====== Vanilla ======

===== Big Upgrade =====

I'm in the process of upgrading an old installation of the Vanilla forum software, from version 3.3, to 2021.009.

Still running into some hiccups, but this's what's helped so far:

  * I had to clear the ''cache'' directory.
  * I had trouble with the 'pretty urls', as they've since become the default. My ''.htaccess'' file was also empty, so I copied the one from [[github>vanilla/vanilla/blob/master/.htaccess.dist]]. If you have a  ''$Configuration['Garden']['RewriteUrls']'' line in ''conf/config.php'' just delete it.
    * If you //can't// enable mod-rewrite then add ''$Configuration['Garden']['RewriteUrls'] = false;'' to ''conf/config.php''. The links in the header will have to be fixed manually somehow, but I think the rest will work.
      * To finish the upgrade it will try to send you to ''[forum url]/utility/update'', instead go to ''[forum url]index.php?p=/utility/update''
  * Apart from the cache, there's some other stuff that can be deleted:
    * ''container.html''
    * ''plugins/EmojiExtender'' (there should be a new dir call ''plugins/emojiextender'')
  * ''themes'' directory has moved to ''addons/themes''.
  * You can enable debug mode with ''$Configuration['Debug'] = true;'' in your config

But I ended up starting the forum over because the database was a big mess, and would take too much manual intervention to get working right.

Other notes

  * There's a 'rich editor' plugin that succeeded the 'advanced editor', but the advanced editor still seems better?
  * Haven't had any luck doing more upgrades. Open source version is effectively dead. You have to build it yourself without any instructions or dependencies.

==== Theming ====

o-> If you want to add or remove themes, or generally mess with the ''plugins/themes'' directory, you might have to delete the related stuff from the cache. Maybe there's an easier way, but I've been SSHing into my cache directory and removing (''rm -r theme/ theme-index.php'') ''theme-index.php'' and ''theme/''. //Some//times it'll prompt you to do a refresh in the UI, but often I'll just get an obnoxious error page and won't be able to get into the theme settings.

<del>My [[tildegit>rjt/vanilla-theme-fancy-gms|old theme]] doesn't work. It seems they've got much more complicated, so I'm currently experimenting to see how uncomplicated I can make one. I have no desire to fuck with //building// something as simple as a theme. Kinda wishing I'd given up on the old forum and switch to [[PHPBB]].</del>\\ Oh fuck, my old theme does work! It just need some fixing-up. I guess I didn't clear the cache properly before.

{{tag>fixes forum guide self-host software theming}}