Forum help

[gravity]

i have added the phpbb forum to my website and have a fair amount of users. the admin panel states that i am outdated. i am completely new to hosting web space stuff. how would i upgrade my forum to version 3. and will my members lose everything?

[elmo]

i have added the phpbb forum to my website and have a fair amount of users. the admin panel states that i am outdated. i am completely new to hosting web space stuff. how would i upgrade my forum to version 3. and will my members lose everything?

gravity,

This is a very good question and similar to one I asked in another thread. I look forward to an answer to this one. Sorry I can't be of any help other than to echo your question as one needing to be answered.

Elmo

[felgall]

Upgrading from phpBB2 to phpBB3 doesn't lose you anything. The upgrade process doesn't even overwrite the existing phpBB2 install. What you do is to install phpBB3 into a new folder and then run the upgrade step from there which copies your old forum into the new one - all the users and posts etc are copied over. Once you have the new one working then you can rename the old folder out of the way and rename the new one in its place. You can then delete the old folder and the old tables from the database whenever suits you. The only things that can get lost are pdates to the old forum while you are upgrading.

[siguie]

Just wanted to add ... any mods that modified your phpBB2 database will screw up the phpBB3 forum. I recommend stripping the phpBB2 one to a vanilla forum before doing the upgrade. Just my 2 cents.

[Believer]

Maybe the safest way is to backup your DB, create a new directory maybe called "forums2". Install the newest phpbb there and then dump the old data into that database and see if it works. I have had problems in the past with upgrading if they had changed the table structure too much and sometimes certain things will be buggy for a while until I could fix the code. If the new install works properly (and it should unless you have plugins), just rename the old one to something like "forums_versionXXX" and creat a sym link to the new one.

ln -s /home/your_account_name/www/forums2 /home/your_account_name/www/forums

I think that syntax is correct. Then in the future you just do the same and move the sym link to the new install.
Open for other suggestions to my method though.:D

[gravity]

so i need to download the version to my PC and then upload it to the server? sorry as i said, extremely newbie!! sorry for the Q's.

[felgall]

Maybe the safest way is to backup your DB, create a new directory maybe called "forums2". Install the newest phpbb there and then dump the old data into that database and see if it works.

The phpBB install requires that you install to a new directory. It then creates new database tables and then copies the data from the old ones. You can then test it fully there to make sure it all works properly before redirecting the phpBB2 directory to the phpBB3 one. You only delete phpBB2 once you are sure that phpBB3 works. That's the way they set up the upgrade to work, it doesn't do it in place unless you copy the phpBB2 to your computer, run the update there and then delete the phpBB2 from your site and then upload the phpBB3 to the directory that had the phpBB2.

[gravity]

i dont get any of this, i guess im just an idiot. my CP in blue Host is extremely confusing to me. i'll just leave it outdated, doesn't seem to be bugging anyone.

i have no idea how to upload the new forum to bluehost, and i dont know what is the saved data from the old forum, thank you for taking the time to help, sorry im a numbskull.

[gravity]

ok installation requires some info, where do i find the following info

* The Database Type - the database you will be using.
* The Database server hostname or DSN - the address of the database server.
* The Database server port - the port of the database server (most of the time this is not needed).
* The Database name - the name of the database on the server.
* The Database username and Database password - the login data to access the database.