Octopus Overlords

Ok, so I've been mucking around in the background and testing different things. I wanted to upgrade the board software to a different system all together -- but that ended up being a whole lot more work than it first appeared.

Anyhow, I took a backup of the board, restored it to another server and did some major revision upgrades to phpBB. Now is your chance to test it!

ootest.octopusoverlords.com is online; please visit it and login with your credentials to kick the tires. This was a pure conversion with a few random styles thrown in for testing -- I didn't move logo files yet, or any other customizations.

Please take a look and tell me if anything is fundamentally broken (just reply here, that way others can see what's borked too and save themselves the typing).

My plan is to take the board offline Saturday (like really offline, as in dead air offline) to pull a fresh backup and restore it to the new server, then do the upgrade (3.0 -> 3.1 -> 3.2). Once tested I will change the DNS on the main website to point to the new one, and that could take up to an hour or two to get to your ISP server.

So don't panic if over the weekend the board just disappears and the server doesn't respond -- I'm just working on it in the background and needed to quiesce the DB.

You probably dont hear this enough but thanks for all of your hard work at keeping this community up and running. You do a fantastic job and deserve major kudos for your effort.

As a Black Pearl user, I'm so happy that this is finally going through (even if it is different from what we tested before.) I have to use a dark theme, but so much stuff is broken or missing in Black Pearl that I'll be glad to finally have a fully functional OO.

Thanks, Fishpants!

I'm pretty sure it should be OOverhaul this weekend - OOutage - Your chance to test now, but you are the technical guy so maybe I'm wrong.

Thanks for the heads up and all the monkeying you're doing behind the scenes.

Will this affect tweets and how they show? Or show at all. Lol

Blackhawk wrote:As a Black Pearl user, I'm so happy that this is finally going through (even if it is different from what we tested before.) I have to use a dark theme, but so much stuff is broken or missing in Black Pearl that I'll be glad to finally have a fully functional OO.

Thanks, Fishpants!

No Black Pearl, uh oh. This is not great. prosilver is blindingly white so the only other option is Digi. The problem with Digi is that is scales all the content across the screen instead of keeping it centered in a nice tight package. It is very hard to read with a high resolution monitor. When you are browsing the topics in a forum the topic name is on the far left of the screen and the information (replies, views, last post) are on the far right. There is a massive gulf between the two and your eyes constantly move back and forth right to left. It's like watching a tennis match and I'm sure it will induce eye strain. Same thing when reading a post. The text is spread all the way across the screen instead of keeping it somewhat centered.

The prosilver theme doesn't do this. It works more like Black Pearl with all the info in the center portion of the screen. However, as stated above, prosilver is so white that it hurts to look at.

Thoughts?

I just loaded the Digi themes very quickly to look at the colors. They are pleasing. I don't like them as well as Black Pearl but I can adapt. Didn't evaluate them functionally; I was just glad that I can remain a creature of darkness.

Go check out phpbb 3.2 themes I can add what you want, was just a quick grab. There’s 40 or so out there.

It's kind of hard to say without seeing them in a 'live' environment, and I'm not sure I'm even looking in the right place, but I do like the look of Hexagon, although it doesn't address Moat_Man's width concerns. The only dark one I saw that seemed to limit width was Carbon, although I found it hard to read with a white-on-gray color scheme.

A second one I wouldn't mind trying would be Latte. I don't need black. I just need the intensity of the white cut. Latte is actually pretty close to how I set up documents (Office, LibreOffice, etc) to work on.

Oh, and don't forget our Binky, Hawk, and Cat Butt!

I took a peek, it seemed to work alright. I can't believe the first selections for themes aren't the same ones we have here. It seems natural, to me, that if you're redoing everything you'd want to make the transition as seamless as possible. The first step is that everything looks the same. I like a dark background with light, but not white, text.

gameoverman wrote:II can't believe the first selections for themes aren't the same ones we have here. It seems natural, to me, that if you're redoing everything you'd want to make the transition as seamless as possible. The first step is that everything looks the same. I like a dark background with light, but not white, text.

Black Pearl was chosen initially because it matched the style from Gone Gold. The theme itself has tons of compatibility problems, mostly caused by the fact that it hasn't been updated in a long, long time, and I believe I remember tales of FishPants having to modify the heck out of it to keep it working.

I like it too, but it just isn't functional anymore.

So who do we pay to make us a new analog?

Isgrimnur wrote:So who do we pay to make us a new analog?

The problem is keeping it updated every time there is an update to Phpbb. Which I insist on pronouncing like Bill the Cat.

I created a hockey thread and posted a tweet to it.

I do prefer a user's pic to show up on the left side though, rather then the right.

Blackhawk wrote:It's kind of hard to say without seeing them in a 'live' environment, and I'm not sure I'm even looking in the right place, but I do like the look of Hexagon, although it doesn't address Moat_Man's width concerns. The only dark one I saw that seemed to limit width was Carbon, although I found it hard to read with a white-on-gray color scheme.

A second one I wouldn't mind trying would be Latte. I don't need black. I just need the intensity of the white cut. Latte is actually pretty close to how I set up documents (Office, LibreOffice, etc) to work on.

