No, this isn’t a post about upgrading from phpBB2 to phpBB3, those will come later. No, this is a post about the general upgrading process itself. See, I use Wordpress to run this blog. I was running an older version, so today I decided to upgrade.

Four hours later, and I’ve still not managed to upgrade.

You see, with phpBB you have a couple of options to upgrade. You have the ability to simply upload the new files over the old files. For this, you can use the “complete package” or download just the “chagned files” to save some time. Wordpress offers these options too.

You also have the “code changes” that are provided. These can be run with EasyMOD or done by hand. I use the code changes model for all of my sites as many of them have been customized far enough that I don’t trust any sort of automatic installer. This has worked well for me for many years.

And then there is the upgrade method that is not provided by phpBB: the patch file.

But back to my Wordpress woes. You see, I downloaded the complete package, made a backup of my database and my changed code files, uploaded the new code, ran the update script. And promptly was locked out of my own blog. No matter what I did, I got a “you don’t have permission to do that” message. Harumph.

So I restored my backups, and tried once again. This time I upgraded only the changed files, which Wordpress – by the way – does not provide. I got them from another site. Same issue.

So I go to the support forums. Which, by the way, suck. They apparently are using some sort of home-grown solution which is absolutely pure and utter cow droppings. Really. I tried the search option, and found several dozen posts with the same error message. None of the solutions fixed my problem. Now would it be nice (and a fairly obvious thing to me) if they broke things into areas by version? Meaning have one category of forums for 1.x issues, and another for 2.x? Sure, makes sense to me. Not to them, apparently.

But I’m ranting now.

The bottom line is that I find I have become spoiled by the phpBB support system. The software is awesome. They don’t provide every possible upgrade option (no patch file) but at least the ones they do provide work. And when you need help, you can actually get help.

I’m still using Wordpress. But I’m much more appreciative of the support and processes available from phpbb.com than I ever was before.