Updating website

Post by **Nathaniel** » October 1st, 2019, 8:53 am

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 · Post by **Moosey** » October 1st, 2019, 10:57 am

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)

Post by **Nathaniel** » October 1st, 2019, 11:02 am

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 · Post by **muzik** » October 1st, 2019, 12:32 pm

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.

Post by **Nathaniel** » October 1st, 2019, 2:56 pm

muzik wrote: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?

Post by **Nathaniel** » October 1st, 2019, 5:18 pm

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 · Post by **muzik** » October 1st, 2019, 5:45 pm

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

muzik · Post by **muzik** » October 1st, 2019, 6:22 pm

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

Post by **Ian07** » October 1st, 2019, 6:41 pm

muzik wrote: October 1st, 2019, 6:22 pm Will the homepage be updated to closer resemble the new forums in design?

Also:

The ConwayLife.com home page wrote: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...

Post by **Nathaniel** » October 1st, 2019, 6:47 pm

muzik wrote: October 1st, 2019, 6:22 pm 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.

Ian07 wrote: October 1st, 2019, 6:41 pm
The ConwayLife.com home page wrote: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 · Post by **testitemqlstudop** » October 1st, 2019, 7:09 pm

Nathaniel wrote: October 1st, 2019, 8:53 am 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 · Post by **GUYTU6J** » October 1st, 2019, 9:17 pm

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

Post by **Nathaniel** » October 1st, 2019, 9:22 pm

GUYTU6J wrote: October 1st, 2019, 9:17 pm 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 · Post by **Freywa** » October 2nd, 2019, 1:24 am

Will HTTPS support (via HTTPS Everywhere) be added?

Gustone · Post by **Gustone** » October 2nd, 2019, 2:45 am

it's too wide

OH NO IT'S SHIT

Post by **Nathaniel** » October 2nd, 2019, 5:31 am

Freywa wrote: October 2nd, 2019, 1:24 am Will HTTPS support (via HTTPS Everywhere) be added?

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

Moosey · Post by **Moosey** » October 2nd, 2019, 6:12 am

Nathaniel wrote: October 1st, 2019, 5:18 pm 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 · Post by **Gamedziner** » October 2nd, 2019, 8:28 am

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

Post by **Nathaniel** » October 2nd, 2019, 8:42 am

Gamedziner wrote: October 2nd, 2019, 8:28 am 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 · Post by **Macbi** » October 2nd, 2019, 9:08 am

Nathaniel wrote: October 2nd, 2019, 8:42 am
Gamedziner wrote: October 2nd, 2019, 8:28 am 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 · Post by **muzik** » October 2nd, 2019, 9:37 am

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 · Post by **Gustone** » October 2nd, 2019, 11:15 am

Just make it old width

it is too wide

(btw terraria forums updated recently too)

Post by **Ian07** » October 2nd, 2019, 3:39 pm

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.

Post by **Nathaniel** » October 2nd, 2019, 4:11 pm

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.

Post by **Ian07** » October 2nd, 2019, 10:43 pm

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.

ConwayLife.com

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