Software upgrades complete.

[Jerry Russell]

I've been notified that Wordpress at this site is going to be auto-upgraded to version 5.0.1 in the next few days. This is a major upgrade, with a new editor (Gutenberg) replacing the old Classic editor. This will make it easier to produce interesting graphic designs for posts at the Wordpress post, but might also mean that the appearance of the old posts could conceivably be disrupted. I'm also running a couple of releases behind on the Newspaper theme.

This is a separate issue from the Xenforo software used to run this Forum section of the site. The site has been running on Xenforo version 1.5. I've just been notified that this is now considered legacy software, and Xenforo will be ceasing support for this version shortly. Xenforo has been encouraging its users to update to Version 2.0 since late 2017. According to the developer:

XenForo 2 represents a significant technological advancement over XenForo 1. The entire software architecture has been rewritten for enhanced efficiency, stability and speed of development. Systems such as XF2's entities provide for easy, rapid, error-proof fetching and manipulation of data, allowing new features and add-ons to be developed with hitherto unseen speed and reliability (1), (2).

User-facing features have now gone beyond parity with XenForo 1, and new enhancements such as Quick Thread and Thread Prompts, the What's New system and enhanced media embedding, along with many other changes, offer end-users new opportunities for engagement, interaction and discovery.
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The upgrade is said to be a simple, painless process. And they're offering a discount price on the upgrade if I buy it before the end of the year.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

[Jerry Russell]

What could possibly go wrong?

Now is the time to find out! The Xenforo upgrade will be happening in the next half-hour. There will be a brief interruption of service, hopefully less than five minutes.

The Wordpress upgrade has long since been accomplished, without any detectable hitch. I've been procrastinating on the XenForo upgrade, and my delay has been rewarded by a further available upgrade to XenForo 2.1, which supports BBedit tables. We had been using a plugin for this purpose. So we'll no longer be needing the plugin.

 

[Jerry Russell]

New XenForo 2.1 software is active as of 8am Monday. One obvious problem is that we need to design a home page icon for display in the upper left corner. Other than that, I don't see any issues. Based on a random sample, I'd say that the text, images, videos, graphics and tables are all formatted correctly in the new system. Please post to this thread if you see any problems.

 

[Richard Stanley]

So far, it looks like the update is a success.

I have noted a few new features, such as that it is now possible to determine where a quote was taken from, that there is a "remove formatting" function, and also a handy "Preview" function (at the bottom right of the editor pane.

I also took the liberty to enable the "Multi-Quote" function (+Quote), but have yet to try it.