Web Wiz Forums Modifications - keeping look and feel for upgrade?

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keeping look and feel for upgrade?

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Category: Web Wiz Web App Support Forums
Forum Name: Web Wiz Forums Modifications
Forum Description: Mod's and Add-on's for Web Wiz Forums.
URL: https://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=24954
Printed Date: 29 March 2026 at 9:41pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.08 - https://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: keeping look and feel for upgrade?

Posted By: billd3
Subject: keeping look and feel for upgrade?
Date Posted: 06 December 2007 at 6:41pm

I understand that v8.06 is getting long in tooth (old, ok?) and that the v9 series is better in some ways.
I also understand that we are really taxing things - our forum is growing in serious ways, numbers are growing daily. As winter hits the U.S. this will increase drastically. Our ISP states our forum is at 3.6 gig, we have about 420 members,
and I think they said our SQL database was like 364 meg after only 5 months.

Space used:
Disk space used by httpdocs	19.7 MB
Disk space used by statistics	3.19 GB

year-month-bandwidth/traffic use:

2007	June	144 MB
2007	July	6 848 MB
2007	Aug	10 003 MB
2007	Sept	8 574 MB
2007	Oct	7 744 MB
2007	Nov	9 715 MB
2007	Dec	1 763 MB

So, probably need a version upgrade and other upgrades,
but my question, I guess is this:
can we maintain how the forum LOOKS, and FEELS, the colors and everything when we upgrade or migrate?
It's been suggested in the past that we install the new version, point it to a copy of the database, lock it down, then tweak and color it.
Yeah, but the color changes and the graphics used were SIMPLE in v8.06 - how simple, and can I use the same gif files to give the tables their gradient colors with 9?
How hard will be it to make this -
http://theamcforum.com/forum

look just like it does now after moving to 9??
Also, we need to allow the navigation to be reflected at the BOTTOM of the page, too, so that one doesn't have to scroll back to the top. Copy active topics button, as well as the navigation forum>thisforum>subforum> and so on also appears at the bottom.

How hard to accomplish this in v9.xx.xx.xx

-------------
BillD
http://theamcpages.com
http://theamcforum.com

Replies:

Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 06 December 2007 at 7:01pm

Really taxing things!! I wish all the forums we hosted were this size, we could pack 1,000's onto a server.

This forum is fairly small compared to many that we host ourselves which get around 60 to 300 active users 90% of the time.

With only 15,000 posts your SQL Server database should only be around 50MB in size at the most. You should check the the recovery model is set to simple and you should shrink the database.

Upgrading to version 9 should be fairly simple, but the biggest difference with version 9 is the look and feel so keeping your existing look and feel may take a bit of tweaking.

Maybe the simplest way is to upload a temporary version 9 forum and just have it running on Access while you tweak it. Once you are happy with it switch it to use you existing SQL Server database. Although you will need to use the database upgrade tool to upgrade your database to version 9.

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https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting
https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting

Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 06 December 2007 at 7:06pm

By the way if you think your forum is really taxing things then here are a few on our systems:-

http://www.allempires.net - http://www.allempires.net
Over 330,000 Posts

http://www.nenosplace.com/forum - http://www.nenosplace.com/forum
Usually between 60 and 250 active users

http://www.scarletfever.org/forum - http://www.scarletfever.org/forum
New this week on our systems.
This I consider a smaller forum on our systems, around 30 active users, but was kicked off last weekend by a big well known UK host who's advertised 'unlimited' resources ran out!

http://www.speakerplans.com/forum - http://www.speakerplans.com/forum
118,000 Posts and usually over 50 active users

There's loads more but this is just a few I can recall out of around 300+ on the servers.

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https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting

Posted By: MortiOli
Date Posted: 06 December 2007 at 7:41pm

Sorry billd3, but as Borg said, your forum isn't that big really.

As a note, your bandwidth usage seems pretty high aswell - do you host a lot of large images for your users?

I'll tell you how I converted my forums to v9, keeping the original colour scheme etc, but tweaking it to actually look better - v9, in my opinion, is a lot slicker looking and put together, so the upgrade actually makes your forum look better too.

I made a copy of my v8 SQL database and just renamed it to 'test' (for example)
I uploaded v9, and configured it to point at the 'test' database
I then went about creating a skin, basing it on the dark skin which comes with the forum
When I was happy, I upgraded my v8 database (taking a backup beforehand), and then pointed my v9 upload to it
My users were still using v8, but I was using v9 - this allowed me to see any changes which needed to be made, as I was using it on a day to day basis
When I was happy, I then deleted my v8 files, and just moved the v9 files into their place

Easy peasy!

http://www.ckyalliance.co.uk/forum/ - http://www.ckyalliance.co.uk/forum/

If your host is saying you're taking too much bandwidth / space / resource, then I would look at moving. Either take a look at Web Wiz Hosting, or drop me a PM.

Posted By: MortiOli
Date Posted: 06 December 2007 at 7:45pm

PS - If you want to see a big forum, with a v8 and v9 comparison, take a look at this topic;

http://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=22331 - http://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=22331

524,278 Posts
11,533 Topics
53 Forums
82,712 Forum Members

Posted By: billd3
Date Posted: 06 December 2007 at 8:37pm

Hmmm. OK, well, it's taxing our setup. I know borg has educated me in the past on this.....
You can't tell how many users we have at any given time because server memory (sessions) are constantly reset or purged, several times an hour. So it may state there are 20 active users and there are really 50 or 60. We've seen it as high as over 40, then boom, it drops to 1 or 2 so we know the number at the bottom is false.
We don't host the images posted to the forum to keep bandwidth down, HOWEVER, we REALLY REALLY REALLY want folks to be able to upload images of their cars and there's historical info we want to host ourselves, or allow a couple of folks to upload.
Anyway, back to the look/feel thing. With 9, would it be easy to add the navigation to the bottom of the page?
For example, you have this (see below) at the top of the forum pages - can it also show at the bottom, along with the "active topics button" too?
default.asp - Forum Home - default.asp?C=2 - Product Support Forums - forum_topics.asp?FID=24 - Web Wiz Forums Version 9.x Support - forum_topics.asp?FID=25 - Web Wiz Forums 9.x Modifications

We are getting donations collected to do an upgrade of hosting, so we'll probably be wanting a quote on hosting soon. We started earlier when the host kept crashing things - it's been very stable the last couple of months, even though the pool is constantly refreshed and sessions lost. We simply didn't have the money to make any changes then, I think we do now.

Thanks for the tips on the SQL database. I've not really done anything with SQL but will look into it - they use the PLESK control panel, and some SQL manager thing on the web so I have access to poke around.

-------------
BillD
http://theamcpages.com
http://theamcforum.com

Posted By: MortiOli
Date Posted: 06 December 2007 at 8:45pm

Yeah, it would be simple to add the links you need to the bottom of the forum - would take a little more work to replicate exactly what you have at the top, but nothing too taxing.

I'd recommend sticking some Google Ads on your forum - may help generate a little bit of revenue, and as your site is quite specific, I can see the click throughs generating a couple of $ per month.