vBulletin 3.0.0 Beta 3 AVAILABLE

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  • Kier
    Former Lead Developer, vBulletin
    • Sep 2000
    • 8179

    vBulletin 3.0.0 Beta 3 AVAILABLE

    vBulletin 3.0.0 Beta 3 - Public Beta

    It's been a long wait, but it's finally here. vBulletin license holders are encouraged to download and try out vBulletin 3 for the first time in the form of Beta 3.

    On behalf of the whole vBulletin team, I would like to thank all our customers for being so patient during the long development process this version has undergone. We hope you find that the wait was worth it.

    As a 'thank you' to our customers for waiting this long, we will be extending the expiry date of most customers' licenses for three months. If you have a currently active license, you will find that the expiry date is now three months later than it was before, and if your license expired after March 31st 2003, you will find that it is now active again, and will expire three months from today.

    The purpose of the public beta is to allow you, administrators and users of vBulletin boards to get acquainted with the system before its final release, and to find any remaining bugs that may need to be fixed. To that end, we hope that some of you will upgrade your vBulletin installations to vBulletin 3 in order to help with the testing procedures and to identify any remaining issues. It goes without saying that the more boards that install the new version, the better the feedback we will get on the system and the quicker we will be able to deliver the final 'Gold' version.

    This is a beta release, so please keep all questions relating to vBulletin 3 on the forums, rather than using the official support ticket system. Any tickets submitted that relate to beta software will be redirected to the forums.

    Here are some things you should know about this release:
    • The new style is not yet complete. The templates are based upon the old vBulletin 2 templates, so you should expect to see the new versions at the Release Candidate stage.
    • Due to the new templates not being complete at this stage, the templates still contain hard-coded text elements. This means that it is (almost) pointless to translate the templates, as they will change before the final release.
    • The control panels are fully integrated with the new language system. You can start to translate all phrases that you find in the language system and these translations will not be lost or made redundant when you upgrade to the final version. In fact, we would actively encourage non-english boards to attempt to use the translation tools so that we can get feedback on any changes that need to be made.
    • Right-to-left language support is included, but there are some minor layout issues that we hope to have fixed before too long.
    If bugs are found in this release, we will wait until a sufficient number are fixed and then update the members' area to Beta 4, then Beta 5 etc. until we are confident that there are no remaining bugs. At this point we will put out a 'Release Candidate' version, which we consider to be as close as possible to the 'Gold' version. If bugs are found in the release candidate, we will do a second release candidate and so on, until we are as sure as possible that the current release candidate can be certified as 'Stable'. When this happens, the current release candidate will be renamed as 'Gold', or vBulletin 3.0.0.

    Things that will change between this version and the first Release Candidate:
    • The biggest change between this version and the first Release Candidate will be the templates. Some template names and template contents will almost certainly change, so for this reason you should not be too precious with your style customizations with this version. By all means play with the style system and get used to the way it works, but be aware that major customizations will have to be re-done at the Release Candidate or Gold stage.
    • We plan to work towards integrating more processors into vBulletin for paid subscriptions. At present, the only stable processor is Paypal, but there are plans to integrate WorldPay and Nochex before the final release.
    • Writers of hacks should be aware that at the moment, there is code in the system to re-register Get/Post/Cookie variables as Globals for any scripts that do not have NO_REGISTER_GLOBALS defined as a constant. However, this code will be removed in a forthcoming release, so you should make sure that any variables you expect to be submitted via GPC are referenced through the new globalize() function, which you will find in functions.php.
    Please note that the vBulletin License Agreement allows you to run both a public installation of vBulletin and a non-public installation for your own testing purposes. However, the 'non-public' part of this license means that you may not run both a public vBulletin 2 installation and a public vBulletin 3 installation at the same time. The license allows for only one public installation of vBulletin.

    Below you will find instructions detailing how to upgrade a vBulletin 2 board to vBulletin 3, and instructions for installing a fresh vBulletin 3.
    In conclusion, as it is customary to say around these parts, Off to the members' area!
  • Kier
    Former Lead Developer, vBulletin
    • Sep 2000
    • 8179

    #2
    Upgrade Instructions

    The vBulletin 2 to vBulletin 3 upgrade script will upgrade your vBulletin 2 installation to vBulletin 3. You will not lose any data. Your vB2 styles will not be usable in vB3, but they will not be deleted, they will be kept in the database for your reference.

    To upgrade, to vBulletin 3 your existing installation must be running vBulletin 2.2.9 or 2.3.0.

    If you want to upgrade your forums to vBulletin 3 Beta 3, you should first close your board via the vBulletin 2 admin control panel, and then make a complete back-up your database using the following command from the system command line:
    Code:
    mysqldump --opt -u[color=blue]username[/color] -p [color=red]databasename[/color] > [color=red]databasename[/color].sql
    (Where username is your MySQL username and databasename is the name of your database)

    When your database backup is complete you should back up your existing vBulletin 2 PHP files and images, just in case you want to revert back to vBulletin 2 for whatever reason.

