March 2021 work summary

I kept very busy in March with little downtime. I did make some progress on a new version of my digests extension that should be able to better handle resource timeouts by failing more gracefully and not locking phpBB’s cron process. But mostly paid work got in the way of this other stuff. Here’s a summary of my work in March:

• I removed an administrator and answered some questions for a client I helped in February.
• Completed a long standing project by doing a final conversion for project: Delphi forums to phpBB 2 to phpBB 3.3.3. The phpBB files and database were then given to another contractor. Ultimately, it was converted again into bbPress, a WordPress bulletin board plugin. The client has now successfully moved his entire platform inside a WordPress framework in this months-long project.
• Upgraded a board from phpBB 3.0.12 to 3.3.3. I changed the version of PHP to 7.4. I installed the Tapatalk extension (previously in a phpBB 3.0 mod) and reentered its key. Client chose the AllanStyle-SUBSILVER style to replace subsilver2 style, and I added their logo. I disabled the contact page and added a new home link on the navigation bar. I set up the reCaptcha V3 spambot countermeasure. Then I recreated the MySQL fulltext index. Later, I addedthe Black style and replaced the logo by editing overall_header.html.
• Upgraded phpBB from version 3.2.7 to 3.3.3. I also upgraded the Lucid Lime style and created a custom style based on Lucid Lime to insulate some minor style changes. I updated the following extensions: 24 hour stats, Header links, Lightbox, Max-Width switch, phpBB Media Embed and the Sortables Captcha. I had to edit the services.yml file for one extension to get it to work. Upgraded German Casual Honorifics language pack to latest version. The security certificate is invalid. The client needs to take care of that. Later, I recreated as best I could the header links managed by the Header links extension. They had to be deleted to install the new extension. I also changed the header bar background color to black.
• I updated a phpBB board from version 3.3.0 to 3.3.3. I created a custom style to show correct logo and to isolate navbar_header.html which shows an active topics link.
• I updated a phpBB board from version 3.3.0 to 3.3.3. I updated the prosilver_se style, and reapplied their logo by replicating changes to stylesheet.css file. I installed and configured the Cleantalk extension and set up reCaptcha V3.
• I upgraded a board from phpBB 3.0.14 to phpBB 3.3.3. Errors during upgrade required moving their database to my machine and upgrading it there. But the export had issues. Certain columns did not have the auto increment property set or default values, for example. I did not move over search tables, as they were too big and could be recreated. I set up reCaptcha V3 and disabled the contact page. I added a Home link. I installed the Black style. Recreated the search index overnight. Made test posts and private messages, revealing issues in phpbb_topics table and phpbb_privmsgs tables where some varchar(255) columns were blobs and there was no default value. Fixed those but there may be others. Client will finish fine-tuning the style.
• Did check up of a board as requested as client reported various problems. I verified that phpBB 3.3.3 software was installed but phpBB 3.3.0 was reported in the database, so I changed the version reported for phpBB in the phpbb_config table. I also verified that all migrations were up to date. The main problem was there were lots of old and unused modules from phpBB 3.0 for various mods that needed to be removed including Gallery, Cleantalk, mChat, Category rules, Users merge, Report reasons and Blog. I provided a summary report. Encountered an issue creating new forums. A non-standard column did not have a default value. Removed it and a few others from the forums table and was able to create a forum. Next: I did a general database cleanup, removing unused tables, columns and removed a lot of rows from the phpbb_config table by comparing his tables with a reference implementation.
• Began a staggered upgrade to phpBB for a well-trafficked board. Started with upgrading a test board. I upgraded the board from phpBB 3.2.7 to phpBB 3.3.3. I removed the Simplicity style. It was not needed as the custom style inherits from prosilver. I changed the spambot countermeasure to reCaptcha to V3. I upgraded Digests, Google Analytics, PM Search, Tapatalk, Thanks for the Posts and User Details extensions. I had to remove an unused module from User Control Panel for the PM Search extension. Users are testing the test board. I expect to upgrade the production board in April.
• Upgraded a phpBB board from version 3.0.12 to version 3.2.11 on Network Solutions hosting. No PHP greater than 7.0 was available on Network Solutions. which meant I couldn’t install version 3.3 of phpBB at all! (As an aside, Network Solutions in general is a very poor web host, with slow page loads and system related issues frequently occurring. Avoid hosting with them.) I installed the we_universal style and then created a custom style based on that to use for their unique changes. I disabled the contact page, and added reCaptcha V2 checkbox spambot countermeasure. I installed the Tapatalk and Reimg Image Resizer extensions. I tried to install Recent Topics, but got HTTP 500 going to index, likely due to Network Solution’s poor hosting. I disabling it and made it go away. phpBB’s caching seemed problematic. Some files did not have expected permissions. Changed 777 permissions to 02777 permissions to match that used elsewhere hoping it would do the trick. The client really needs to rehost somewhere else and is working on it because the board feels fragile, runs slowly and can bring up what seems like random HTTP errors. I had a limited ability to trace PHP issues as no log files are available to look at. Later, I tweaked the mobile style to fix some minor issues.
• Updated a phpBB board from phpBB 3.3.1 to phpBB 3.3.3. I reapplied a donate button to style. I updated my filter by country extension and the Google analytics extensions. I also installed my Digests extension, successfully did a manual test and a cron test mailer test. I set up cron to run every 15 minutes to handle digests and notifications using a system cron.
• A client’s login issue returned. The cookie domain was incorrect again and /cache/production folder had 755 permissions. Fixed these again and purged the cache. Hope this solves the problem.
• My work for a major client continued. We’ve been stuck for a couple of months trying to affect an OAuth authorization solution. We’ve been using a Spotify extension I found as a template to try to create our own OAuth service. The company has their own proprietary client management solution that works with OAuth on phpBB 3.0. The client wants to use phpBB 3.3’s extension architecture to do this without using any hacks. It is quite a challenge! This month though working with their developer we were able to login successfully and transparently using their OAuth service in a test environment. More work is needed though because it must create phpBB board accounts behind the scenes for new users. Also did some minor changes to the styling, as it has evolved over the last year.