Me2Be
Mon 29th Jan '01, 12:26pm
Here's a story, of a lovely lady, who was busy with three boards of her own. There were 3 boards, working altogether, and never alone... LOL
I converted one of my offshoot boards last night to VB2.0 and I wanted to share my experience with all of you so you can get an idea of what to expect when you convert.
I got a copy of the software on Friday and created a test board on my system. This gave me the weekend to play with all the templates (and there are quite a few of them!). Since I'm a perfectionist on how things look on my board (I don't use the default layout), I spent the entire weekend working on my templates.
Last night at about 7:30pm I closed down my board. I backed up the old software (just in case) as well as backed up my database. Then I uploaded all the new files, and ran the upgrade file.
The upgrade file was much simpler than I expected. There are a lot of steps (about 25 or so) because it converts many of the hacks we had on 1.1.5 (polls, pms, avatars, etc) and since I didn't have a few of those, I was just clicking "next step".
I went to my control panel and set up my options, clicked "go to my home page" and guess what! It was there!! I was back online within an hour! (and that's just because I went through everything before I brought it back online).
The only problem was it was using the purple Vbulletin variables so I just took a couple of minutes, changed my colors and that was it.
I reindexed the search (which took about 20 minutes for 75,000 posts) brought it back online and that was it!
It went much smoother than I had expected!! I had set up a board feedback forum where my visitors could ask questions and report problems. By the time I went to bed it had 49 posts (and mostly simple questions like "how do I do this"). When I woke up this morning, I expected about 200 posts in there.
I got online this morning and first breathed a sigh of relief that I was still online :) Then I saw about 50 people on my board and only 69 total posts in the Feedback forum. The only true error was the spellcheck (and that's because I forgot to upload a file) and that was it!
My visitors have gotten the hang of this very quickly, and absolutely love it!
Just when we thought the Boards couldnt get any bigger or better - you've totally outdone yourselves! Kudos to all involved for a job well done!
Wooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooo! I love it! Great job you guys!
and that's just a few of the comments we've gotten!!
I am so HAPPY that the upgrade was so smooth and so easy!!
When you get your hands on the software, I definitely recommend creating a test board first though. It will give your moderators a chance to test out all of the new Mod features (sticky/merge/split/cp panel, etc) as well as give you time to change your templates to how you want it to look.
Then when you cut over to the new board, just download your templates from the test board and upload them to your new board! (Yes, I said upload/download - no more copy & pasting of templates!)
If you have any questions on the upgrade, let me know!
I converted one of my offshoot boards last night to VB2.0 and I wanted to share my experience with all of you so you can get an idea of what to expect when you convert.
I got a copy of the software on Friday and created a test board on my system. This gave me the weekend to play with all the templates (and there are quite a few of them!). Since I'm a perfectionist on how things look on my board (I don't use the default layout), I spent the entire weekend working on my templates.
Last night at about 7:30pm I closed down my board. I backed up the old software (just in case) as well as backed up my database. Then I uploaded all the new files, and ran the upgrade file.
The upgrade file was much simpler than I expected. There are a lot of steps (about 25 or so) because it converts many of the hacks we had on 1.1.5 (polls, pms, avatars, etc) and since I didn't have a few of those, I was just clicking "next step".
I went to my control panel and set up my options, clicked "go to my home page" and guess what! It was there!! I was back online within an hour! (and that's just because I went through everything before I brought it back online).
The only problem was it was using the purple Vbulletin variables so I just took a couple of minutes, changed my colors and that was it.
I reindexed the search (which took about 20 minutes for 75,000 posts) brought it back online and that was it!
It went much smoother than I had expected!! I had set up a board feedback forum where my visitors could ask questions and report problems. By the time I went to bed it had 49 posts (and mostly simple questions like "how do I do this"). When I woke up this morning, I expected about 200 posts in there.
I got online this morning and first breathed a sigh of relief that I was still online :) Then I saw about 50 people on my board and only 69 total posts in the Feedback forum. The only true error was the spellcheck (and that's because I forgot to upload a file) and that was it!
My visitors have gotten the hang of this very quickly, and absolutely love it!
Just when we thought the Boards couldnt get any bigger or better - you've totally outdone yourselves! Kudos to all involved for a job well done!
Wooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooo! I love it! Great job you guys!
and that's just a few of the comments we've gotten!!
I am so HAPPY that the upgrade was so smooth and so easy!!
When you get your hands on the software, I definitely recommend creating a test board first though. It will give your moderators a chance to test out all of the new Mod features (sticky/merge/split/cp panel, etc) as well as give you time to change your templates to how you want it to look.
Then when you cut over to the new board, just download your templates from the test board and upload them to your new board! (Yes, I said upload/download - no more copy & pasting of templates!)
If you have any questions on the upgrade, let me know!