I relaxed a bit in March, taking on work at a less frantic pace. Here’s some of what I did for others in March:
- Updated a phpBB board from version 3.3.8 to 3.3.10. Updated the Italian language pack. Updated the Advertisement Management extension from version 2.0.6 to 3.0.0. Found and added Italian language files for the ads extension.
- Met client online to discuss work projects generally. Signed and forwarded NDA. Wrote a document (2 hours) answering questions client sent. Later I spend 90 minutes online tutoring, going through permissions and emailing issues, then one more hour training online, refining board look and layout.
- Exploratory work to see if an Invasion BBS circa 2003 could be converted to be imported into phpBB 3.3. Did some preliminary analysis that looked like it might be technically possible, but client decided he could not move forward on it and canceled the project.
- Updated phpBB from version 3.3.5 to 3.3.10 for two sites, retaining logos. For one board, investigated why the mysqli driver wasn’t loading in PHP 7.4. I created a php.ini file in the web root and added the command there and the problem was solved. A queue.php issue should be fixed with the update. On the new forums, replicated some triggers I wrote a few years ago to automatically have new user watch all forums, and to delete these watches if the account is removed. Also completed the install on these forums by creating a database and database username.
- Rehosting and update. Board was phpBB 3.2.4, now 3.3.10. Board is now read only. Updated Google Analytics extension, removed the rest. Reapplied logo. Deleted American English language pack.
- Board was down with errors that were hard to troubleshoot. Had to get database access to determine that the board was running phpBB 3.1.6. Once I had access I found it was missing some files, which I uploaded. However, because PHP 7.3 was the lowest supported version, various errors showed. I upgraded the board to phpBB 3.3.10 without an issue. I disabled the contact form.
- User couldn’t login because his IP was in the Spamhaus database. Disabling Spamhaus in the ACP fixed the issue.
- Updated from phpBB 3.3.0 to 3.3.10. Changed PHP from 7.4 to 8.1. Moved board into a phpBB folder, and created a redirect rule so if you go the domain root it redirects to the phpBB folder.
- Surprising painful upgrade from phpBB 3.2.3 to 3.3.10. All sorts of annoying technical issues: FTP would not upload. Database updater would not update. Downloaded tables to my machine, converted locally, then uploaded database. Still a few more issues to fix: users table not fully populated, some tables missed on import due to a timeout. Can change PHP to 8.0. Upgraded external links open in new windows extension from version 1.0.6 to 1.0.10.
- Rehosting and upgraded. Moved from GoDaddy to Hostmonster. 800,000 posts, moving posts table was a major pain. Updated se_square_left style and mChat and Tapatalk extensions. Updated phpBB from 3.3.0 to 3.3.10. Changed spambot countermeasure to reCaptcha V3.
- Troubleshooting emailing issues. Also updated digests to version 3.3.18.
- Installed external links open in new windows extension and mChat extensions. Then changed user_lastvisit time to the time of last post using SQL.
- For my major commercial client, finally fixed an obscure bug related to logging into the ACP using OAuth authentication
