My Willys 3A and 3B Community

Important announcements!! Please read.. => Announcements => Topic started by: Quebec Jeep on April 15, 2019, 11:26:08 AM

Title: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: Quebec Jeep on April 15, 2019, 11:26:08 AM: Ok, I will upgrade the forum software this week.
So we will move away from Yabb and go to SMF.
YaBB support is now hard to get and perl coding with flat file database is very old software.
SMF is using php coding and MySQL database which are now the internet standard.

Also, should we keep the domain name www.cj-3a.com? We are paying 15$ each year for it.
This domain is redirected to our main domain name www.cj3apage.com.
I think we should get rid of it and let it go away.

I bought an SSL certificate for our website. So the web address will change for http: to https:
It cost 75$ for two years.
It will provide us encrypted data. It should be more secure when we will logon the forum.

OK. let me know your feedback as soon as possible. Thank
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: athawk11 on April 15, 2019, 11:59:08 AM: Hi Pascal,
I am sure thankful you know how to do all this computer/internet tech. As always, I'm ready to pitch in where I can. In this case, sending you the $$ to cover the expenses is about all I can do.

Send to your PayPal still okay?

If you think letting the extra domain go away is a good move, then I fine with that decision.

Tim
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: mtnman37879 on April 15, 2019, 04:26:06 PM: Post an email address so we can help via paypal.
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: Quebec Jeep on April 15, 2019, 04:57:16 PM: I did not make this post for the money at all. We will renew in June our hosting fee so let do the money thing at that moment.

My post was more about should we let away the cj-3a.com
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: oldtime on April 15, 2019, 08:04:35 PM: Pascal,
Can you determine any positive or negative effects concerning theï¿½ domain itself ?
Does the domain itself simply guarantee that no one else can come along and use that specific name ?
I seriously doubt that any other "so called" competition will ever come along who is also focused on the CJ-3A.
If someone else ever wants in bad enough they could just use whatever other similar name theyï¿½ might register.
IMHO a single domain name should suffice.....
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: Bob W on April 15, 2019, 09:04:24 PM: Pascal,

I really appreciate everything you do for all of us with the forum and support whatever you think is best.

Bob
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: Quebec Jeep on April 15, 2019, 10:12:23 PM: I don't see any negative effect by getting rid of cj-3a.com. We will save 15$ a year...

The original website from Jonathan was running on www.cj-3a.com domain. When we bought it, we moved it to www.cj3apage.com because it was easier. We decided to keep the old domain www.cj-3a.com and redirect it to the new one www.cj3apage.com. (And personally I don't understand at that time why we didn't name it www.thecj3apage.com... like the 2A!)

So if anyone are still using www.cj-3a.com into their bookmark then it will not land into our site anymore. They will have to update their bookmark for the new domain www.cj3apage.com.
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: Quebec Jeep on April 16, 2019, 05:03:38 PM: Ok I installed the SSL certificate and changed all pages from the website to reflect the new https. It's almost 100 pages!!!

So you need to update your bookmark to point to the new address https://www.cj3apage.com

We now have a "secure" website. At least chrome, safari, edge and other browser will not report the site as "not secure". We now have the lock into our web address bar.

Note that the web address http still work for now because of the forum. As soon as the forum will be updated, then I will redirect all http request to https.

I will now look for the forum software upgrade.

And I decide to let away www.cj-3a.com. So I will not pay the renewal fee in 5 month for it.
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: athawk11 on April 16, 2019, 09:37:53 PM: Terrific! Thanks Pacal.
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: Quebec Jeep on May 18, 2019, 06:22:08 PM: I though i would give you some feedback of where iï¿½m with the forum upgrade.

I did pass a lot of hours (more then 15hrs)ï¿½ going no where with the SMF converter software. So i decided to pay 50$ to have a member charter access for their support to get things on track faster. So i pay for a one year support.

I was able finally to convert our YaBB 2.6.11 to SMF 1.1.14. Yeah! But...

We are loosing all attachments during the upgrade which is not acceptable. Iï¿½m working with them to find out why this happening as it should not.

So when we will be able to fix this, I will work with them to upgrade the SMF up to version 2.1.

I will take a fresh backup of the forum again as Iï¿½m seeing a lot of new members and posts since I did it. We donï¿½t want to lose them!

Thank you for your patience and comprehension.

Letï¿½s make this forum THE place for 3A 3B and DJ!
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: Quebec Jeep on May 21, 2019, 12:59:54 PM: Ok, the problem with the attachment is that in earlier version of YaBB, only one attachment per post was allowed. The SMF converter is designed for those earlier version.

So iï¿½m looking for a solution when we have more then 1 attachment per post.

I may endout to redo all those posts one by one.
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: Rus Curtis on May 21, 2019, 03:01:13 PM: Pascal, I appreciate what you are doing. Non-compatibility between different platforms should not be a thing.
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: johnrb3b on May 24, 2019, 01:24:39 PM: Hahaha
Tell that to the geeks who write the code.
The whole world of computers is a case study in non-compatibility,
:)
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: Quebec Jeep on May 28, 2019, 11:06:00 AM: Ok, some goods news.

We have now been able to convert 1464 attachments pics of the 4682 total so far...

I apologize for all time it take.
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: johnrb3b on May 29, 2019, 09:19:56 AM: Hey Pascal,
No need to apologize for all that work taking time out of your life.
Thanks for doing it.
Don't worry about the time frame.
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: Quebec Jeep on May 31, 2019, 11:41:55 AM: EUREKA!!!

VERY GOOD NEWS!!!

We were able to convert all the forum to SMF version 1.1.14!
All the attachments seem to be there as well as members, topics, messages, boards, categories....
I think we only loose personal attachment and some users avatars. We should be able to live with it and fix avatars later.

YeaH!

OK, I did it with a backup dated from the beginning of May.
So I will redo all the conversion again but with a latest backup that I should do during the weekend.

The next step will be to upgrade the SMF to their latest version which is 2.0.15 and then put our new forum online!

And....Let welcome all new 3B and DJ members into our forum.

The overall job will not be done yet as we will have to modify our categories and boards as we discuss to accomodate everyone. We will need to change the forum name and logo. But all those changes can be done with help from our admin John, Tim and new other one like Derek.

It was the most painful upgrade that I did for this website.

Thank everyone for your patience.
Title: Re: Change to the forum and website needed!?
Post by: Rus Curtis on May 31, 2019, 04:23:59 PM: Wow! My hat is off to you! It is a good feeling when the outcome is positive!

Well done, and THANK YOU!