BowlingChat Upgrade to PHP7.2/phpBB 3.2 - *COMPLETED*

[MegaMav]

I've been informed by our service provider that we will be forced to upgrade to PHP7.2 sometime this month.
What this means:

1. The website will be reduced down to the most used sections. Frontpage, Forum, Wiki. The chat system, map and BCU will be gone.
2. The look will change, the theme will be different and singular.
3. BowlingChat overall will be faster, about 2x faster than now. I think its pretty quick now, wait until the upgrade is over!
4. The wiki and forum will be 2 separate accounts. Right now, they are bridged, but only a very select few users update and contribute to the wiki. I will be turning registrations off for the wiki and editing will be granted on an individual basis.
5. Reputations will be going away, its not compatible with the new forum version.
6. The groups will be reduced and reshuffled. Trusted source group will change and will be based on quality of posts and final reputation count. We will have the following groups: Registered Users (Default), Pro Shops (Open), Certified Coaches (Restricted), Trusted Source (Restricted). Trusted Source group hasnt been maintained by Mo for years, we're going to start out with the top 10 (except me) user contributed rep point users, as of now (no admin boosting points like my 1000 to JMerrell) in the group and go from there. (see attached)

It shouldnt be a surprise when I say we're less busy now, mostly due to facebook, but I want to keep the ball rolling. I still think we're a better user experience here than facebook in terms of documentation, learning and respectful, intelligent discussion.

When will this happen? I'll be removing reputations this weekend. The upgrade date is unknown, but expect it to be on a weekend and it may span the whole weekend. Hopefully I can give some notice. The board will be disabled while we upgrade. When the upgrade is done, you will know. The website will appear completely different.

Please send your best wishes for a smooth upgrade.

Your friendly neighborhood website administrator,

-Eric

[scotts33]

Thanks for what you do Eric! Appreciate your hard work and what you personally have done for the bowling community. I for one don't use Facebook because of all it's issues ie. Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, etc, etc. So, I find your forum is still the best choice for bowling forums and chat. Sorry to see the chat part of BC going away.

Scott

[ICURNVS]

Thanks for what you do Eric! Appreciate your hard work and what you personally have done for the bowling community. I for one don't use Facebook because of all it's issues ie. Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, etc, etc. So, I find your forum is still the best choice for bowling forums and chat. Sorry to see the chat part of BC going away.

Scott

Yes will be very sad to see the Chat disappear.

Scotts33, Over the last 4-5 years I have enjoyed our mostly daily chats not just about bowling but just everyday life. Hopefully we will find a venue to stay in touch.

[elgavachon]

Glad you are keeping it alive. You can't get this much personal touch on facebook. Good luck.

[Starion]

Good call with the upgrade. Very much needed. This is def. one of the older of the forums I'm active in. I don't envy your challenge in trimming the fat and reintegrating to the new setup, but appreciate it! Lots of great content here for bowlers wanting to learn & up their experience like me.

I'm building my own forum currently (for my trade) and decided on myBB > phpBB. PM me if interested in talking forums. I found a forum completely for forum owners...theadminzone.com
Pretty awesome source for everything an owner might want/need; plugins; themes; you name it. The have a subforum all for phpBB. ~Best!

[kajmk]

Glad you are keeping it alive. You can't get this much personal touch on facebook. Good luck.

Thanks Eric for all your work over the years.

Thanks to all who have made bowling chat a helpful and caring neighborhood.

[MegaMav]

Thanks guys, this part of the job of administrator isnt glamorous.
Setting up for a mock upgrade next weekend.

Upgrade prep progress:
Reputations removed
Chat system disabled
Forum/Wiki bridge disabled

If you are a wiki editor, please test your wiki login.
If you cannot login, let me know, I'll set a password for you.

Thanks.

[snick]

Good luck with the upgrade; technology can be a challenge.

[MegaMav]

Mock upgrade is done with only a few hitches.
Kelly Te Huna helped out with tweaking the youtube tag to work on the new system. Thanks Kelly!
Looks like the REAL upgrade will be next weekend, I'll be taking the board down 1-2 hours before I start to make sure all connections are flushed out. When everything is back online you'll know.
Thank you for your patience.

[Maine Man]

Mav,

Thanks for everything you do! I don't post as much as I used to on the old, old forum haha, but always read and keep up with everyone's posts on here.

[deanchamp]

I hope it all goes smoothly Eric

[ballspoint]

Dont cock it up , as this is the best site around, thanks for what you do.

[MegaMav]

Welcome to the new forum!

