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Redesigning the Abesha.com Forums

Abesha's forum ran on an older version of PHPbb until it was decided that we upgrade to the newest version and consider redesigning the layout. I had never been a real fan of the default PHPbb3 or PHPbb2 themes and being such a heavy user of the site I wanted a design that wouldn't egregiously stand out in a professional setting (for instance, users browsing the forums at work) but I didn't want a design so boring that it would become an eyesore after viewing it for too long. The development process went as follows:

  • Backed up the 700+ MB database
  • Backed up the actual PHPbb installation
  • Created a test instance using the newest version of PHPbb to customize the theme in development environment
  • Upgraded the production board software
  • Extracted the SQL table holding the style changes from the dev environment and imported it into the production db
  • Copied over the customized PHPbb files into the production board

The database was the most unwieldy part of the upgrade due to its size. The board has been active since 2003 and contains almost 373,000 posts so it was important that all the data still be preserved throughout the upgrade. The site has been humming along admirably since the upgrade with little to no maintenance required.

Stop by the forums at www.abesha.com/boards