Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

So uh yea. Apparently, the SQL database for the forum was updated to the point that the current software (or something like that) was no longer supported. As such, I looked up a fix online and got the forum to at least a read-only state, as, for some reason, it wouldn't allow anyone to post, and started throwing errors everywhere.

So, I decided to see if there were any updates available, only to find out the forum's software was way out of date (we had been running 3.0.14, and the current version that we are now running is 3.2.5), so I decided to go and update it. Unfortunately, the forum software was so out of date, that it wasn't even supported by phpBB's own automatic updater! So needless to say, I had to pretty must manually install the new software, which was a bit easier when I figured out the instructions for doing so basically wanted me to wipe most of the old software's files off of the server and re-upload them.

Now hopefully, we shouldn't have any more issues with the forum for a while, and I'll do some fiddling with the settings shortly to get the forum looking the way it was pre-upgrade (if possible). If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask them below.

Thank you for your patience!
-David

Also, it may be a bit before the forum's theme is restored, mostly due to the person who made the theme having not updated it since 2011 (back when 3.0.8 was still the current version). However, I know the guy who helps run The Siren Board, and he's willing to see if he can update the theme to 3.2, so we'll have to wait and see if it can be updated to the current theme.

Good stuff with getting phpBB updated. At least no content was lost in the process

A notice on the main site though probably could have done well, though, if you had to ask me.

ZachL wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 23, 2019 5:41 pm

Good stuff with getting phpBB updated. At least no content was lost in the process

A notice on the main site though probably could have done well, though, if you had to ask me.

Yea, probably should've thought about that. I'll make sure to do it next time if/when an issue arises again.

Well, it was decided that trying to update the previous theme would be too much of a hassle, so we selected a new, similar theme, instead. I got the opinions of two of the other admins, and they agreed that this should be the theme to use, so we're going to use it, especially since the old theme, while I will admit I did like it, was starting to get a bit dated looking (at least according to Paul).

Great to see the site up and running again!

Eh, before the theme update yesterday i was seeing coding above and certain message etc not showing.

NathanFromEngland wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 24, 2019 9:56 am

Eh, before the theme update yesterday i was seeing coding above and certain message etc not showing.

That's because the old software was way out of date and pretty much falling apart at the seams. In fact, the search function hadn't been working right for a long time, regularly returning "search is not available at this time" when trying to go beyond the first page of results (though refreshing it a few times occasionally made it work). I think the database was also beginning to have issues with the software, causing all of those error messages, so I updated the forum's software to hopefully keep us from having anymore major issues.

The theme only got changed due to the fact that the old theme wouldn't work with the new software, due to being way out of date.

The new theme looks great! Though I kinda miss having the unread posts link out in the open instead of in a menu. Could that be changed?

By the way, do emojis properly work yet?

EDIT: they do!

ZachL wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 24, 2019 1:32 pm

The new theme looks great! Though I kinda miss having the unread posts link out in the open instead of in a menu. Could that be changed?

By the way, do emojis properly work yet?

EDIT: they do!

Not sure, TBH. Would probably have to do some digging around in the settings.