Updating website

[Nathaniel]

I'm starting to fiddle around with (finally!) updating a bunch of things on the backend of website. Unfortunately, my testing has revealed that there is pretty much no way to do this without temporarily breaking things -- updating the server from PHP 5.3 to PHP 7.2 breaks both the forums and the wiki, and I can't update the forums or wiki without updating PHP.

So I apologize for any downtime over the next day or two. Hopefully everything goes reasonably smoothly, but I can't guarantee anything. Please feel free to let me know of any weirdness here.

[Moosey]

Out of curiosity, what will happen to old discussions?
Nothing will happen to them, right?
(I know this is a stupid question, but I have never been on a forum which was updated at some time during my membership before)

[Nathaniel]

Yep, nothing will be lost. It's just the back-end software that is being updated -- all forum posts and wiki articles will carry on as if nothing happened.

[muzik]

On the topic of updating, could the mediawiki plugin or whatever it is that allows tables to have tabs be added? It'd be useful to have a way to control the third value in the 5S project summary table.

[Nathaniel]

On the topic of updating, could the mediawiki plugin or whatever it is that allows tables to have tabs be added? It'd be useful to have a way to control the third value in the 5S project summary table.

Could you point me to a Wikipedia page (or a page on another wiki) that has the functionality you'd like, just so that I know exactly what it is?

[Nathaniel]

Forum software is now updated. It seems to be functional again (but let me know if anything is not), but looks quite different. Will start transitioning things back to the old style (e.g., the ConwayLife.com header and LifeViewer integration) now.

[muzik]

I can't think of any pages I know that use tabs, but this extension looks like it would do the job.

[muzik]

Will the homepage be updated to closer resemble the new forums in design?

[Ian07]

Will the homepage be updated to closer resemble the new forums in design?

Also:

The largest collection of online information about Conway's Game of Life and Life-like cellular automata. Contains over 1,000 articles.

I mean, it's not wrong...

[Nathaniel]

Will the homepage be updated to closer resemble the new forums in design?

No plans at the moment, but I can at it to the todo list. Current plans are focused on updating/improving the forums and wiki, but I can have a look at the main page after those upgrades are done.

The largest collection of online information about Conway's Game of Life and Life-like cellular automata. Contains over 1,000 articles.

I mean, it's not wrong...

"Technically correct" is my sweet spot. (OK, OK, I fixed it)

[testitemqlstudop]

I'm starting to fiddle around with (finally!) updating a bunch of things on the backend of website. Unfortunately, my testing has revealed that there is pretty much no way to do this without temporarily breaking things -- updating the server from PHP 5.3 to PHP 7.2 breaks both the forums and the wiki, and I can't update the forums or wiki without updating PHP.

So I apologize for any downtime over the next day or two. Hopefully everything goes reasonably smoothly, but I can't guarantee anything. Please feel free to let me know of any weirdness here.

Ooo I love the new quote format

[GUYTU6J]

How about updating the CAPTCHA process when registering the forums, as I suggested here? I hope it will help prevent spam bots.

[Nathaniel]

How about updating the CAPTCHA process when registering the forums, as I suggested here? I hope it will help prevent spam bots.

Unfortunately that would be extremely non-trivial to implement, and I'm not convinced it would change spam levels significantly. Currently, the spam control on this forum catches essentially all spam attacks except for ones that are implemented by humans (not bots) and/or specifically designed with our forum in mind, and implementing a different CAPTCHA won't change that. If worse comes to worse and we need a stronger CAPTCHA for the forum, I'd be inclined to just move to reCAPTCHA.

[Freywa]

Will HTTPS support (via HTTPS Everywhere) be added?

[Gustone]

it's too wide

OH NO IT'S SHIT

[Nathaniel]

Will HTTPS support (via HTTPS Everywhere) be added?

Yep, that's on the list. Should happen shortly after the wiki is updated.

[Moosey]

Forum software is now updated. It seems to be functional again (but let me know if anything is not), but looks quite different. Will start transitioning things back to the old style (e.g., the ConwayLife.com header and LifeViewer integration) now.

That was fast

[Gamedziner]

Pages in the updated forums seem to load a lot slower.

[Nathaniel]

Pages in the updated forums seem to load a lot slower.

Anyone else having this problem? Seems fine to me.

Also, I'll be updating to PHP 7.2 in a day or two, which should speed up the whole site somewhat.

[Macbi]

Pages in the updated forums seem to load a lot slower.

Anyone else having this problem? Seems fine to me.

Also, I'll be updating to PHP 7.2 in a day or two, which should speed up the whole site somewhat.

Seems fine to me too.

[muzik]

I assume the MediaWiki version used by LifeWiki is also going to be updated?

Also, speaking of the wiki, could it be formatted so that it also has the same sort of page top layout as Home and Forums, or would this be too intrusive on the look of the wiki?

[Gustone]

Just make it old width

it is too wide

(btw terraria forums updated recently too)

[Ian07]

Is the wiki software going to be updated as well? LifeWiki still uses MediaWiki 1.23.3, which was released in 2014 and has been unsupported since 2017.

[Nathaniel]

Yes, wiki software update is coming next. It's just a bigger undertaking since PHP itself has to be updated to run the newest version of MediaWiki. Hopefully will happen tonight, but it just depends on when I can get a chunk of time when I know I can fix problems if they arise in the upgrade process.

Edit: Wiki is now updated and seems functional on my end. PHP now updated to 7.2 on the server too. Let me know of any weirdness you encounter.

[Ian07]

Hmm, looks like the MediaWiki update caused a few HTML errors: http://www.conwaylife.com/w/index.php?t ... &redlink=1

The template Template:Distinguish is one of the culprits, not sure where exactly the other ones are coming from though they're all conduits.