The ne-blackgreen theme (demo here) is another dark style that seems to retain the more familiar boxed (fixed width) layout Moat_Man mentioned.

I think if it's based on the prosilver theme it work so Black and ne-blackgreen (as Anonymous Bosch said) would work. Boy AnimeZone sure looks GoldGold-ish if you block out the pictures and just look at the text and font. Too bad it's been put on hiatus and doesn't list 3.2.

Looks like Black is the best bet. Can you change the font colour from blue to gold? Is there any way to upload that style to the test site?

P.S. Don't take any of this as demanding. I know you do all this to support the community out of the goodness of your heart and I am but a peon.

i like any of the dark styles, plus ne-blackgreen and Green

I definitely want something as close to Black Pearl as possible. It's much better on my eyes than a white background. And the black and gold has a lot of nostalgia for me

Fishpants asks us to "kick the tires" and we all chime in about our favorite colors. At least that indicates that the test environment appears to be fully functional.

Blackhawk wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:So who do we pay to make us a new analog?

The problem is keeping it updated every time there is an update to Phpbb. Which I insist on pronouncing like Bill the Cat.

Lol.

Grifman wrote:I definitely want something as close to Black Pearl as possible. It's much better on my eyes than a white background. And the black and gold has a lot of nostalgia for me

I'm almost getting teary reading the board tonight. The gold and black has been part of my life for what 17 years? It's just... comfortable.

Ok I had some errands to do this morning.. Going to be taking the board down soon for backup etc. We can get the colours sorted out over time. For now I am more worried about getting the content moved, and all of the backend stuff working 100% (like Amazon backups, local backups, local FTP backups.. yes I do a lot of backups.. we have the best backups.. they are amazing backups).

Ok so this is the new server.. I have some styles in, but I need to do a lot of work with logos, adding amazon links etc. Anyhow for the time being it looks like that went way smoother than I expected -- even with a testing period.

Avatars on the right are already scaring the hell out of me.

What's the best option for getting things arranged as they were before?

(Thank you for the update work!)

Yeah, it's working, but it's like we just slipped into a mirror universe. Everything is just slightly different. I'm freaking out man!

Also, thanks.

I think the avatar placement might be style dependent.. let me do some digging. It does seem weird to have it on the right.

For what it's worth, I kinda like the Hexagon style. I'm going to remove Absolution tho, it's horrible.

Is there a way to make "user profile" info not take up 1/4 of the readable area? I'm using the prosilver theme, btw. Seems like tons of wasted space. Maybe I didn't notice when it was on the left side of the screen.

Style "SE Square Left" is installed.. that seems to be the only style that has the stuff on the left hand side.

Im not sure what style I was using before. Cant find it.

Oh , please install the subsilver style if it's compatible. That's what I was using before. Change is bad, unless there's something better. At this time there is nothing better.

Moat_Man wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2017 2:37 am

Grifman wrote:I definitely want something as close to Black Pearl as possible. It's much better on my eyes than a white background. And the black and gold has a lot of nostalgia for me

I'm almost getting teary reading the board tonight. The gold and black has been part of my life for what 17 years? It's just... comfortable.

Wait is that gone forever?

Daehawk wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2017 4:38 pm Im not sure what style I was using before. Cant find it.

Yeah. I don't know what style I was using either. It wasn't a dark one. Avatars were on the left hand side. It wasn't prosilver because the board would default to that when I wasn't logged in. And it wasn't centered like latte.

In the big scheme of things, it doesn't matter of course. I'll still come by and read/post. And if the server side runs smoother, that's the important part. But yeah - it's weird. It's not the same.

killbot737 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2017 4:45 pm Oh , please install the subsilver style if it's compatible. That's what I was using before. Change is bad, unless there's something better. At this time there is nothing better.

Ah - that's it! I was using subsilver (or subsilver 2). A please from me on that one too if not too much trouble.

Sorry for the double post, and thanks for all the hard work, FP!

I can't install Subsilver (Someone made it, but it breaks extensions and creates another fork of madness to maintain). Try the style "Allanstyle Subsilver" and see if that does the trick.. I still think SE Square left is the best thought, that or Digi Orange for the black pearl folks.

Ya I think it was Subsilver 2. The Allan one is very close. Well except for avatars being on the right.

Yep that works. Thank you.

FishPants wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2017 4:56 pm I can't install Subsilver (Someone made it, but it breaks extensions and creates another fork of madness to maintain). Try the style "Allanstyle Subsilver" and see if that does the trick.. I still think SE Square left is the best thought, that or Digi Orange for the black pearl folks.

Yeah, it is freaky seeing the avatars on the right, but otherwise the Allanstyle works well. Thanks for grabbing it and making it an option!

Thanks for the hard work and time. Appreciate it very much.

No bearing on your work. I know you're doing all this for us...its just life in general for me..the older I get the more I dislike change. In all of life Im that way. used to be I looked for the future. Dont like myself much these days lol.

I can only access the forum by tapatalk now desire clearing my cache etc on my computer it keeps saying forbidden.