Well, I'd hoped that I'd be able to figure this out on my own, but I'm having such severe problems that I figured it's about time I start a thread.
Anyway, we're currently in preparation for upgrading our website from a combination of vbPortal 3.0, vBulletin 2.3.7 and Photopost 3.3.
Prior to doing this upgrade (which is happening in two weeks), I've set up a local install on my machine (a Mac running OS 10.4) to test everything out and make sure that the integration is going to go smoothly... needless to say it's been anything but smooth.
I've currently upgraded my local install with vBulletin 3.5 and vbPortal 3.5 without problem... both are running well together and the integration bridge between the two is running fine... however, Photopost just does not want to play nice at all with these two other software packages.
Here's the process I've gone through so far:
1. SQL dumped our Photopost 3.3 database, and reimported it into a local database for testing.
2. Copied our current Photopost directory to my local machine, along with about 20% of our photo library (the entire library is over 8GB, so copying the whole thing would be excessive).
3. Opened the new database and changed the settings variables to point to my local installation of PP 3.3, rather than the one currently on our webserver.
4. Unzipped Photopost 5.21 into a separate directory in my local webserver root directory named "gallery".
5. Edited both the config-inc.php and config-int.php (from PP 5.21) and changed the settings in those files to point to locally installed databases and directories, and also filled in the vB3.5 license so that the bridge can function. I've currently left the integration functions turned 'off'. (I figured out that turning any of these on before performing the upgrade causes you to get a blank screen when clicking 'Proceed to upgrade').
6. I then point my browser to <my.domain>/gallery/upgrade.php, where the upgrade process begins (starting at the 3.3 upgrade).
At upgrade 4.5, I get this error:
Code:
Content visible to verified customers only.
Which seems pretty benign, and the text at the bottom says 'Upgrade Successful', so I continue...
At upgrade 4.7, I get this error:
Code:
Content visible to verified customers only.
But it also says that the upgrade was successful, and I continue...
At upgrade 4.85, I don't really get an error, but it doesn't perform as expected. The link to click says '
Move DATA directory files (you only do this only once successfully) -->' but it only moves the files around in the old 'photos/data' directory, rather than moving them into their relative positions inside the new 'gallery/data' directory... is this normal behavior? If it's 'normal', then it's very counter-intuitive, and contrary to what one expects to happen. It then updates the filenames without a problem.
The rest of the upgrade finishes as expected, with no errors, but at the last screen, you're not told what to do next, only that 'Upgrade is Complete, you can now remove the upgrade.php file'.
Like... uh... do I need to go to the admin panel now or something to change any settings? No indication whatsoever, and referring back to the upgrade.txt file only says 'You're Done' as the last step... nothing to indicate any further steps either...
So, figuring my next option is to go to the gallery index, I point my browser at 'gallery/index.php', and Photopost pops up, apparently working fine.
I click the 'Admin' link (thinking cool, the bridge is working), and get this error:
Code:
Content visible to verified customers only.
(Hrm... code sharing maybe?
). So, I go back to my config-inc.php to make sure that I haven't set anything incorrectly, and lo-and-behold, I did indeed set the pp database as 'gallery'. So, I go into the gallery database, figuring that the database setting might be stored there... no go.
So, I do some searching, and discover that I should go straight to the adm-index.php file, so I try that. Up comes the login dialog, and I fill in my username and password (since I'm the admin), and click 'Submit'... and get this error:
Code:
Content visible to verified customers only.
Wait a sec... I figured that since I had changed all my directory paths in the config-inc.php and config-int.php files, these would be changed in the database... nope!
So, I go into the gallery database, and manually change the settings myself to point at the new installation, leaving the photos data directory pointed at the old installation (since they didn't get moved). I try the login again.
Now I get this error:
Code:
Content visible to verified customers only.
Apparently the bridge
isn't working, so, I search around here some more, and come up with this bit of code:
Code:
Content visible to verified customers only.
Which I add to my adm-inc.php file, which finally allows me to login to the admin settings file. Apparently this is a cookie problem, and a known issue (why this isn't spelled out in the upgrade file is beyond me). So I set the cookies up ("/" as the path, "bb" as the prefix, and "<my.domain>" as the cookie domain). Supposedly now all I have to do is log out, clear my cookies, comment out the code above, and log in again for the bridge to work...
Once again:
Code:
Content visible to verified customers only.
Argh!, so I uncomment the code, and re-login to the admin panel, and change the cookie domain to 'blank', I also go into vBulletin and change the cookie domain to 'blank' as well. I clear my cookies, go back into vBulletin, log in, then try going back to my photopost install.
This time the 'Admin' link shows up, so I click it, and up comes a login screen. I enter my username and password, and...
Once again:
Code:
Content visible to verified customers only.
Man, I just lost another patch of hair that I probably won't grow back... So, I
once again uncomment the auto-login code from adm-inc.php, and log back into the admin area.
Figuring that maybe I have to turn the integration on, I go into the 'Edit Integration" pane, and select vbPortal2 Integration... apparently that's the wrong selection, because I end up with a blank screen when I attempt to go back to the gallery home page. So I click 'back' in my browser window, disable vbPortal2 Integration, and turn 'on' all three of the vBulletin 3 integration options.
So now, the header and footer from vBulletin show up, and also the vbPortal Sidebar, but there's no style applied to Photopost at all... it looks really heinous... so back into the admin panel I go... I see the 'Forum Settings' link, so I click it, and lo and behold, there's some settings I haven't seen. The only problem is, they won't stick. It says that the settings have been saved, only they haven't. When the window refreshes, the old settings are still there (vb2 integration, and no stylesheet sharing).
So, I go back into the database, and find the field that says 'vb2' and change it to 'vb3'... and now I can login like I'm supposed to, and it recognizes and greets me when I link into the gallery page.
However, there's still no stylesheet integration, even though I have 'shared stylesheets' selected.
Needless to say, at about this point, I gave up and posted here... I definitely
wasn't done when the upgrade told me I was... and in fact I spent another three hours fiddling with stuff just to get basic functionality.
I hate to say it, but the upgrade process for this software sucks. I upgraded to vBulletin 3.5 and everything went buttery smooth, without a single problem... and when that install said it was done,
it was done!.
I can't fathom why the software doesn't upgrade the database paths from the new config-inc.php variables rather than leaving them as-is. I had to go in and change these manually (which thankfully I know how to do), but if I didn't, I'd be in for a world of hurt.
I supposed I should mention that I'm running PHP 5.x and MySQL 4.x, but I wouldn't think that it would matter (of course I could be wrong).
If anybody managed to get through this
really long post, do you have any advice (aside from me to get a life
).
I consider myself quite knowledgeable when it comes to this kind of stuff, but this upgrade process just has me frazzled... needless to say I'd like to have these kinks worked out before we try to go live with it in two weeks.
Thanks for your input.
P.S. I also tried just copying all the upgrade files to the old photopost directory on my local machine and performing the upgrade that way, but it also didn't work. I'm also unzipping the install files on the command-line with the 'unzip' utility, so hopefully permissions are preserved for most files... still, I did a chmod -R 777 * on all the files in the directory just in case (it's a local install so I'm not worried about security).