SMF Admin of Christian website considering update to 2.0b. Guidance appreciated.

[l_d_allan]

The recent deluge of bot attacks on SMF 1.x.x increases our interest level to update from 1.1.7 to 2.0b4.

• Is there a SMF link oriented to semi-newbies that clearly discusses the pros and cons? Along with how to recover if appropriate?
• Would it be mostly or exclusively a matter of uploading the unzipped 2.0b4 files to the existing www.berbible.org/forums subdirectory tree?
• This may not be a valid question, but is there assurance that the 1.1.x and 2.0 MySql "schemas" are forward and backward compatible wrt recovery?
• Checklist available?
• Advisable to wait until at least 2.0 RC-1?
• Other issues that I'm ignorant about?

• However, it may be the case that an upgrade to 2.0b4 is not something that we can decide to do on our own.
• Because SMF uses MySql, this might have to somehow or other be "sync'ed" with our internet web hosting vendor.
• We have a "spare sandbox" domain that is hosted by the same vendor, so I suppose we could "try and see".

<warning comment="fwiw from SMF semi-newbie">

• Our observation is that the Internet is almost weekly becoming a more and more dangerous environment.
  * For the first time in history, millions of more or less ordinary human beings can feel there are no consequences for their malicious mischief ... i.e. unaccountable.
  * A 14 y.o. boy can easily pretend to be a virtual James Bond and have confidence that no one will ever know
  * (other than God, who they either don't believe in, think is Santa Claus, prefer to rebel against,   etc.).
  * A 14 yo girl can easily pretend to be a virtual Bathsheba or B. Speers.
  

Other info:

• Our impression is that the majority of the improvements to SMF for 2.0 have been security related, presumably for just this reason of the Internet getting more and more dangerous.
  * We consider the recent reCAPTCHA bot attack to be a "wake up call".
  * We do use SMF 2.0B4 on a semi-regular basis.
  * The SMF volunteers are "eating their own dog food" by using 2.0b4 to support SMF.
  * In addition to the improved security (which isn't all that visible), there are significant other improvements in usability.
  

</warning>

[swtdivalove]

Well... 2.0.4 has features that assist in the hinderence of spam attacks.  And there are also mods that assist in keeping spam out and ensuring that it is a human who is actually registering on your site.

There are more pros than cons to upgrading and it is not that difficult to upgrade the site from 1.1.7 to 2.0.4.  If you need assistance in doing this, I am sure that one of the SMF folks who can spare a few minutes could walk you through it and or do it themselves for you.

And, God Bless you!

[Oldiesmann]

The biggest con is that many mods and themes aren't yet compatible with SMF 2.0.

The 2.0 database structure is not compatible with 1.1 and vice-versa. Many columns were renamed in 2.0 due to PostgreSQL not supporting capitalized column names. In addition, some tables have had new columns added, and a few new tables were added in 2.0 as well. The only way to go back to 1.1.7 from 2.0 is to restore an old backup of the database, or convert to another system and then convert back (which could cause data loss).

I have been running SMF 2.0 on the board for one of my favorite bands since August and we haven't run into any major issues (the board is located at http://www.downhere.com/messageboard if you're interested).