CAA's getting a code upgrade; what YOU need to do!

[Mithrandir]

Hi everyone,

What's up:
We're going to be performing a massive code upgrade at some point over the next week or two. This will result in pretty much every piece of code on the site being modified, including the back-end database.

What you need to do:
When you first log in after this upgrade, you will be required to reset your password. This just means clicking a link, then checking your email and following directions - but that means your email address needs to be up to date!!! To ensure everything goes smoothly for you, please go to your User CP, then click on "Edit Profile" and then the "Edit Email & Password" button. Be sure you have access to the email address you find there! If that's an old email address, be sure to update it. You will also probably want to download your Avatar and Signature graphics - just in case things go sideways and you need to re-upload things.

What to expect:
We expect this upgrade will result in about 6 hours of down time, during which visitors to the site will see a notice about the upgrade. We're going to try to process the upgrade this coming week, but if things aren't working in time, we may have to move the upgrade out to next week. You also may notice that some forums are being consolidated for better organization.

Things will look different, and some features (reviews, chat, etc) may not work properly for a few days or weeks while we attempt to figure out what's broken and repair things.

Boring Details:
Here at CAA, we've been wanting to do this upgrade for about 5 years now, but we've been putting it off for various reasons. However, the recent security hole and resulting bot flood (you know, the one that's forced us to disable new user registrations) has turned this into an emergency and we're going to have upgrade quickly.

We're taking this opportunity to radically alter the way code is structured. For those of you who are professional programmers, we're implementing a revision control system to allow better collaboration and quicker security patching. We've wanted to do this for a long time, we first deployed this code so long ago, there literally wasn't really any feasible way to do it. Even though we're in emergency upgrade mode, we want to make sure we take advantage of this down time and make things even more awesome!

This weekend, we've been working really hard behind the scenes and going through all the steps of this upgrade several times (on a backup copy of the server) - to try and make sure there are as few problems as possible when we migrate the live data. We think we've got a pretty good handle on the scope of the upgrade, so we're making the announcement now. If things change, we'll make any announcements we need to here.

Thank you to everyone for understanding,
Mithrandir

[Lynna]

I have a question! Will CAA still have a dark background? I like it...it's kinder to my eyes late at night.

[mechana2015]

Yes it will. We are doing our best to keep CAA looking like CAA while integrating new features and updates, and the backgrounds and color scheme are based of the CAA we know and love.

[Banana Lobster]

Does this "upgrade" mean I'll stop seeing banned people logged in? I've seen people in the "currently active" part of the forums section with their names crossed out, and when I click on them, it says they've been banned, but they're in the "logged in" part, so...it's a little confusing.

And I've noticed this "banned people logged in" thing before, and I've been meaning to PM a mod about it, but I tend to procrastinate like crazy, (a habit I've really been trying to break) so I've never gotten around to it. Sorry guys.

[mechana2015]

If they have a line through their name, they can't see most of the site and can't do anything. Banning doesn't prevent login just all actions on part of the user. this will most likely still be present in the future version.

[Banana Lobster]

Okay, thanks Mecha, it was just a little confusing for me. Thanks for taking the time to answer, and sorry about the procrastinating thing, the next time I see something odd, I'll let you or one of the other mods know right away.

[acgifford]

Thank you guys so much! This is going to be awesome! I'm excited! You and your staff are what makes CAA such a wonderful and safe place be! I would love to hug all of you!

[Crossfire]

Any plans to reorganize sub-forums?

[mechana2015]

Some reorganization may occur.

[TheMewster]

I'm excited to see how the new CAA will be. Are old forum topics still going to be here or will they be deleted in the process of upgrading?

[Furen]

Are old forum topics still going to be here or will they be deleted in the process of upgrading?

I'm curious about this myself.

[mechana2015]

At this point it seems like all threads and discussion areas will remain, unless we deliberately merge some of them.

[Mithrandir]

Hi everyone,

We are planning a to take this opportunity to do a tiny little bit of re-organizing, but nothing hugely unexpected. It is our assumption that these changes will not have a major impact on anyone, but if anyone gets lost, I'm pretty sure you'll let us know.

As you can probably tell, this did not happen last weekend, due to a variety of reasons. I'm really hoping that I can get through everything this weekend, but I've got some health issues (and a really weird back-end bug that's proving a bit harder than expected to squelch) that may cause a bit more delay.

Just keeping you guys in the loop.

- Mith