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Photopost Classifieds will not be used on the new site. I am going with a different solution for Classifieds. I've fought issues with the Photopost software for years and am taking this opportunity to move on. All ads will have to be resubmitted. Sorry.

Here is a link that you can use to get to the Chat Room for now. http://host718.123flashchat.com/venturerider/123flashchat.php?init_group=venturerider

You can use this for now. http://host718.123flashchat.com/venturerider/123flashchat.php?init_group=venturerider

Just tried and logged in with no problem. Not going to worry about it right now though. Just login as guest until I get things changed over.

They are already easy.

LOL...it won't be orange. I was just joking about that.

One other thing. The major change won't happen until tomorrow. I just don't have it in me tonight. Messed with this until about 3:30 this morning and my alarm went off at 6:00 to get to work. Got to get some rest tonight. Hopefully it will function OK as is now.

Well one great new feature of the new version is that it has an autosave feature. So if you are typing a long post and something happens it saves every so often. Some things will be missing but that is what it is. You will see some strange things happening here right now. I'm removing some plugins that aren't compatible with either upgrade. The smilies are already messed up. Also the side menus and etc. are gone. Some of these things will be put back eventually after it is all updated.

Well here's the deal folks. I have the mirror site running fine on the updated version of VBulletin. Now that it is done and am confident about porting it over to the live site, VBulletin has come up with an update to our current software. It adds no new features but allows it to run on the newer versions of the server software that needs to be installed. It may STILL not be an option because it may break other things, like our home page which is a different software but integrated with the forum. I actually just installed the new 3.8.8 version here and I can see one thing already that is not working correctly. It's just minor addon though. My question is. What is YOUR preference. Do you prefer to stay with what we have IF it is possible or should I go ahead with the newer version that I am running at the Touring Hogs site?

Well, I think I am close to making the switch. I worked on the test site until about 3:30 this morning. Once it goes live, there will still be a ton of work to do on it. After upgrading the test site to the new software version, I then had to get rid of all the modifications that we use here but wouldn't run on the new software. That would have been a nightmare had I actually be asleep. Most of them had "uninstall" routines but I now know that most are very lacking in actually removing everything. I ended u searching and manually deleting a lot of orphan files that got left behind and were causing some major issues with database crashes and etc. Our current classifieds will be gone. I have already installed a new classifieds system and though you may like it better or not as well, it co-exists better with the new software. All classifieds will be lost so any of you who have things listed for sale will have to submit new ones after the move. There is not yet an interface with the chat room but I'll be working on that. In the meantime, Flyinfool has a link to the html version of our current chatroom that he hopefully will post after the move. Home page is just barely there for now. I will be working on that over the next days and weeks also. As for the style? I mean colors, layout and etc. You may or may not like it but it is just something that I threw together pretty quickly. Likely to change fairly soon or at least give you selectable options for colors and etc. I KNOW there is going to be some complaining. I expect it and apologize but this was something that I really had no choice about.

Yep. It's OK. Very stable. Will be updating it soon but the next one will be seamless. This one is hard because of major changes from 3.8.

You folks STOP that. Don't try to login, just wanted you to see that progress is being made. Probably sometime tomorrow, I will be at at the point of converting this live site and just wanted you to see that it will be different.

Look again. I've been working on the colors. There will be a default option though.

Sorry...it is turned off. I thought you would be able to see it but just not post. Oh well...just have to wait I guess.

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.