SITE UPGRADE INBOUND

[Telos]

Hello everyone

/TLDR - aiming to upgrade to V6 on Friday

1	Buy vBulletin 6 license (possible upgrade discount)
2	Clone your site to a staging server or subdomain
3	Update PHP to 8.1+, MySQL to 8.0+ if needed
4	Backup everything
5	Upload vBulletin 6 files to staging, run upgrade script
6	Test plugins, themes, user flows
7	Once happy, schedule live upgrade
8	Repeat process on production site

The site has been "problematic" over the last few months. Numerous bugs and general weirdness have been battled with patch upgrades, RAM and processor upgrades and work arounds. At this point, we can't do anything else to save the patient. We have to upgrade.

Starting on Monday the site will be migrating (likely in stages, we are still talking with vBulletin on this upgrade path) from v 4.2.5 to the latest revision of vBulletin V6

Upgrading vBulletin is no simple task, and it must be performed in stages:

1. Core code and Hosting Environment
2. Theme and plugins
3. Customizations

We are now in a virtual environment, that means we can clone the current production site and create a duplicate we can break without impacting production. We can do this over and over again very quickly, providing we can troubleshoot any issues quickly. We have vBulletin hired on for realtime support on this upgrade so hopefully we can get all the bugs ironed out by the end of the week.

If we hit our mark we should be ready to upgrade production on Friday.


If anything changes with the intent or timings of this project I will update here.

[Telos]

UPDATE JUNE 17

The site is currently on version 4.2.5. vBulletin is now at 6.1.2 for stable release.

There is NO upgrade path that avoids breaking functionality of the site. It was left at 4.2.5 too long.

All of the current plugins have no upgrade path. So, we are going to get the core code to version 6.1.2 stable and then start adding features and functionality back in over time.

EXPECTED DOWNTIME

vBulletin is handling this upgrade with us. They estimate 72 hours of the site being offline as a minimum, but it could go longer if they find unexpected things like code hacks, and custom work arounds.

The good news is if things go completely sideways, we can restore the snapshot backup to the time just before they started and at least end up back here with a (semi) functioning community.

I will update again with dates for this outage once we have that info from vBulletin.


__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ____
UPDATE MAY 03

After waiting a week to hear back from vBulletin we finally got the license to upgrade late on Thursday. We have been test upgrading since then, but we originally scoped for a week, and that got eaten by licensing complications.

We are going to extend out testing out to be sure we dont miss anything, and I will update here with a new upgrade date and time.

It also looks like we will need to do a two stage upgrade, going from 4>5 then 5>6.

[Haywire1]

So will it fix the damn punctuation?

[Dewey Cox]

Will we need to re-sign in with our passwords on the new site?

[harbl_the_cat]

You guys did a great job.

Keep up the good work.

[SIR VEYOR]

Will we need to re-sign in with our passwords on the new site?

Most likely.

Write it down somewhere right now.

I welcome the new overlord controls!

And election night is still a go for this site!

[Dewey Cox]

Hello everyone

/TLDR - aiming to upgrade to V6 on Friday

1	Buy vBulletin 6 license (possible upgrade discount)
2	Clone your site to a staging server or subdomain
3	Update PHP to 8.1+, MySQL to 8.0+ if needed
4	Backup everything
5	Upload vBulletin 6 files to staging, run upgrade script
6	Test plugins, themes, user flows
7	Once happy, schedule live upgrade
8	Repeat process on production site

The site has been "problematic" over the last few months. Numerous bugs and general weirdness have been battled with patch upgrades, RAM and processor upgrades and work arounds. At this point, we can't do anything else to save the patient. We have to upgrade.

Starting on Monday the site will be migrating (likely in stages, we are still talking with vBulletin on this upgrade path) from v 4.2.5 to the latest revision of vBulletin V6

Upgrading vBulletin is no simple task, and it must be performed in stages:

1. Core code and Hosting Environment
2. Theme and plugins
3. Customizations

We are now in a virtual environment, that means we can clone the current production site and create a duplicate we can break without impacting production. We can do this over and over again very quickly, providing we can troubleshoot any issues quickly. We have vBulletin hired on for realtime support on this upgrade so hopefully we can get all the bugs ironed out by the end of the week.

If we hit our mark we should be ready to upgrade production on Friday.


If anything changes with the intent or timings of this project I will update here.

So, what does that mean for us this week?
Is it business as usual til some point friday when it instantly switches?
Will it be down at points during the week?

[blacksmithden]

So, what does that mean for us this week?
Is it business as usual til some point friday when it instantly switches?
Will it be down at points during the week?

I get the impression we're right at the stage where the patient is as stable as its going to get right before they start harvesting the organs. Could go at any second though. Lol

[Camo tung]

So, what does that mean for us this week?
Is it business as usual til some point friday when it instantly switches?

That's my understanding from his description above. The system clone (system B or the back-up) gets the upgrade and tests to eliminate any operating issues and at some point the switch-over occurs where system B goes live, all new and shiny. At that point I would expect we'd see something similar to a freeze and a prompt to log in again.

[blacksmithden]

I just opened a "TEMPORARY MAIN SITE THREAD" on the facebook page. If the site goes down during the switch, go there to keep in touch.

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2143554996117080&id=1116804955458761

If you're not on facebook, well, this wont help y'all. Remember there's no buying or selling on there, so just dont or you'll either get banned if its found by the mods or you'll get the group shut down if its found by facebook. Discussion only please.

[Steveo9mm]

been nice knowin all ya politically charged old farts

[Dewey Cox]

That's my understanding from his description above. The system clone (system B or the back-up) gets the upgrade and tests to eliminate any operating issues and at some point the switch-over occurs where system B goes live, all new and shiny. At that point I would expect we'd see something similar to a freeze and a prompt to log in again.

So is everything we post between now and then going on a fake site that will disappear?
Don't anyone post their "A" material til next week...

[Camo tung]

So is everything we post between now and then going on a fake site that will disappear?
Don't anyone post their "A" material til next week...

I'm not sure how Telos will mirror the 2 servers, I don't think this outfit has a big budget for technological greatness. You may feel some loss and disorientation.

[Swingerguy]

So is everything we post between now and then going on a fake site that will disappear?
Don't anyone post their "A" material til next week...

Oh man, I was going to roll out my new standup routine on here before I release it on Netflix.

[Gaidheal]

There goes RB's post count