Category: Web

It had been a while since I have tried to upgrade the MyBB software for my bulletin board. They just released a major upgrade, so it was important to get up-to-date (I think). Here’s what I needed to do:

First, shut the bulletin board down temporarily.

Second, backup all the files. There is a control panel that lets me download a backup file, but I can also do a backup to the server, which I think would work better. Best to do both. Also it is best to download copies of settings.php and config.php in the inc folder, just to be safe.

Download the software. I thought there was a way to do this through cPanel, but maybe not. Instead I just downloaded it to my hard drive and then uploaded to the forum folder. Fortunately, myBB is very, very small, only about a megabyte.

Using cPanel’s File Manager, extract the installation file into a temp folder. Then, using File Manager again (my FTP software wouldn’t do this because it won’t overwrite directories with files in them), copy all of the files in the temp/upload folder into the mybb folder, overwriting just about everything.

Now set some of the file permissions per the instructions

Now, in a web browser, go to the forum URL /install/upgrade.php and follow the instructions.

Clean up. Delete the install folder, the zip file, and the temp folder. Reset permissions on config and settings to 666.

At work we use these really old programs written in the early 80’s to take input and create drawings that we use on our plans. This was seriously cutting edge technology back in the day, using Fortran programs to create electronic files. Over the years the company that makes the drafting software has made a lot of changes and we kept paying consultants to update our programs so they would still work. The guy who originally wrote the programs went on to other things, not least of which was becoming second in charge of our agency before leaving to become a consultant.

Continue reading “I Made a Wiki”

As someone who sometimes gets money for internet ads, I don’t mind ads on websites, but I hate pop-ups and pop-unders. So I keep those blocked. And I also don’t like the ads that expand over the content of the web page. Usually these ads only expand if your mouse is over them and once you move the mouse out of the way, the ad shrinks back down. So I never did anything about that. But today I was looking up information about HDTV receivers that could also record (my HDTV receiver doesn’t work anymore and my TV can’t unscramble HD by itself). I was on a discussion area and there was an ad that would expand all by itself every now and then. You could click close, but you had to keep clicking on it. I thought I would block traffic from doubleclick.com who were producing the ad, which I remembered being pretty easy, but I couldn’t do it in either Firefox or McAfee after looking around a little. I did a search and found software called AdBlock, but then found something called Flashblock which only blocks content made for Adobe Flash player. The good thing is it replaces the ad with a Play icon so if you run across Flash content that you actually want, you can hit play and see it. I found it on Mozilla’s website, so I figure it must be okay.

The city commissioner that I wrote to about setting up a bulletin board, mentioned me starting the board in his electronic newsletter on Friday. About 10 people signed up that day and I picked up a few more yesterday. I figure about 20 people is the critical mass where they can get conversations going and get some word of mouth (it shows 19 users right now, but 3 of those are me). Also if you Google “Avondale Estates forum” (not in quotes) then the page shows up on the first page of results. So Google at least has me indexed.

 

The manual process of activating members has been fun. I send a standard e-mail to people who have signed up asking them for their real name, address, and phone number. This verifies who they are (kind of; I’m not actually calling them so they could be faking, but I do look up the name and address in the city directory), but more importantly if I ever have to kick them off prevents them from signing up again.

I also got to hear from some interesting people. One guy is a photographer who has a blog where his most recent post exclaims his first tomato of the season. Except because he is a professional photographer, it is the best picture of a tomato you could ask for. Another person works at the Atlanta Opera (not a performer). So it has been kind of neat getting to know people even though I haven’t met any of them.