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Vanilla 2 Upgrading Tips
Tim
Vanilla Staff
Upgrading software can often be frustrating and there are always ways to make things go more smoothly. I'm going to be compiling a list of tips and tricks for completing Vanilla upgrades (as discovered by you guys, our community) in this thread.
Start posting your ideas
If you're reading this, your browser's address bar has the following in it:
It should be pretty obvious what this is.
The Domain:
This is the domain on which your forum is installed.
The Webroot:
This is the hardest one to understand. On vanillaforums.org, we've installed the forum at the topmost level of the web server's document root, so there are no additional folders in the URL. Lets say, however, that we installed Vanilla into a subfolder on our web server, and lets say we called that folder "myforum/". Now the web root would be: http://www.vanillaforums.org/myforum/. Basically, when in doubt, the web root is the shortest URL that gets you to the discussions list.
The Path:
This is the "request" that Vanilla is processing for you. In this case, if we converted the path to pseudo English, it would sound something like: "give me the discussion with id number 12740". The title part is optional, and is only there to make links look nicer and to improve user experience and search engine optimization.
"Navigate to the page in your forum" - This tells us to start with the Webroot. Cool, so right now our URL looks like this:
"that updates your database" - This is filler text, ignore it. It simply describes the page you are about to visit. URL still looks the same as before:
"(this will not work if you did not sign in as UserID = 1)" - This tells us to be logged in as the ORIGINAL CREATOR ACCOUNT of the forum. This is the user your created DURING THE INSTALL PROCESS. URL still looks the same, but we should now be logged in as the primary admin.
"www.yourdomain.com/path/to/vanilla/" - This is a common way of specifying URLs whose beginning is unknown to the writer. When we write "/path/to" it is a way of saying "the fully qualified path to ". This is basically a reiteration of the first part, where we say "Navigate to the page in your forum". URL stays the same.
"utility/update" - And now we just tack this on the end of our URL:
And that's it! If you did everything correctly, you should get a page that says "Success"!
Start posting your ideas
Before you make any changes...
- Back up your database
- Back up your conf/config.php
The upgrade process
- If you can, instead of simply copying the new files over the old files, delete your original files first (everything except conf/, cache/, uploads/, custom themes/and custom plugins/ and *then* copy the news files. This will ensure that any files we've removed from Vanilla in the updated version will not stick around in your installation.
If you've just upgraded Vanilla 2...
- Delete all the .ini files in your cache/ folder
- Run the /utility/update database update script
/utility/update
Running /utility/updateis pretty simple, but we often find people getting extremely confused. I'm going to explain how Vanilla URLs work here. Please read carefully.If you're reading this, your browser's address bar has the following in it:
http://www.vanillaforums.org/discussion/12740/vanilla-2-upgrading-tips
Lets break that URL into its constituent parts
The Scheme:http://It should be pretty obvious what this is.
The Domain:
www.vanillaforums.orgThis is the domain on which your forum is installed.
The Webroot:
http://www.vanillaforums.org/This is the hardest one to understand. On vanillaforums.org, we've installed the forum at the topmost level of the web server's document root, so there are no additional folders in the URL. Lets say, however, that we installed Vanilla into a subfolder on our web server, and lets say we called that folder "myforum/". Now the web root would be: http://www.vanillaforums.org/myforum/. Basically, when in doubt, the web root is the shortest URL that gets you to the discussions list.
The Path:
discussion/12740/vanilla-2-upgrading-tipsThis is the "request" that Vanilla is processing for you. In this case, if we converted the path to pseudo English, it would sound something like: "give me the discussion with id number 12740". The title part is optional, and is only there to make links look nicer and to improve user experience and search engine optimization.
Now, back to our instructions for accessing "/utility/update"
"Navigate to the page in your forum that updates your database (this will not work if you did not sign in as UserID = 1): www.yourdomain.com/path/to/vanilla/utility/update""Navigate to the page in your forum" - This tells us to start with the Webroot. Cool, so right now our URL looks like this:
http://www.vanillaforums.org/"that updates your database" - This is filler text, ignore it. It simply describes the page you are about to visit. URL still looks the same as before:
http://www.vanillaforums.org/"(this will not work if you did not sign in as UserID = 1)" - This tells us to be logged in as the ORIGINAL CREATOR ACCOUNT of the forum. This is the user your created DURING THE INSTALL PROCESS. URL still looks the same, but we should now be logged in as the primary admin.
http://www.vanillaforums.org/"www.yourdomain.com/path/to/vanilla/" - This is a common way of specifying URLs whose beginning is unknown to the writer. When we write "/path/to" it is a way of saying "the fully qualified path to ". This is basically a reiteration of the first part, where we say "Navigate to the page in your forum". URL stays the same.
http://www.vanillaforums.org/"utility/update" - And now we just tack this on the end of our URL:
http://www.vanillaforums.org/utility/updateAnd that's it! If you did everything correctly, you should get a page that says "Success"!
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This discussion has been closed.
Comments
Vanilla Forums COO [GitHub, Twitter, About.me]
When I click "rescan" it brings up all the same stuff from "The following structure changes are required for your database." over and over again everytime I run it and rescan it so it looks like it isn't making any changes.
Vanilla Forums COO [GitHub, Twitter, About.me]
Vanilla Forums COO [GitHub, Twitter, About.me]
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ',', expecting '(' in /nfs/c06/h04/mnt/95421/domains/talkvancouver.ca/html/bootstrap.php on line 64Vanilla Forums COO [GitHub, Twitter, About.me]
Thanks for the response Tim, I wasn't expecting anyone to be around at this time
The weird thing is that the setting changed from PHP5 to PHP4 on it's own somehow (after I uploaded the new files to the server).
(I'm trying to upgrade from 2.0.14 to 2.0.17)
Vanilla Forums COO [GitHub, Twitter, About.me]
Fatal Error in Gdn_Database.Query();
Unknown column 'c.TreeRight' in 'field list'
Need more details?
on your forum
Vanilla Forums COO [GitHub, Twitter, About.me]
Is it file permissions or something?
Vanilla Forums COO [GitHub, Twitter, About.me]
Fatal Error in Gdn_Database.Query();
Unknown column 'c.TreeRight' in 'field list'
select c.Name as `Name`, c.CategoryID as `CategoryID`, c.TreeRight as `TreeRight`, c.TreeLeft as `TreeLeft`, c.Depth as `Depth`, c.Description as `Description`, c.CountDiscussions as `CountDiscussions`, c.CountComments as `CountComments`, c.UrlCode as `UrlCode`, c.LastCommentID as `LastCommentID`, co.DateInserted as `DateLastComment`, co.InsertUserID as `LastCommentUserID`, cu.Name as `LastCommentName`, cu.Photo as `LastCommentPhoto`, co.DiscussionID as `LastDiscussionID`, d.Name as `LastDiscussionName` from GDN_Category c left join GDN_Comment co on c.LastCommentID = co.CommentID left join GDN_User cu on co.InsertUserID = cu.UserID left join GDN_Discussion d on d.DiscussionID = co.DiscussionID where c.AllowDiscussions = :cAllowDiscussions order by TreeLeft asc