Freebird

Still a long way to go but here is a sneak peek. It may change entirely in regards to colors and etc. I'm still playing with it. It is NOT turned on so you can't post there. Also, it is a temorary URL. Just a mirror. http://www.venturerider.org/forums/forum.php

LOL....that's been the least of my problems over the past few days. Nerves really loosen things up for me.

All backed up.

OK....I asked what time to expect this because I want to give you all a heads up. Here is the response so now you know. "I'll have a go at this later today."

I THINK they are looking at starting the upgrade soon. I have no idea but I guess the site could become inoperative at any time this morning. I have the mirror site running and think they are going to play with it first but I'm not sure.

It's ok..they are responding to my ticket now and trying real hard to help. This forum is apparently just too big for the updater tool to work. Maybe it would work but it seems that it would take many hours and the site would be down for all that time. What takes so long is that the new version has to import all the posts, indexes and etc. into the database. It apparently takes a LONG time for it to import over 630,000 posts. So they have recommended that I try running the upgrade via SSH from a command line. That is more complicated for me as I don't have much experience using SSH, Putty, Command lines and etc. As bad as I hate it, I am going to pay VBulletin to do the upgrade this time. I've been using this software for over 10 years and have upgraded many times but this one is much more complicated than what I've done in the past. I have already paid for the software and the installation so now it's just a matter of WHEN they get to it. Hopefully they will give me some notice but if you try to get on and find that the site is down, that means it is happening. Will do the best I can to let you know.

Tried all morning. Went to work. Been trying all evening. The difference is that I created a mirror site of the forum so that I can work on it there until I figure it out and not disrupt the live forum. This is a major update with many database changes. I think the problem I'm having is MySQL timing out and not letting the update complete. I know that I've done everything right but it's not finishing. Now VBulletin is telling me that due to the number of posts and etc., I will probably have to install it via SSH command line. That is fairly foreign to me. I'll get it done one way or another. So far, I've probably spent about 26 hours trying to get it updated and with nothing to show for it.

Save that bookmark. That is the html version of our chat room. I will possibly go with a different chat solution on the new version of the site.

I took a different approach early this morning. I created an entire copy of the site, a mirror site so to speak. It looked and worked exactly like this live site. So now I'm running the upgrade on it to see if it works. It has been updating for hours now. It is at the same step that I got to yesterday. Step 104 of 109. There is a message that says "The current step may take a long time to complete. Please be patient." I was patient that step for over 4 hours yesterday before finally pulling the plug and restoring the site to where it was and where it is now. I don't know what they mean by "a long time" and I don't even know what that step is going. I've sent a support ticket to VBulletin asking that question but have received no response at this time. At least I figured out how to try this without taking the site down. What was happening yesterday was that overtime one of you tried getting on the site, I was getting emails about a database error. You folks are persistent. I have no idea how many hundreds of those emails I got.

Take it to the classifieds troublemaker.

Thanks folks...it's not about the money though.

Yes, they have a forum and I've posted some questions there but haven't gotten the right answers yet. As I sat here thinking about it this morning, I thunk another thought. That is VERY dangerous to me but there it is. So...I'm going to put the thought that I thunk into action and see if it works. Not sure when because I have to get to my real job now but soon....vewy vewy soon.

That is a possibility. I'm kind of the same way I am about taking my bike to a dealer though. I have a hard time letting somebody else mess with my stuff. Nobody cares about it as much as I do.

That was one of the things that I tried and will be looking further into. The problem is, the new version of the Vbulletin software uses a different database structure. I think that is what I ran into trying to upgrade. There are 109 steps to the upgrade. At step 104, it stalled. That step is trying to update setting tables. It sat there for a long time and when I looked in the Cpanel, it showed no process running. I assume that PHP timed out. Not sure yet. So the upgrade modifies the database but trying to import a database from a backup would not work...I don't think. What I did yesterday was to create a new database by copying the existing one and giving it a new name. That way I was able to try these things without corrupting the original.

