Upgrade the Forums

The vanillaforums.org site lists the latest stable version of the Vanilla forum software. Because we've added a few minor things on top of vanilla, we can't simply download and install from scratch each time there's an update. Below is the step-by-step process of how to merge the latest upstream branch into our 29th-extensions-* branch, push it to our source control, and then pull it onto the production server. In the examples below, we use versions 2.1.8p2 and 2.1.10 to represent the "current version" and "desired version", respectively. Obviously you'll want to change those version numbers when you use it.

On development server, from a fresh clone

$ git clone https://github.com/29th/vanilla.git
$ cd vanilla
$ git remote add upstream https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla.git
$ git fetch upstream
$ git fetch upstream --tags
$ git checkout 29th-extensions-2.1.8p2
$ git checkout -b 29th-extensions-2.1.10
$ git rebase tags/Vanilla_2.1.10
$ git push --force origin 29th-extensions-2.1.10

On production server, first copy the production forum directory to the staging directory

$ cp -R /var/www/forums.29th.org /var/www/staging-forums.29th.org

Then, from within the staging-forums.29th.org/public_html/ directory, remove the cache and reset the permissions on the cache folder so it will be accessible rom the web

$ rm cache/*.ini
$ rm cache/Smarty/compile/van*
$ chmod -R 777 cache

Then switch to the new version's branch you pushed

$ git fetch
$ git checkout 29th-extensions-2.1.10

Verify it works by visiting staging-forums.29th.org, then move the production forum directory to a backup folder and replace it with this staging directory

$ mv /var/www/forums.29th.org /var/www/backup-forums.29th.org
$ mv /var/www/staging-forums.29th.org /var/www/forums.29th.org

Finally, repeat the cache clearing steps from above from within the forums.29th.org/public_html/ directory

$ rm cache/*.ini
$ rm cache/Smarty/compile/van*
$ chmod -R 777 cache

The forum should now be upgraded at forums.29th.org. Verify by looking at the version number in the footer in the admin dashboard.