Some notes:

The youtube tag has been deprecated in favor of an instant URL parsing extension that will instantly embed media content from many websites including:

ABC News
Allocine
Amazon Product
audioBoom
Audiomack
Bandcamp
BBC News
BitChute
Bleacher Report Videos
Break
Brightcove
CBS News Video
Clyp
CNBC
CNN
CNNMoney
CodePen
CollegeHumor
Comedy Central
Coub
Dailymotion
Democracy Now!
Dotsub
dumpert
eBaum's World
8tracks
ESPN
Facebook
Flickr
Fox News
FOX Sports
Funny or Die
Gamespot
GameTrailers
Getty Images
Gfycat
Gifs.com
GitHub Gist
Global News
GoFundMe
Google Drive
Google+
Google Sheets
Healthguru
Hudl
Hulu
HumorTV
IGN
IMDb
Imgur
Indiegogo
Instagram
Internet Archive
İzlesene
JW Platform
Kontinental Hockey League (КХЛ)
Kickstarter
Libsyn
LiveCap
Liveleak
Livestream
Mail.Ru
Medium
Metacafe
Mixcloud
MLB
Mod DB
MRCTV
MSNBC
National Geographic Channel
National Geographic Video
NBC News
NBC Sports
NHL Videos and Highlights
NPR
The New York Times Video
Odnoklassniki
Orfium
Pastebin
Pinterest
Plays.tv
Podbean
Prezi
Reddit threads and comments
Rutube
SchoolTube
Scribd
Sendvid
SlideShare
snotr
SoundCloud
Sportsnet
Spotify
Steam store
Stitcher
Straw Poll
Streamable
Streamja
Team Coco
TED Talks
Telegram
The Atlantic Video
The Guardian (obsolete)
The Onion
TikTok
TinyPic videos
TMZ
Trailer Addict
Tumblr
247Sports
Twitch
Twitter
Ustream
VBOX7
Veoh
Vevo
Video Detective
VideoPress
Vimeo
Vine
VK
Vocaroo
Vox
Washington Post Video
WorldStarHipHop
The Wall Street Journal Online
XboxClips
Gamer DVR
Yahoo! Screen
Youku
YouTube

All you need to do is paste the url and submit your post! If the site is parsed, it will automatically embed for you.

An artifact of us moving on from the old deprecated youtube embedder is there will be some broken links from the old tags.
Some will render video with the page, some wont and will show a warning at the top of the page.
I will have to manually change posts from the old youtube tag to

Code: Select all

[yt][/yt]

and reparse the post to render video and get rid of the warning.
Its the only way we can move on and still keep the old videos in tact in posts.
If you own these errored posts, please edit them yourself.
If not, eventually I will convert it by hand. Many hands make light work!
Hopefully there wont be too many!

We're running very light on features now, but very fast on speed.
I know BowlingChat used to be really busy and we're not so much now, but I still think this is the best place on the internet for intelligent discussion, getting help, searching posts for knowledge and reference materials with the wiki.

Have a look around, let me know if you see anything odd. Posts with the old youtube tag will have "phpBB Debug" warnings at the top.
I will have to update those manually to remove that and restore the video.

We are more mobile friendly now too. Check us out on your mobile device on the go!
Enjoy, and thank you for supporting BowlingChat.net!

[JimH]

It seems to have gone very well Eric.

Another job well done.

Thanks

[rkj4243]

Looks much brighter, and thank you for your efforts here at BowlingChat.

[MegaMav]

Thanks guys it can be hard work being an administrator, knowing people appreciate the work keeps me going.
Check us out on your phone too! Much more mobile friendly design now.

[kajmk]

Looking Good.
Your job is like an offensive lineman, hard, tough, sometimes dirty.
When you do a good job your like the invisible man.
Thanks for your diligence and keeping the backfield upright and healthy.

A BIG GREEN HIGH FIVE TO THE WIZARD BEHIND THE CURTAIN !

[ballspoint]

Great to see the upgrade went well, but if i may say the site is hard to read.
It may be the back ground colour and/or the font colour, or too many different font colours/sizing.
My son is a graphic designer, on his next visit home i will ask his opinion and pass on.
Other wise all good, i am on here every day catching up on the comments made.

Just to add the parts i find hard to read is the board index page, once on those pages its the topics and last post columns, were there is alot of fonts and colours.

[JJakobsen]

Had to test this, wow, this function is really handy, great work with the upgrade!

[TheChief]

Looks good Mav. Just spent 3 hours looking around. It's been way too long since I've been here or posted. This will change. Sorry I didn't bowl this week. Just too much going on.