That is exactly right. They can't make money on new versions if they continue to support the old versions that folks are happy with. Yesterday was a nightmare folks. I spent literally all day trying to upgrade the site. Tried many different ways but all failed. Many hours of sitting in from of the computer and waiting for steps to complete and etc. Finally got to the point last night where it showed everything was finally completed. At that point, you delete the install directory, enter your username and password for the admin panel and go there to make your final settings. Entered username and password and guess what? Completely blank white screen. home page, forum, admin panel....all white screens. Over the course of the day, I tried 3 or 4 different ways of doing it. The only time I actually got the site to come up with all the new software was with a complete clean install but it was just a blank forum. No users, no topics created, all old posts and information gone. So I started over again. Then the blank pages. At that point, I had been working on this thing for about 10 hours and I knew that enough was enough. I knew that because Eileen told me so. I just restored everything to the way it was when I started and called it a night. It must be done though. I will figure it out. I have to ask though, I know that a couple of you have told me that you are system admins and etc. but does anybody here have experience with VBulletin? I sure could have used somebody to bounce some questions and ideas off of. I posted a couple of questions to the official VBulletin forum and though I got a couple of responses, none of them helped.

OK folks...I've run into major problems trying to do this update. So....after many hours of doing things that I won't even try to explain, I have restored it as was for now. I'm beat and will try again probably tomorrow night. Sorry and than you for your patience.

Yes, because it's not created yet. Once the update is done though, I HOPE it will work. Getting ready to turn off the forum for a while. You folks go for a ride.

I know that some of you have this site bookmarked to go straight to the forum and others go to the home page. When I do the upgrade, I am going to try and do it in a way to minimize downtime. That may mean that the home page goes away before the forum does. I need you to bookmark the actual forum if you haven't done so already. http://www.venturerider.org/forum/ If you reach a point where that doesn't work, try this one. It will probably be the URL for the new forum http://www.venturerider.org/forum.php

I'm thinking that some of you missed my post last week about this change. I'm not upgrading the site because I think that it needs to be the latest and greatest software. I'm very happy with it the way it is. I can promise you that I would not even be thinking about this if there was a choice. The software running on the server is very obsolete now. The PHP version is what they call "end of life" and will no longer be supported. If there is a problem, crash, etc. of any kind, there is not even a copy of it on the system to restore. They have warned me that PHP must be updated. The problem is that this software is so old that it will not run on the updated version of the server software. Now this site is running on VBulletin version 3.8.7. They actually do have a version 3.8.8 now that is supposed to run on the newer PHP BUT....that is only half the issue for us. When I built this site over 10 years ago, I used VBulletin for the forum and a software named VBPortal for the home page. They integrate together and give us the total home page and forum integration that we currently have. I have made many upgrades over the years to keep it as current as possible but have run out of rope to keep it going as is. VBPortal is not even on the market any longer. They went out of business several years ago and I've had to cobble it together to work with various updates to VBulletin. This time though, I just don't have the time or smarts to do it. Making VBPortal work with the newer version of PHP is simply beyond my capabilities and would mean editing thousands of lines of programming code. So I am not doing this to force a change on you that you don't want. I'm doing it to keep the site running.

This is just a bit of notice. I THINK I'm going to try to update the site on Monday evening. Will let you know for sure before I do it. Very nervous about this. Will do a full backup and take every precaution before trying it. Things are going to be a lot different around here once I'm finished. You can take a look at the touring hog site to get an idea of what it will be like. It will be pretty basic once it is up and running. I want to get it fully functional and then will start adding as many of the features back that are possible. Many customizations here over the years. Most are not that important but some may be missed until I figure out a way to get some of them back. I am NOT looking forward to this but it has to be done. Actually thought about doing it this evening but if things go bad....my wife is not going to be happy with me spending the rest of the weekend on the computer. I think it is also time for a color change. Haven't decided what colors yet but am getting tired of the blue. HEY....the ORANGE at the touring hog site looks pretty good. Orange and black...yea....that sounds nice.

I can certainly help you folks out. I have thought about selling out and moving a bit further south. It is VERY safe where I'm located. Never an issue of any kind. So who wants to buy me out?

I see a lot of Wheel Horse mowers and tractors around here. Was curious and just looked at the Cleveland, OH Craigslist and there are quite a few listed there along with some accessories. They were bought out by Toro at some point and I don't think are near the tractor that they once were. There are some Toro models and some older ones listed there though. Those like you bought are tough old tractors. I have an old John Deere with an iron cylinder 8 HP Kohler that I use only for the snow blower. It's a tough old tractor too. It's a 110 model i I remember correctly. Would have to go outside and look and that's just too much trouble right now. I think it's a 72 model or something like that.

Yes it does because I have not edited it yet. Waiting for people to give me the dates so that I don't have to do it over and over again.

That's the plan at this time.

Yes, remove it or at least unbolt it and get it out of the way. When we did mine, we removed it completely. It can be done by just unbolting it and tying it up and out of the way without unhooking all the wires and etc.