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icon5.gif  Themes and upgrades [message #15644] Mon, 29 December 2003 21:24 Go to next message
wfjmueller is currently offline  wfjmueller   Germany
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I wonder what happens to a hand-tailored theme when it comes to upgrade to a new version of FUDforum ? Suppose one has a theme based on 2.5.2 and one wants to upgrade to 2.6.0 ? Since the layout changed (user info inline rather than on the left) between these two versions it is obvious that upgrading a theme isn't a trivial process. So:
  • are user-defined themes upgraded at all ?
  • if yes, are there limitations/restrictions ?
  • of not, what happens to the old theme ?
Re: Themes and upgrades [message #15645 is a reply to message #15644] Mon, 29 December 2003 21:30 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ilia is currently offline  Ilia   Canada
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Given that rather extensive changes in FUD 2.6 you'll probably need to do some work to get your theme to work with new templates. The amount of work depends on the depth of your customizations. What it means that the upgrade process will replace the old templates with the new ones, which means old customizations in those templates will be 'lost' and you'll need to reapply them based on the backups.

As before, when the upgrade script upgrades the theme the old files are backed up into the .backup/ directory which can be found inside the errors directory.


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Re: Themes and upgrades [message #15655 is a reply to message #15645] Tue, 30 December 2003 13:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
wfjmueller is currently offline  wfjmueller   Germany
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Does this mean, that every time an upgrade script is run, all the custom templates are 'put aside' and have to be manually reestablished ? That means for me, that each customization creates automatically a maintenance issue. This limits to a large degree the inherent value of the template based approach.
Re: Themes and upgrades [message #15657 is a reply to message #15655] Tue, 30 December 2003 14:01 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ilia is currently offline  Ilia   Canada
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No. During upgrade only the templates that were changed (in FUDforum) are replaced. For the most part I try to keep commonly modified templates such as header/footer/forum.css the same and in other instances the changes are usually fairly minor.

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Re: Themes and upgrades [message #15694 is a reply to message #15657] Fri, 02 January 2004 02:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
tgaastra is currently offline  tgaastra   United States
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Just as a "perceived level of work" gauge-mark:

It seems to me that I've had to fiddle/fix my custom themes pretty much every time there is a point release (i.e. 2.5.2 -> 2.5.3 -> 2.6.0) and it has been like that since the days of 1.2.x...

Its not a huge inconvenience, but my assumption is on every upgrade now that the custom themes used will need some work.
Re: Themes and upgrades [message #15697 is a reply to message #15694] Fri, 02 January 2004 04:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ilia is currently offline  Ilia   Canada
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Like I said before that depends on the nature of your customizations.

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Re: Themes and upgrades [message #15699 is a reply to message #15697] Fri, 02 January 2004 05:48 Go to previous messageGo to next message
tgaastra is currently offline  tgaastra   United States
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Not a complaint, just an observation. Just wanted to let him know that he probably should be prepared to have to make some changes after every upgrade.
Re: Themes and upgrades [message #15757 is a reply to message #15699] Sun, 04 January 2004 00:06 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Wild_Cat is currently offline  Wild_Cat   Ukraine
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Nope. If customizations are no more than header/footer/css, it's not so much work. I only had to rework it once from 2.3.2 to 2.5.2/
What's painful for me and done every time - to delete default message icons so that they don't show up next to my own customized, smilies are not atomatical and if you have different file-names, you won't see the default ones, thankfully. And I think I had to re-upload some cusom buttons, like the ones in control panel...

The other question that change from 2.5.2 to 2.6.0 will be much more significant, and counting I think to make major changes to the new message display layout I don't like - that can cause more problems certainly, counting that it will require to redo it all anew every time, because if template is changed - this is for some reason (may be a bug fix - or a new feature?) and if you want to keep this change, you can't simply copy, you'll have to redo, I'll have to redo... Well, it's rather small 'payment' for having this wonderful engine developed and supported so vividly, I say! Smile


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Re: Themes and upgrades [message #15764 is a reply to message #15757] Sun, 04 January 2004 06:37 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Ilia is currently offline  Ilia   Canada
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I wish I knew how to determine whether or not to keep the old icons or not. If anyone had any suggestions how to do this, those suggestions are more then welcome.

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Re: Themes and upgrades [message #15782 is a reply to message #15764] Mon, 05 January 2004 01:30 Go to previous message
Wild_Cat is currently offline  Wild_Cat   Ukraine
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As far as I understand, you are talking about message icons.
Also, if I understand it right, the upgrade script overwrites changed files checking by their version name, which is not possible in case of icons...
But then icons are not updated every time, so no need to include them may be? That's a part of possible solution, as it seems to me.

I didn't know until reading this topic, that old files are stored in the backup dir. But the first time I discovered the message icons are overwritten, I named my new icons differently, so I only needed to remove the ones I don't need on the next upgrade. So, if we suppose, the forum admin has enough wits to use one or another from the above-mentioned work-arounds (restore from backup or give different names if he's too lazy like me to read docs), another partial solution may be to check for file existence in case of an icon update and NOT create it if DOES NOT exists?

As for the smilies new pics every time, I don't even need to remove them since they are included from database, so unused smilies don't give any problem (for more deleted by optimizer?). A forum icons manager as for smilies and another SQL table? That's another cardinal possible solution, seems to me...


Lady of Avalon
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