[Complete] Site Outage 28 or 29 October 2019 (Late Evening) - Forum Upgrade

[ryanschristmaslights]

NOTICE OF PLANNED SITE OUTAGE - Forum upgrade to XenForo 2.1

AusChristmasLighting is currently running an older version of the XenForo forum software, which is no longer supported. To receive new security fixes and support, the site must be upgraded. This upgrade will introduce some changes/improvements (see previous announcement for details). During the upgrade, the site will be temporarily unavailable.


When is the site outage expected?
Late evening, Monday 28th or Tuesday 29th October. At this time the site will be placed into maintenance mode where all areas including forums, chat and wiki will be unavailable.

The exact time that the outage would begin is to be determined. I'll play this by ear based on site traffic. For instance, there is some flexibility to delay this for a few hours if there is an active chat room conversation or increased forum posting activity.


How long will the site be unavailable?
I have performed several test upgrades in preparation for this upgrade. Based on this, I estimate that the site should be back in a few hours after the outage begins.

Extra backups will be created prior to commencing the upgrade. If new issues are encountered that would extend the required outage time, then we can roll the site back and reschedule the upgrade for the beginning of 2020. I don't want to keep the site closed for longer than is necessary, especially given the current time of year with the festive season almost at the doorstep.


What about the 101 manual?
The normal method for obtaining the AusChristmasLighting 101 Manual won't work during the planned site outage. But don't worry, I will provide an alternative for the duration of the outage . This alternative will not require a site account (as new registrations will be disabled until we return). The 101 manual will be available again from the usual link once the site upgrade is complete.


Discussion thread: https://auschristmaslighting.com/threads/discussion-and-feedback-for-xenforo-2-1-upgrade.11795/

 

[ryanschristmaslights]

Thanks for your patience during the recent site outage. It has almost been two days since AusChristmasLighting made the leap to the newest version of the XenForo forum software. While the big upgrade is behind us now, there are some remaining tasks for me to go through at a later date. Some additional tweaks to the server configuration are necessary in order to activate support for emojis and device push notifications*. Additionally, username changes are temporarily suspended due to a bug with a third-party addon.
*Apple iPhone and iPad (all browsers) plus Safari for macOS do not currently support push notifications.

You'll probably have noticed that this upgrade has brought with it some differences in the site’s appearance (especially portable devices such as phones). Compared to when we initially migrated to XenForo in 2017, these differences aren’t as significant. One particular change that I want to bring to your attention relates to the main site navigation menu – this is where you’ll find the familiar buttons that say "Forums", "Wiki", and so on. The menus for these used to automatically open when hovered over. As of the new XenForo update, this behaviour has changed so that the menu will only open when the button is clicked (or tapped on for touchscreen devices).




Secondly, the site search bar can now be accessed by clicking on the new magnifying glass icon at the top right of the site. Compared to the old search location, it hasn’t moved very far. One other change is that the search now defaults to 'everywhere' (site-wide) searches even if more specific constraints are available. For example, if you have a particular forum section open, the search won't automatically constrain your search to it (unless you explicitly choose "This forum").



With great thanks to everyone who has helped out with the site's running costs, we've been able to take advantage of multiple sale promotions for the forum, media gallery and chat to extend the updates/support duration of these licences all the way to 2022 at a discounted cost. This has taken care of some of our running costs for the next few years. This would not have been possible without all the generous elves, so thank you!