phpBB3 Upgrade Notice for August 24, 2012

The following was posted on the CEFSG Forum this morning and is copied here for those that may not see it prior to the switch, currently scheduled for Tuesday August 28, 2012.

The testing program by Register.ca on the upgrade to the phpBB3 system is nearing completion. It is expected that the change over to the new system (from the old phpBB2 - which is no longer serviced) can be completed on Monday or Tuesday of next week. I have opted for Tuesday as it is generally unwise to make major changes on a Monday.

The main structure of the forum is now in phpBB3 but is not accessible by the general membership, while we are checking the individual components of the system.

We will follow a similar plan to what was used when we moved from the .COM to the .CA site, in that we will close down access to the CEFSG Forum while the transfer is being completed ([i]expected to be a period of about 3 hours - but assume there will be no access on Tuesday[/i]). During this period, also keep watch on the CEFSG Blog Site as that is where specific notices and updates will be posted:

http://cefresearch.blogspot.ca/

Three issues have been identified to date that may cause some problems with the transfer:

1. The PASSWORDS will apparently all be erased and will need to be re-entered manually. I am looking into details as to whether we can do this manually over the weekend so that some (many) will already be in place for Tuesday. I have not yet heard back from Register.ca on this issue. Also I do not know if we have everyone's password on file or if we will need to put in temporary passwords that are changed later. Watch for more information on that topic over the next few days.
2. There are about 200 existing posts (out of tens of thousands) that have characters that are neither English nor French and thus they will not transfer (update) correctly. The posts will remain but may have errors that may need to be corrected manually or ignored. We will have to wait and see what they are.
3. The format of phpBB3 is a bit different and so there are "new things to learn" to set up the new format. For example, the BBCode and HTML set up parameters are different so we have to figure those out and activate them. I am hoping that we can start on that ahead of time, again awaiting an answer from Register.ca. If the "system" of phpBB3 remains as it is now and only the database is updated on Tuesday then some of the issues can be addressed prior to the move.

The new system will be on the main CEFSG site at http://cefresearch.ca and the main page will be accessible at http://cefresearch.ca/index.html but the page for the phpBB2 system will be deactivated which is currently at http://cefresearch.ca/phpBB2 (the default of which is http://cefresearch.ca/phpBB2/index.php). As soon as the phpBB3 system is active we will have an automatic forward to the new site (or post a link to the new site if that fails - which it should not).

If I did it correct this time, you should be able to respond to posts in this sub-forum. I will place a copy of this notice on the blog.

Richard