Maintenance - Sometime In October, 2020

[JWPlatt]

Greetings,

Our domain hosting service will be upgrading PHP on our shared server from version 5.6 to 7.3 sometime in the new few weeks. They already did this once earlier than planned without warning and broke the site, then reverted upon demand. It won't be delayed a second time. I am working with three different companies on software development projects with tight, contractual timelines, so this upgrade is forced and inconvenient, and will be done in stages of priority. The software will be upgraded first to the standard releases over the next few weeks. This means the custom OpenUru.org navigation wrappers in our masthead across all domain services, including CAVSTAT, may be gone for a while until I can upgrade them for PHP 7.3. OpenUru.org domain customizations to the affected services, if not changed entirely or significantly reduced to allow easier future support, will then happen in the order shown below. There may be some presentation breakages here and there for a while until I can attended to them. Function before form, in this case.

Affected services are:
Forums (forums.OpenUru.org) - phpBB
Wiki (wiki.OpenUru.org) - MediaWiki
Support (support.OpenUru.org) - Hesk
Blogs (blogs.OpenUru.org) - Wordpress
Bugs (bugs.OpenUru.org) - Mantis : If Mantis does not convert easily or without modification, it will be removed permanently. No one uses it and continued maintenance is unjustified and unsustainable.

Foundry will NOT be affected because rarified is that good.

Thanks,
JW

[JWPlatt]

The main site navigation wrapper (SiteNav) has been upgraded to work with PHP 5.6 or 7.3. This ensures that the home page and Support (Hesk) will work under PHP 5.6 or 7.x.

• The forums and wiki need more complex integration with SiteNav and will be upgraded soonish.
• MediaWiki has changed their authentication interface, so your wiki logon credentials will be independent going forward and not be based upon your forum credentials until and unless the deprecated extension for this is revised and restored.
• While SiteNav would also work with Mantis (bugs.OpenUru.org), Mantis itself would require an upgrade to work under PHP 7.x, which will not happen since Mantis decided to be unfriendly to site wrappers. Mantis will be removed.

Thanks,
JW

[JWPlatt]

Greetings,

The forums will be put into maintenance mode (no logons) at about midnight tonight US Eastern Time to allow backups to run in preparation for a software update tomorrow. The forums will be down until I get it done tomorrow.

Thanks,
JW

[McP82]

Okay, so that's what happened! I registered on the forum yesterday, and didn't have the time to see this message before the forum went dark, and I thought "isn't that great, I'm barely discovering the forum and it's already gone belly up " I'm glad to see it was nothing bad, congrats for actively taking care of the forum for such a long time!

[JWPlatt]

Thanks for toughing it out @McP82. For a similar experience, watch "Eyes," Steven Spielberg directing, from the pilot episode of the original Night Gallery series.

Forums.OpenUru.org (phpBB) has been upgraded from version 3.2.0 to 3.3.1 and PHP upgraded from 5.6 to 7.3.
Support.OpenUru.org (Hesk) has been upgraded from version 2.7.2 to to 2.8.7 and upgraded from PHP 5.6 to 7.3.
Blogs.OpenUru.org (Wordpress) has been upgraded by clicking all the "upgrade" buttons - by far the easiest to upgrade. it was already running PHP 7.3 without complaint.

A word on whether to use Support.OpenUru.org or the Foundry Service Desk:

• Use the Foundry Service Desk for Cyan Worlds Myst Online Uru Live again (MOULa) support.
• Use Support.OpenUru.org for OpenUru.org support, including the Minkata shards.
• I.e., The Foundry Service Desk provides the ability to submit bugs and requests for MOULa, which we’re doing as a community service for MOULa users. Support.OpenUru.org is targeted at bugs in the Minkata shards and other OpenUru.org properties or services. Those wishing to help with testing before submission to MOULa would do so at Support.OpenUru.org. While both are run by OpenUru.org, they serve disjoint user communities.

[McP82]

Eh, "toughing it out" is a big word for reloading a page twice and then reopening it a day later, the amount of action and suspense is more akin to a 30 second ad than to a Steven Spielberg movie