freeze old site, import the data, roll out.
6. Continue working on the missing stuff.

 

[Phil S]

Thanks for the update. Sure sounds like a lot of work. I am hoping that Ron is being compensated for his time and expertise

 

[drw]

Thank you for the update, it is much appreciated. In all candor, I do not understand all that is involved; but I am knowledgable enough to know that a lot of work is required. I do understand that transitions such as you described can come with hiccups...that said, it is good to know that we are moving forward! Thank you.

 

[Jeff]

Ron has a lot on his plate. Can any other folks help him?

 

[Mike Davis]

He has gone through the install a couple times. Importing the database takes about 6 hours of uninterrupted digital transfer. Basically get it started and check on it regularly to be sure it didn’t stall.

After that comes a lot of tweaking.

Then adding most of the NCWW custom features, but doing it in the correct way through the template system rather than rewriting the base code as was done before and caused a lot of headaches. Some features we will drop, some are no longer relevant, and some new better features will be available.

At this point Ron is systematically going through the program, exploring features, add ons, and making notes. He probably has written more of a manual than the ZenForo programmers. They basically don’t have any user instructions.

We are hoping he will have a test site running in a few weeks.

 

[Bear Republic]

I 'm in IT so I know thats a lot of work. How can we thank him and anyone else doing the heavy lifting so we can use this site? So do we need to set up a "go fund me" page for Ron? Maybe for a gift certificate to Klingspor or one of our other supportive vendors?

 

[photostu]

If help is needed, my day job is full stack web development. Please feel free to contact me. These forums products are different beasts though, but I can offer what I know

 

[sawman101]

A huge thank you to the BOD and Flying Ron for tackling this huge task. I understand none of this, so from my view point, you all are actually moving mountains! Without this forum, I'd be pretty lonely considering all the friends I wouldn't have.

 

[ScottM]

My IT skills are all old school stuff (Mainframe MVS and VM) and very rusty but I am willing to do testing, data input or whatever else is needed.

 

[Pop Golden]

THANKS THANKS THANKS for all the work ! ! !

Pop

 

[CrealBilly]

Lots of work done and still needs to be done. Go Team :thumbs_up.

If you need an ethical hacker to hack up the test site - let me know.