Category: Service news

• Provided an hour of tutoring to a client
• Changed PHP from 7.2 to 8.2. Then updated phpBB with portal mod from 3.3.11 to 3.3.13 and updated media embed extension from 2.0.1 to 2.0.2.

I finished just two jobs during July, no problem as I am slowly unwinding this business so it’s not surprising that requests are fewer:

• Updated a board to phpBB 3.3.12. I fixed and hopefully fully addressed issue of new topic notifications not being sent.
• Updated a board from phpBB 3.3.5 to 3.3.12. Issues getting into GoDaddy as an administrator. Reinstated the old logo.

Just three jobs completed in June:

• Updated a phpBB board from version 3.3.11 to 3.3.12. Youtube BBCode wouldn’t work afterward. Tried some things but client eventually figured it out.
• Updated a phpBB board from version 3.3.11 to 3.3.12.
• Updated a phpBB board from version 3.3.10 to 3.3.12, Board rules extension from version 2.1.3 to 3.0.1, spam remover extension from 1.0.3 to 1.0.4 and Nosebleed style from 3.1.4 to 3.1.8.4.

It was another slow month, which was fine.

• Slow board access with frequent 508/resource unavailable errors. Changed all forums to deny known bots (search engines) permission to read the forums. Purged 85000 sessions. A session is created every time someone hits your board with an IP address not already in the sessions table. The board was configured to allow a session to persist for 99,999 seconds, or a bit more than a day. Changed it to 24 hours. Changed group forum permissions to deny known bots read access to all forums.
• Provided with new favicon image and asked to place it. Resized it to 32×32 and added a line to overall_header.html for the custom style to show it.
  
• Updated filter by country extension to the latest version. The old MaxMind license key no longer works. A new one must be retrieved and replace the old one on the extension’s setting page. In addition the newest version of the extension must be used and can be downloaded on the extension’s page on this site. The root of the problem was that curl required a tweak to force it to follow redirects received.

I was kept busy in April, but a surprising amount of my work was nonproductive, i.e. didn’t lead to a whole lot of income. In some ways this is fine. It’s been my goal to scale back my business due to health issues but also because a lot of the work is rote and boring as I have done some things so many times. But also so much of it becomes something of a hassle. For example, working on your server requires getting credentials, and they are frequent issues where a URL or usename/password is incorrect, requiring more back and forth emails. Usually you have to grant me developer credentials. This takes more time and error. I’m thinking of charging a fee to at least better cover the time and expense involved.

There are also plenty of miscommunications in emails about what the issue actually is. This requires more back and forth. Often when you think you are done, you aren’t. The client has more requests making it hard to move on and do other work.

Anyhow, in April:

• Updated a board using the Basic style from phpBB 3.3.9 to 3.3.11. Updated Google Analytics extension from 1.0.1 to 1.0.6. Couldn’t get into ACP until my IP address was whitelisted.
• Straightened out some issues with my digests extension for a client.
• Provided some advice to straighten out some phpBB issues/quirks.
• Long job with a client trying to restore missing posts. I became a bit exasperated by it all and asked another developer with more patience than me to do it. He eventually finished the work and I asked the client to use him in the future.

I forgot to post a summary of my work for March 2024. Here it is belatedly:

• Tried to move domain to Dreamhost but couldn’t get the upgrade script to work. Client paid me for my time. Later, on my local machine installed a LAMP instance and imported database. Upgrade script ran ok. Moved it to DH and with some help from them brought it up there.
• Updated board from phpBB 3.3.9 to 3.3.11. No extensions or styles needed to be upgraded. Spent an hour or so trying to figure out why client couldn’t login. Eventually decided it must be a bad password issue. Created an ACP account and showed client how password could be changed by the manage users function.
• Updated board from phpBB 3.3.10 to 3.3.11. Placed custom image on landing screen and changed link color to white so it could more easily be read. Installed a new SSL certificate. Would appear in Firefox but not in Vivaldi, although the next day the issue went away for me.