    Before you proceed, you should run the Database Conflict Detection Script to make sure that the upgrade script will not fail due to any differences from the default vBulletin 2 installation in your database. If any conflicts are detected, you should resolve them before proceeding with the upgrade.

    You should now LOG OUT of your vBulletin 2 board if you are currently logged in.

    Next, unzip the vBulletin zip file you downloaded from the members' area to your hard disk and then open the upload/includes folder. In this you will find config.php.new. You should rename this to config.php and then open it in a text editor.

    The config.php file is commented throughout, so you should be able to work out what values to enter for the variables yourself. When you have finished, save the file back into the upload/includes/ folder as config.php.

    Next, you should delete all vBulletin 2 files, including PHP, CSS and style files, along with any images. You should then upload the contents of the 'upload' folder to your server.

    When the upload is complete, point your browser at http://www.domain.com/forum/install/upgrade.php where www.domain.com/forum/ is the URL of your vBulletin files.

    Please note that we have found that due to the large number of pages that the upgrade script loads, and the speed at which it loads them, certain browser plug-ins can cause the browser to crash out for various reasons. The Google Toolbar is one such plug-in, and we have seen browsers crashing due to the amount of browsing statistics being sent back to Google. If you have plug-ins of this kind installed, turn them off while running the upgrade script.

    Running upgrade.php will automatically load the correct upgrade script and present you with a message, which you should read carefully. When you have finished reading, click the 'Next Step' button at the bottom of the page to start the upgrade process. When each page has completed its processing, it will either give you a 'Next Step' button to click, or automatically load the next page, depending on the type of job the page in question is doing.

    Some steps will take quite a while to run, especially on large boards with large numbers of posts/threads. Please be patient and allow the script to complete.

    If your browser crashes during the upgrade, or if you are on dial-up and your connection is dropped (etc.) then to restart the upgrade script simply point your browser at install/upgrade.php again and it will work out where you got to in the process and restart the process at the appropriate step.

    For the most part, you do not need to do anything except click the 'Next Step' buttons to keep the upgrade script running. However, there are a few steps where the script will require your input to continue. One of these is the step where the script asks you to tell it which of your usergroups you use for 'Banned' users. It is important to select these carefully in order to make the enhanced vBulletin 3 banning system work. Additionally, towards the end of the upgrade, as the cookie and user format is converted from vB2 format to vB3 format, you will be required to log-in again a few times. This is the expected behavior.

    When the script is complete, it will tell you to delete some files, and then redirect you to the Admin Control Panel. You should log in to this and proceed to the Import and Maintenance section of the control panel, where you should run the Rebuild Search Index and Rebuild Statistics controls. Both of these functions will take a quite a long time to run on larger boards.
    Last edited by Kier; Fri 13 Jun '03, 10:47am.

    Comment

    • Kier
      Former Lead Developer, vBulletin
      • Sep 2000
      • 8179

      #3
      Installation Instructions

      Installing a fresh copy of vBulletin 3 is far more simple than upgrading an existing vB2 installation to vB3.

      First, unzip the vBulletin zip file you downloaded from the members' area to your hard disk and then open the upload/includes folder. In this you will find config.php.new. You should rename this to config.php and then open it in a text editor.

      The config.php file is commented throughout, so you should be able to work out what values to enter for the variables yourself. When you have finished, save the file and then upload the entire contents of the 'upload' folder to your web server.

      When this is done, point your browser at http://www.domain.com/forums/install/install.php (where www.domain.com/forums/ is the URL of your vBulletin) and proceed to click the 'Next Step' buttons until the script asks to fill in some addresses and names for your board.

      After you have done this, the installer will ask you for some details to set you up as the administrator of the new vBulletin. A few more clicks and the script will be finished.

      Before proceeding to the Admin Control Panel, you must delete the install/install.php and install/upgrade1.php files from your webserver. You may then enter the control panel and start working on your new vBulletin!

      The entire installation process should take no more than five minutes.
      Last edited by Kier; Fri 13 Jun '03, 9:39am.

      Comment

      • Kier
        Former Lead Developer, vBulletin
        • Sep 2000
        • 8179

        #4
        The official discussion thread:



        The license extensions referred to above are currently being executed. Please be patient!

        Comment

        • Kier
          Former Lead Developer, vBulletin
          • Sep 2000
          • 8179

          #5
          Important!

          If you have already downloaded the vB3 zip, and you find that it contains a folder called 'betascripts', please DELETE that folder from your webserver.

          Comment

          • Kier
            Former Lead Developer, vBulletin
            • Sep 2000
            • 8179

            #6
            Just a note for those who have upgraded (rather than installed a fresh board):

            You may notice that pre-upgrade threads do not show their thread preview tooltip on forumdisplay. If you want to fix that, go to the Admin Control Panel, scroll the nav panel down to Import & Maintenance, choose Update Counters and then run the Rebuild Thread Information section.

            Your thread previews will be updated for all threads.

            Comment

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