ocPortal 9 released! - Comments
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ocPortal 9 released!
9 released. Read the full article for a list of changes, and upgrade information.
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The non-bundled addons aren't out yet, but should be out tomorrow.
(Except of course the theme compatibility break)
All reported bugs are now fixed, listed in the usual place:
9 - ocPortal.com
These are the two issues found so far that everyone will wish to patch:
Upgraded to 9 - Hate it.
Patty Lynch
patty@lldrepsonly.biz
Use that to restore your site to its original 8.x.x state.
You should have read the 'negative' comments about upgrading to 9.0.0 in this thread. It would have rung alarm bells!
If you didn't use the ocPortal backup system, read to the end.
You should be able to restore things to an acceptable level, even if it takes a bit of time. Ultimately, it is worth it - nay, essential - since you don't have a site that you had or want!
Good Luck!
Thanks for your help!
Stick to 8.x.x until you decide you wish to change the layout completely, THEN take a stab at upgrading. Build a 'clone' site (comprehensive instructions by temp1024 at - View topic: How to clone your ocPortal site - ocPortal.com) and work on that, (one bite of the elephant at a time), and you will slowly realise how, where and what you need to change to achieve your objective.
I know I am slowly going through this painful process, but on a more enthusiastic note, I am also seriously toying with the idea of a completely 'new' design.
Here's to your success …
Despite all of the warnings, I decided to take the hard route. Yes, I am just that stubborn.
Yes, the work was hard. I had to replace certain files that got left out of the upgrade for some reason, and had to slowly rebuild my theme from scratch. But over all… It just wasn't as bad as I was fearing it would be ™.
For most sites, the best route for an upgrade if they must have one would be to do the cloning method. I chose to do the hard way because hey, someone had to. My site is now up and running well, and everything looks fine (after 100+ questions in the Developing Forum, sorry about that Chris).
If I could make one suggestion Chris, remove the theme upgrader for upgrading to v9. Instead put in big bold letters YOUR THEME WILL NOT WORK IN v9!!!!!! That sould catch all of those who just refuse to believe your warnings of doom!
Over all, a good release. But please, lets wait a while before the next major breaking release lol.
As you rightly point out, this is a one-time MAJOR change to anything we are currently running in versions <8.x.x, and sites and themes will need to be rebuilt - from the ground up.
For that reason alone I don't think I will be rushing to upgrade to v9.x.x any time soon. Perhaps the solution would be to build a new site based on version 9, but I don't have the heart to 'start all over again'.
Also, you might want to consider removing my site as an 'example' build from the ocP Home page as it will no longer be a relevant example. If I manage to resurrect the site with a version 9 build and theme, I will re-submit for your perusal.
I 'upgraded' the sacrificial 'clone' site, and I wasn't disappointed.
It got HOSED!
Now it's back to temp's instructions on how to clone a site, so that I can resurrect the clone, although I don't see the need for it any longer now that I know that v9 isn't going to play nice!
I suspect there will be a plethora of 'established' ocPortal sites stagnating at version 8.x.x for some time to come.
v9 is a great base for new users.
I imagine v10 will be quite a while, so some existing users may wish to jump over v9 and go straight to v10 when it does come, which probably include the other side to compat breaks – server-side stuff (e.g. raising the minimum PHP version, heavily reorganising the filesystem, and so on).
Yeah, OK!
Some users might not be aware they are using a theme. Really, anyone who has chosen a colour during the Setup Wizard, has a custom theme, which won't be compatible after the upgrade.
You can delete and recreate the theme from the Admin Zone, which will be fully working and accessible.
Admin Zone > Style > Themes, then choose to edit the theme and delete it.
Then you'll find the option to make a new theme on Admin Zone > Style > Themes also.
v9 and themes
On a theme-by-theme basis we can upgrade and license them via our normal support system though. We'd need to charge a few support hours per theme to do the conversion – we're saying we'll do this at a loss to share the upgrade cost, although exactly how that will work out isn't decided yet.
We also are maintaining version 8 with bug fixes for the time being, there's no reason to upgrade if you don't wish to. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I expect some users will choose to leapfrog v9 at the point where they're ready for a new reinvestment/upgrade cycle in their sites.
The full story is that we invested heavily to make them due to a high demand for professional ocPortal themes. After they were released people stopped giving any feedback on themes at all, and we didn't make any sales. I think ultimately people wanted to see a large number of themes, but for free or possibly just as a demonstration of what can be achieved. Normally we'd get some kind of feedback, even if to say the price was wrong, I just expect people realised the price was fair but most users didn't have budgets, or if they did probably didn't want to use a theme. I'm sure there would have been one or two exceptions but the cost of just maintaining such a large collection of sophisticated themes would be many times more than we'd recoup in sales.
I think the main take-away from the experience for me is to survey-survey-survey on people's actual intentions rather than just implementing feedback unquestionably. A big lesson for me there.
v9 and the theme
On my end, credits were spent in this process, if the next version is soon, I could possibly wait. There is content that is in need of publishing, and I am not exactly sure when my classes start again (although I should find out on Thursday), when they do, there will be fervent publishing.
Otherwise, if you could take a look at how the site looks now (post-upgrade), it would be great to have a firmer idea of what it would take to get back what has been lost.
I can roll it back at some point to the 13th which was the last date before the upgrade, but, I may not have much time to decide as I'm not totally familiar with SG's restore process and data discharge schedule.
Will the v10 upgrade lead to these issues as from 8 to 9? With the editing done to this to date, it doesn't seem practical to restart this project, will there be a big gain in v10?
As usual, your efforts and skills are appreciated.
As detailed in the release announcement, the themeing changes exist on a level somewhere between a reorganisation and a complete rewrite. So it's not so much a matter of upgrading the themes, it'd be a case of rewriting large chunks of them, perhaps 6 hours per theme if we work really fast and efficiently. v10 wouldn't change this, but I expect by the time that comes (quite a long time I imagine, but this hasn't been determined) users would have gone through a redesign cycle on their sites anyway.
If you upgraded without realising I would suggest restoring the backup. As discussed above, people aren't required to upgrade and we're maintaining v8 with bug fixes. v8 is a great release and it's not being abandoned.
I'm afraid I'm not sure I follow so please clarify for me. Is SG the webhost, and you are relying on the backups taken by the web host, and are not sure how their restoration process would go?
I know it's not helpful for me to say at this point, but our advice is to always make your own backups and to test them – personally I wouldn't trust a web host's own backup system unless I had instant access to the backups and had verified their integrity.
Best regards,
Chris
So I wonder if I should bother with 9. Is it going to be a major improvement over 8?
My biggest issue with OCP so far is simply speed, it seems so much slower than anything else I have used.
I find that, for me, v9 feels a bit faster than v8.
ocPortal is a huge behemoth of a program. There are a lot of database calls and such that your speed with ocPortal is more or less going to be dependent upon your host. However, the improvements and changes to how templates and themeing and whatnot work in v9 seem, for me, to make it run a little faster and smoother.
The question if making the change to v9 yet is a good idea or not can only really be answered by you. Do you really want or need the themeing improvements and standarizations put into v9, or is v8 doing well enough for you now as it is? I note that you still have some things not working in v8, and there is no guarentee such things would work in v9. But for the most part, the largest change in v9 is templating. That might give you a preformance boost… but is it worth the headache to make the change?
For me, it was. For you? That is really just something you are going to have to think about. But at least there is no rush to do so and you can continue to use v8 as long as you like. It is, after all, your site
Ooh, burn!
I'm sure he must have meant Windows 2000
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