Welcome Back

[ash]

Welcome back everyone.

I've successfully reinstalled the latest backup we had (upto 14th Feb 2008) and changed the forum software to SMF and i think the software is more stable, better coded and easier to modify and upgrade etc.

Any teething problems please contact me.

[ultimatehandyman]

I'd be interested to know why you changed over from phpbb, is SMF much better than phpbb?

Was it difficult moving from phpbb to SMF?


Has it effected the indexed pages in Google etc?

[ash]

Hi Ultimate

Welcome back.

Why we changed

Well as you may know we had a database crash and a load of data got wiped so we were faced with a backup over 4 months old so have lost alot of current posts. The forum was effectively dead with a backup from early 2007 before the latest incarnation, so i viewed it that we did'nt really have alot to lose.

The choice of using SMF was a pretty simple one for me having used PHPBB extensively with this site and SMF with another site.

I find SMF so much easier to use (I've not tried PHPBB3 so can't comment on that at all), for example themes and modifications are installed using a package manager that will check all the files before it installs so ineffect it checks compatibility with your current setup and warns of any potential errors or problems the install is likely to encounter. If you encounter any conflicts after install you can simply uninstall the mod and everything is back to 'normal' in a matter of clicks.

Likewise for upgrading to the latest version (even with a modified forum) its just a matter of clicks.

The PHPBB we were running was heavily modified and made changing to a newer version or upgrade of PHPBB2 very trying.

Converting to SMF from PHPBB2
Was a breeze, there is a great converter script available. All you do is setup a new install of SMF (in another directory) run the converter script giving it the URL of your PHPBB forum and away it goes. All completed in a matter of minutes.

Redirecting URLS
This is not something i was too worried about, i'm sure with a bit of time i could setup a custom htaccess to redirect the old urls to the new ones but the site does'nt get a huge amount of SE traffic and given the site was largely dead (after the crash) i'm not too worried. I will setup a custom 404 page and robots.txt soon.

[treblesix]

I always liked YABBSE for its standards compliance and other stuff.
SMF was therefore interesting as it emerged from a difference of
views amongst the YABBSE guys ... with the lead developer departing
to do things a somewhat better way as SMF imho.

SMF is very conscious of coding, W3C standards and security. All in
all, it seems to have most of the good stuff with little if any of the bad.

TIP + SMF = 

[ultimatehandyman]

Thanks Ash,

do you or your web hosts not do regular backups?

I try and do mine every week, I'm on a dedicated server- well two of them now, and I was paying for a management service. They offered free migration from my old server, but when they did it they really screwed everthing up and nothing with a database would work, they even connected the directory to the arcade forum etc. I got a webmaster to fix it all and then cancelled the management contract with them and now I just have two dedicated servers, which I manage myself.

I ust mysqldumper to back up all of the databases as it works really well and is easy to use 

[ash]

To be honest no. Its not my forum after all and i've not been very active on here for the past few months starting after the new year really.

We must put some systems in place for the future.

[ultimatehandyman]

To be honest no. Its not my forum after all and i've not been very active on here for the past few months starting after the new year really.

We must put some systems in place for the future.

When I was with 1and1 they updated the server platform to php5 and it messed up virtually everything, they offered to do a backup- which was three weeks old! from that moment on I decided to do my own backups as these web hosting companies obviously do not give a damn.

I highly recommend mysqldumper http://forum.mysqldumper.de/downloads.php

You can set up a cronjob so that it does the backup automatically, but I don't know how to do that and so I do it manually.

[ctabuk]

I thought that Ash and I were co owners with me paying the server, but if I'm the boss. God help the admin I hate technical stuff

[ash]

I thought that Ash and I were co owners

Yeah i sort of forgot that! Anyway, regular backups are the order of the day.

[gid]

Wow SMF looks good.  Very clean.  I started a new forum about a month ago and am using phpbb 3.0.1.  I wish I had check out SMF beforehand.

[ash]

Cheers Gid.

I like it too, and even the standard skin is growing on me. SMF have some converters available if you want to swap over to SMF it really is pretty easy.

[yourweb]

Where was all this info when I was looking around. Well until my site crashes I will stick with what I have.

Will take some time getting used to this all over again. Changes, ahhhhhh 

[gid]

Yeah I would hate to have to restyle the site again.  All I wish I really had at this point were some seo-ed urls.

[SEOibiza]

hi guys..  new forum looks nice 

 so this will be why our MS free websites post has dropped from #2 to #5 or 6 then.

..not that I care one iota, but did notice it drop away a little while back and this is the only place it was linked from.

further proof of the effectiveness of forum links IMO