Old AO was cool

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think about the time involved as well as the amount of effort it takes to repair and rebuild something.

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I think one of the best comments to come out of this thread has been the one (or two, maybe) concerning the downtime, and how this should not have been an issue were there a separate, backed-up version of the site where this new upgrade could be rolled out onto. It's worth the time to create another environment for testing purposes... that way downtime does not occur at all.

Concerning the changes, I don't much care about the looks and feel of the site, though I always did like the AntiPoints system. Call me a noob or whatever, but I enjoyed that aspect of the site... it's what made me stay in the initial days of my joining up to the site (many years ago), and is certainly what made AO so much different in my eyes. If you study psychology, you can see that reward systems have nothing to do simply with "children" or "kids," but is in fact a motivator in all states of life. Why do something if there is little reward? Increase the reward, then you increase the risk (time, in this case) a person is willing to undertake, thus increasing the output.

I think it's interesting what some people are saying about how the site is "free" and how we all should give the folks a break. The site is not free. While we don't pay anything to use it, we see advertisements at the top of every page. The maintainers are paid by the users viewing those ads. This is a company, a business, etc. It is in *their* best interest to keep the community happy, or else what happens? There is no more community, and no more viewers of ads, and no more money, then no more AO at all. So, complaints should be received with open hearts and open minds. If someone is willing to put forth their time and effort to say something, then apparently they care at least somewhat about AO's future (minus those who do just like to see themselves rant). These are people you want to hold onto, and these are those who you want to at least try to please and not shun.

While this may all seem complicated, it's actually quite basic. This is basic business, basic (group and personal) pscyhology, and basic programming standards.

Business: advertisements, community members, etc.
Psychology: the community's reactions, individually and as a whole.
Programming standards: rolling out a site when it hasn't been fully tested on a dev platform.

Fix these three issues, and there will be very little problems the next time an upgrade is deemed necessary.

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Originally Posted by jehnx

Fix these three issues, and there will be very little problems the next time an upgrade is deemed necessary.

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Because of this upgrade you really shouldn't have any downtime in the future upgrades. You won't be dealing with a version of vB so hacked to hell and so antiquated there is no easy way to deal with it.

That's not possible folks. Think a minute. The database transfer alone took 48straight hrs to do. What would happen to all those posts made to the live forum, during that time? Would they be transferred? Of course not.

Christina is correct (and thank you). Now that the version isn't a dozen releases old with more customizations than I have hair on my chest, this issue won't occur again. Downtime will be approximately 1 or 2 hrs.

I trust Christina's opinion (since I've known her for a long time), and I trust that JPnyc is not trying to screw anyone over, as it would be against the goals of the site, likely. I appreciate you guys responding; it's certainly possible that I'm underestimating the task of upgrading these forums and whatnot. It's never taken me very long, but my userbases have never been nearly as large as those here at AO.

That said, I hope you guys look at the other two points I made in my previous post, as they are equally as important as the coding comment, IMO.

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Originally Posted by jehnx

I trust Christina's opinion (since I've known her for a long time), and I trust that JPnyc is not trying to screw anyone over, as it would be against the goals of the site, likely. I appreciate you guys responding; it's certainly possible that I'm underestimating the task of upgrading these forums and whatnot. It's never taken me very long, but my userbases have never been nearly as large as those here at AO.

That said, I hope you guys look at the other two points I made in my previous post, as they are equally as important as the coding comment, IMO.

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Jehnx, but consider the work in the project you are working on, and even then, there is a lot of work with that too. Lots of bugfixes, etc...

No job like that is easy.

*Hugs Jehnx long time no see man.

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Originally Posted by jehnx

I trust Christina's opinion (since I've known her for a long time), and I trust that JPnyc is not trying to screw anyone over, as it would be against the goals of the site, likely. I appreciate you guys responding; it's certainly possible that I'm underestimating the task of upgrading these forums and whatnot. It's never taken me very long, but my userbases have never been nearly as large as those here at AO.

That said, I hope you guys look at the other two points I made in my previous post, as they are equally as important as the coding comment, IMO.

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We are ignoring your other two points completely.


/laughs j/k

It's been a long time *huge hugs*
(weren't you banned? or is the chemo really eating my brain?)

It really had very little to do with the size of the DB. It had more to do with the fact that vbulletin stopped supporting the version we had here YEARS ago, and so the script wasn't intended to import from that version to begin with. Added to that was the fact that some of the customizations made to this site included changes to the database tables themselves, and you have a situation where fields must be imported individually with custom written scripts. That's what we had to do.

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Originally Posted by JPnyc

It really had very little to do with the size of the DB. It had more to do with the fact that vbulletin stopped supporting the version we had here YEARS ago, and so the script wasn't intended to import from that version to begin with. Added to that was the fact that some of the customizations made to this site included changes to the database tables themselves, and you have a situation where fields must be imported individually with custom written scripts. That's what we had to do.

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Now with the site finally migrated and working, now there is tons of work getting everything tidied up and stuff.

That is a ton of work too. :(

DP, Christina: *hugs!*

Yeah, I was banned at one point a long time ago, but eventually they let me back in. I don't know why, actually, hehe.. either way, I only pop in about once per 4 months or so now-a-days.

I hope you guys are doing well, but I guess we should probably go to PM after this one so we don't ruin the thread, hehe. I've definitely missed both of you.. :)