Upgrade to site software

[Kirsten]

Over the next few weeks we'll be undergoing some upgrades and improvements to the site, focusing primarily on the front end of the site ( http://servicedogcentral.org ).  There may outages and/or periods where certain features do not function.  The upgrade to the front end should not affect the forum, but salsa is always possible.

I'm trying to minimize the down time by making the upgrades to a copy of the site, with a plan to copy that copy over top of the original when I get it right.  Unfortunately, I cannot completely separate the two copies, so there may be some leakage from any disaster on the copy site onto the real site.  Sorry about that.  When I think I have the copy running in the updated mode, I'll ask for volunteers to cruise around in the copy looking for problems before we switch over. 

Once the front end is updated I'll turn my attention to bringing the forum up to the latest version available, but I'll let you all know when I start messing around with the forum.

[Kirsten]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHH

It was easy.  Frightenly easy.  TOO easy.  Things went unexpectedly quickly and not as planned.  Because I thought it would be harder I did some prep things (temporary copy) that made unexpected things happen when I updated the database.  I completed the first half of the upgrade, but might not have done so correctly. 

What I see won't necessarily be what the casual visitor sees.  The upgrade is supposed to be invisible to the visitor as all the changes were done to the administration area.  So it's time for volunteers to look through the front end of the site and see if any big chunks are missing.  The FAQ was missing for a while but I got it back.

I'll wait to do the second half tomorrow when my heart stops racing and I hear back from y'all about any problems.

[Kirsten]

Oh.  I should have been clearer.  Some of the things that might have changed involve security.  Please check whether you are able to post comments on any of the pages or sneak into anything that looks like it should be restricted (like the editor's login).  There's not much restricted on the site, but the ability to edit pages definitely needs to be.