New to Vanilla... questions on versions and Dashboard
ginahoy
New
I will be the Admin for a soon-to-be-launch forum based on open source Vanilla (2.2.1) and I have questions. My only prior admin experience is brief exposure to phpBB Admin Control Panel (ACP).
a) Pros/Cons of sticking with v2.2 vs upgrading to v2.3
b) Where did the changelogs move for v2.2 and v2.3? (http://docs.vanillaforums.com/developer/changelog/)
c) I don't see where I can backup/restore the forum database from Dashborard. Is there a plugin for that or do I have to do backups on the server side?
d) Where/how do I resync forum statistics (post counts, member count, etc.), or delete/rebuild the search index?
thanks
Best Answer
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River
MVP
b) Where did the changelogs move for v2.2 and v2.3? (http://docs.vanillaforums.com/developer/changelog/)
b) someone else should know!
ok I'll re-post info, the last time this question was asked
changes are reflected here
https://vanillaforums.org/discussion/comment/240806/#Comment_240806and here
https://vanillaforums.org/discussion/32712/vanilla-2-3-release-candidates-now-rc2/p1
but yes the changelog is out of date in the "official documentation". maybe its not necessary, since the changes are in all the release notes discussions https://vanillaforums.org/categories/blog and the docs are bound to get out of date.
some documentation does not relate to current stable release - some refers to older releases and some refers to cloud version.
sometimes just searching the forum and reading tutorials is the best way or at least an alternative way to find answers.
https://vanillaforums.org/categories/tutorials
since you are new to forum. I'll re-gift this to you https://vanillaforums.org/discussion/28420/frequently-asked-questions (avoid the table of contents the links don't take you to the questions in the faq and some questions in the faq are missing in the toc).
ARE your FOUR QUESTIONS answered now?
Pragmatism is all I have to offer. Avoiding the sidelines and providing centerline pro-tips.
5
Answers
@ginahoy
Welcome to the community
a) there is no advantage to NOT upgrading to Vanilla 2.3. Do a test install to make sure that your current theme and preferred add-ons work with 2.3
b) someone else should know!
c) You need to back up the database from the server side
d) I think you would achieve this with
http://yourforum/dashboard/dba/counts
but stand to be corrected.
Thanks, whu606. Interestingly, the /dba/counts link works, but I don't see a way to navigate to the page from my dashboard. Is it possible this page existed in the 2.2.1 trunk but for some reason not supported in the UI until v2.3? Or maybe I just haven't figured out where it is...?
Hopefully someone will chime in regarding changelogs and rebuilding search index.
One more... does anyone know if there's a plugin that allows posts to be migrated from one member to another? We're starting with archives from a previous forum so we'd like to be able to migrate the post for the most active members to their new identity. We can do this directly in the SQL database, but I'm thinking there may be a plugin to allow Admin to do this within Vanilla.
@ginahoy
You can use the Utility Links plugin: https://vanillaforums.org/addon/utilitylinks-plugin to add dba/counts and some other common tasks to the Dashboard.
Thanks.
vanilla search doesn't work like phpBB, and doesn't use that kind of index. I recommend setting up sphinx search as normal mysql full text searching will not be viable at scale.
https://vanillaforums.org/addon/sphinxsearch-plugin
https://vanillaforums.org/addon/sphinxsearchlite-plugin
https://vanillaforums.org/addon/sphinxsearchsyntaxdropdown-plugin
grep is your friend.
One thing I liked about phpBB is the ACP you had to log into separately. This is good security.
grep is your friend.
Actually, we will be using the SphinxSearch plugin. Does it use an index file? If so, it's useful to force a re-build, for example, after heavy pruning.
@ginahoy
ok I'll re-post info, the last time this question was asked
changes are reflected here
https://vanillaforums.org/discussion/comment/240806/#Comment_240806
and here
https://vanillaforums.org/discussion/32712/vanilla-2-3-release-candidates-now-rc2/p1
but yes the changelog is out of date in the "official documentation". maybe its not necessary, since the changes are in all the release notes discussions https://vanillaforums.org/categories/blog and the docs are bound to get out of date.
some documentation does not relate to current stable release - some refers to older releases and some refers to cloud version.
sometimes just searching the forum and reading tutorials is the best way or at least an alternative way to find answers.
https://vanillaforums.org/categories/tutorials
since you are new to forum. I'll re-gift this to you https://vanillaforums.org/discussion/28420/frequently-asked-questions (avoid the table of contents the links don't take you to the questions in the faq and some questions in the faq are missing in the toc).
ARE your FOUR QUESTIONS answered now?
Pragmatism is all I have to offer. Avoiding the sidelines and providing centerline pro-tips.
@River, thanks for those links. Very helpful.
Since there are no responses to my follow-on questions, I'll start new thread(s).