Why should I upgrade to 4.#?: WSN Support

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Why should I upgrade to 4.#?
Is WSNKB 4.# dramatically different?

Version: 2.0.18

Why should I upgrade to 4.#?

knipp
Beginner

Usergroup: Member
Joined: Jan 13, 2008
Total Topics: 3
Total Posts: 4

Posted 01/14/08 - 06:35 AM:	#1
I am running WSNKB 2.0.18. Is there enough that is different in 4.# to make me want to upgrade? How easy is the upgrade process? Advice welcome.

Paul
Administrator

Usergroup: Administrator
Joined: Dec 21, 2001
Location: Northern California
Total Topics: 49
Total Posts: 5511

Posted 01/14/08 - 01:10 PM:	#2
The jump in numbering is to synch with WSN Links, so 2.0.x is equivilant to 4.0.x, only one series behind the current. So the new stuff is all of this: http://scripts.webmastersite.net/releasenotes.php... If you don't have a problem with 2.0, upgrading isn't urgent at this time. How difficult it is depends on how many template changes you have -- the upgrade requires redoing your templates. Outside of templates nothing else should be difficult. Upgrades from 4.1 onward are much simpler with the automated upgrade and the template change listings. Unfortunately that can't be retroactively applied to make it any easier to upgrade from 2.0. In general, 4.1 should improve ease of use and save you some time in the long run. Edited by Paul on 01/14/08 - 01:15 PM

AutumnWindz
Member

Usergroup: Customer
Joined: Oct 01, 2004
Total Topics: 9
Total Posts: 30

Posted 01/14/08 - 02:21 PM:	#3
Thoughts from another users vantage point. The site that I started several years ago with wsnkb is highly customized to fit my site users needs. I did upgrade to 4.xx and ran into quite a few problems as a result. These problems were for the most part a result of my customizations no longer working as expected in the upgraded script. Yes, I could go back and redo all of my customizations into the newest version, however it took me an unimaginable amount of time to get them working right the first time. Thankfully I keep backups and after several frustrating weeks, on the admin side and for my site posters, I reverted back to 2.0.28. There were not any new options that I needed on the site and it works just fine at 2.0.28 and that particular site will forever stay at 2.0.28. So, what I am trying to say is that if you haven't done much editing of your templates, added custom fields, article types, etc., then upgrading should not be too painful. On the otherhand, if like my original site there is major customization and the upgraded script does not have any new features that you can't live without, then I would leave it as it is.

Paul
Administrator

Usergroup: Administrator
Joined: Dec 21, 2001
Location: Northern California
Total Topics: 49
Total Posts: 5511

Posted 01/15/08 - 07:50 PM:	#4
You won't stay forever on 2.0.28, because someday another PHP version will come out which breaks backwards compatability (already happened a couple times in PHP 5), and your host will have to upgrade to it for security reasons, and 2.0.28 will cease to function. The difference is it'll be an emergency then, and by that point no one will have tested an upgrade from 2.0 in years, increasing chances of the upgrade not working. Alternately, someday there may be a security hole discovered that affects 2.0.28 and due to never updating to patched versions you'll eventually be hacked. What I would recommend when there are a lot of template customizations is doing the upgrade on a copy of the site, instead of the live site (copy the database and files to a new location, such as on your computer if you're using xampp, edit config.php to update the info to that location), so that it's not a rush job. Then take a careful look at your HTML/CSS practices -- often people write invalid HTML and fail to make proper use of CSS because it seems easier to them at the time, but it bites them in the end by making the templates unnecessarily complex. There are still a startling number of people who type fonts and sizes directly into HTML, for example, which by itself probably doubles the sizes of their templates compared to using CSS, besides making it infinitely harder to change the design later, and considering that the stylesheet upgrades automatically so never has to be redone. Also consider using [INSERTFILE=] where applicable. 4.1 simplifies by using a single article bit for most article-displaying spots. Edited by Paul on 01/15/08 - 08:16 PM

AutumnWindz
Member

Usergroup: Customer
Joined: Oct 01, 2004
Total Topics: 9
Total Posts: 30

Posted 01/16/08 - 08:13 PM:	#5
Oh, I know and I should have phrased my response a little differently. Eventually, everyone needs to upgrade, but it is not at an urgent state at the moment and that is really what I was trying to say - that if the site is working fine in an older version then there is no rush to update, but it will eventually need to be done. I always have numerous projects in the works and since the newspaperabstracts site is working fine at the moment, it is not worth the time to upgrade. And I love the insertfile function - I have been using that on the newspaperabstracts site from the beginning. My server has already been upgraded to the latest PHP version, though as you stated, you never know what will happen in the future that will affect compatability. My current 'environment stats' read: Apache/1.3.39 (Unix) PHP/5.2.3 mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2634a mod_ssl/2.8.30 OpenSSL/0.9.7a PHP 5.2.3 with zend engine 2.2.0 Loaded PHP Extensions: zip, libxml, xsl, xmlwriter, xmlrpc, dom, xmlreader, xml, wddx, tokenizer, sysvsem, sysvmsg, session, pcre, SimpleXML, SPL, PDO, sockets, SQLite, standard, Reflection, pspell, posix, pdo_sqlite, mysqli, mysql, ming, mhash, mcrypt, mbstring, ldap, json, imap, iconv, hash, gettext, gd, ftp, filter, exif, dbase, dba, date, curl, ctype, calendar, bz2, bcmath, zlib, openssl, apache, Zend Optimizer

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