phpBB3 => phpBB SEO premod

arch stanton · PR1 Joined: 04 Oct 2006 Posts: 113

dcz, what's the best course of action for someone who has a phpbb3 RC4 installation, with the SEO mods installed manually, and needs to upgrade to the latest versions of everything?

The problem is that the pre-mod works best with someone upgrading from 2.0.x to 3.0, it doesn't work as easily with an existing 3.0 board.

This is how I plan to proceed:
* back up everything (doh!)
* use the database update from the "changed files" package to get the database up to 3.0.0 Gold
* delete all the old files, upload the pre-mod files

I think the problem at this point is going to be that the ACP for the extra packages won't be there (I can't remember exactly what happened when I last tried installing the pre-mod on a clone of my live board but I had some problem of this nature and SeO told me I needed to install the extra packages manually into the ACP panel?)

Or would I be better off just installing the vanilla 3.0.0 Gold files and just installing everything manually?

Thanks.

SeO · Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 4:25 pm Post subject: Re: phpBB3 => phpBB SEO premod

Actually, it's easier than you think if you want to go for the premod.
The only thing to deal with is the eventual extra mod installed and the style customization.
You'll have to update them manually. About the style, given the huge amount of change since RC4, I'm quite sure doing it again from the last version is not the worst.

This being said, here is how you would do it without any extra mods :

Just download both the premod full package and the changed file only package (last version rc7 to 3.0.0).
Since you already where using one of the phpBB SEO mod rewrite, make sure you enter your setting again in the new phpbb_seo_class.php file, such as the index url, or the static parts of the url, in case of course you modded them.
Then overwrite all your current files with the premod ones except of course config.php and the .htaccess. While doing so, do not delete what's in phpbb_seo/cache/, so you'll keep the configured forum urls and other settings.
Then, upload the install/ dir from the changed file only package and hit yourdomain.com/phpBB3/install/database_update.php to update the db directly to the last version.
Once this is done, if the phpBB SEO mod rewrite acp was already installed with the mod rewrite, then, it's ready for the premod too, if not, you would have to upload the phpbb_seo_install.php file from the contrib/ dir of the package and run it from the phpbb_seo/ dir (yourdomain.com/phpbb_seo/phpbb_seo_install.php) to install it.
Once this is done, go to ACP and configure the new options, the first one to deal with being the mod rewrite type since the premod offers them all at once, juts make sure you keep the same as before : advanced mixed or simple, otherwise you'll need to personalize your .htaccess to get the redirecting done.

You'll as well need to generate and install a new .htaccess for the new profile groups and search user pages rewriting.

Last thing, for the no duplicate included as well, you'll need to run this SQL query :

arch stanton · PR1 Joined: 04 Oct 2006 Posts: 113

Thanks, SeO. Everything is updated now, it all went pretty smoothly. Smile

There is just one slight annoyance. One of the forums on my board is called "Glade Festival 2008" and the mod rewrite always displayed it as /glade-festival-2008-f33/

But when I was setting up mod rewrite in the ACP, it didn't like the 2008 being included and keeps rendering the URL as /glade-festival-f33/ instead. Any idea what's going wrong?

SeO · Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 9:59 am Post subject: Re: phpBB3 => phpBB SEO premod

Yes, you cannot use numbers at the end of forum URLs, this limitation is here to make sure pagination will work in all cases, since it could use a number at the end of a forum url : forum-url-xx.html where xx would be the start param.

You could add it at the beginning of the forum url instead.

Stokerpiller · PR0 Joined: 24 May 2007 Posts: 56

Thanks for this guide.
It worked perfect Very Happy