As you may be aware the current member homepage system (profile, blogs and gallery) has a number of bugs and quirks, the person who wrote it no longer works for JubMedia, and nobody else has managed to get their heads around it all. The other problem is that a lot of modifications were made to the vBulletin forum software to link it in, which nobody has a record of, which makes updating vBulletin very difficult. However the next main release of vBulletin (v3.7.x) includes a homepage system with many of the same features as our current one. It certainly allows an extended profile, blogs and galleries. There is some information about this and the other additions to vBulletin v3.7.x here http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=249460. The plan is to get rid of the current homepage system, upgrade to vBulletin 3.7 and use that homepage system instead. The biggest part of that job will be transferring all the existing photos, blog entries, comments, and profile details etc across to the new system. That will need some PHP and MySQL code which we will have to write specifically for the job. vBulletin v3.7 development is currently at Release Candidate 2. There is no set timescale for its release but I would expect it to be in the next month or two. I am busy for the next two weekends but will download the latest version later this month and start working on the transferring code etc later this month. I will also need to make changes to the Members section and the user info code for the front page to tie in with the new system. So I cannot give an accurate timescale at the moment. My best guess is the end of May or into June.
I wish I was more of a codemonkey. I would help for free. My skills are pretty useless at the moment. :[
The reason it will take some time is that there is only really me doing it and I work during the week and am busy most weekends at the moment. If we have any PHP/MySQL programmers here (maybe at something a bit beyond beginner level) who want to help out - for free - let me know!
Based on the current rate of progress I estimate that the update will take place on the weekend 31st May/1st June. However it could go back a week if I run into any serious problems. A lot of work has gone into it, and quite a bit still needs to be done (all of this weekend and all of next weekend probably), but progress is good so far. I will post an update when I know the date and times the site will be closed for.
An update: The upgrade/conversion process and scripts etc are about 95% complete, and the remaining bits will be finished this week. I have created a test site which the mods have access to, so hopefully we can get some instructions or notes for everyone. Martin has volunteered to do this and Micah has offered to check them. The update process took about two hours on the test site, but I expect this live one to take a bit longer, probably around 2.5 hours (due to the slightly slower connection to the server in the USA). The current plan is to start the update at 10am UK time (GMT+1) on Sunday 1st June. The forum will be closed while this is happening, and the chatroom probably won't work either. I will post a confirmed date and time etc later this week. -----oOo----- One important note: The update process SHOULD preserve hidden galleries and hidden blog posts, however I cannot guarantee that. If there is something in your gallery or blog that must remain hidden I suggest you remove it for now and upload it again once the update is completed. This would avoid embarrassment if it didn't stay hidden.