I kept decently busy in January, more toward the start of the month than the end:

 

• Updated a board from phpBB 3.3.7 to 3.3.11. Updated digests from 3.3.15 to 3.3.18 and advertisement management extension from 2.0.6 to 3.0.0. Got some PHP errors. Changed /cache/production permissions to 777 and PHP from 7.3 to 8.0 (done by client) and the problem was solved.
• Updated a board from phpBB 3.3.8 to 3.3.11. Installed updated German language pack. Reapplied changes to stylesheet.css. Recommended changing PHP from 7.4.3 to 8.1.
• Updated a board from phpBB 3.3.10 to 3.3.11. Installed current Italian language pack. Updated PHP from 7.3 to 8.1.
• Upgraded a board from phpBB 3.2.4 to 3.3.11. There were many baffling issues with this work due to various issues including mysqli drivers not added to PHP, white screens after the update and little to go on that eventually went away purging the cache manually, extensions that brought the board down when upgraded and difficulty finding and placing the old logo. More work to do when the board feels stable to the client: successfully update six extensions.
• Troubleshooting. A long SQL query in stop forum spam extension was causing a slowness issue. Disabling extension solved issue. Mentioned Cleantalk.
• Updated phpBB from 3.3.10 to 3.3.11. Changed PHP from 7.4 to 8.2. Was not able to change reCaptcha V2 to V3.
• I finished a long and confusing project to recover a forum and move it into a new domain. Was able to find a backup provided by Bluehost from 2020 that was a good enough for the client. phpBB 3.0.14 database upgraded to 3.3.11. Installed Milk V2 style. Created new database and populated it with 2020 backup. Changed PHP to 8.1. Also moved over avatars and uploads from the backup.

Ho ho ho! December was a profitable month for my business with steady but not overwhelming work:

• Developed a draft of requirements needed for someone to do my work for Adafruit. I did hardly any work for them in 2023 but they still gave me a holiday bonus!
  
• I updated board from phpBB 3.2.1 to 3.3.11. I updated the following extensions to 3.3 compatible versions: Max Width Switch, Tapatalk, Media Embed, Recent Topics, Nav Bar Search. I upgraded PHP from 7.1.3 to 7.4. Some issues with upgrade: I had to make the prosilver style active and rebuild the search index to use the MySQL full text index. I could not match sidebars and style changes but it turned out not to matter.
  
• I updated a board to phpBB 3.3.11 from 3.3.9. I changed PHP for the domain to 8.1 from 7.2. The Cleantalk extension was updated to the latest version. Logo was reapplied.
• Rehosted and upgraded a board from phpBB 3.2 to 3.3.11. Client moved over database extract and someone had installed phpBB 3.3.11 already on the new host. The database extract had tables for two phpBB instances, those with a phpbb3_ prefix were dropped. There was no exact match for the style so I installed the prosilver Dark style, which was similar.
  
• Updated a board from phpBB 3.0.12 to 3.3.11. Also changed all tables with the MyISAM storage engine to use the InnoDB storage engine. I had difficulty accessing his web host. Eventually we did it together on Google Meet under my direction. It was slow at times but eventually finished.

I spent about half of October on a European River Cruise, so I wasn’t working during that time. That, plus that I am slowly reducing the amount of jobs I am taking on with the eventual goal of closing it altogether (I don’t need the money) meant an exceptionally light October for phpBB consulting:

• Upgraded a board from phpBB from 3.3.4 to 3.3.11. I also updated the Cleantalk and ads extension. I reapplied logo by reapplying style changes to stylesheet.css. Was unable to upload new phpBB archive for a while. This was likely due to a firewall rule disallowing .exe files in uploaded archives. Client figured a workaround for the issue.
• Demoed and discussed various issues with upgrade in a screen share session. I placed a post on the Wanted! forum on phpbb.com to seek developer to do the work, found one prospect that successfully completed the job. A few days later I gave the same developer another similar phpBB 3.0 board upgrade job.

I forgot to post a summary of my work in August. It wasn’t much. So here goes (belatedly):

• Updated phpBB from version 3.3.8 to 3.3.10. Issue in that PHP 5.6 was current which meant upgrade program did not run. Host changed to 7.4.33. Reapplied template changes. Updated American English language pack to latest and Cleantalk to 5.7.6 with bug fixes.
• Upgraded board from phpBB 3.3.1 to 3.3.10. Updated prosilver_se style to latest version. I made minor changes to CSS to make navigation bar look better. Updated seven extensions. Removed Stop Forum Spam extension, replaced with Cleantalk with spam firewall enabled. There were permission issues with the file system: some folders had the wrong owner and couldn’t be updated until host forced it.