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Ryan Healey
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Posted 11/11/2011 13:12:18
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I dont see much sun
Group: Administrators
Last Active: Yesterday @ 15:34:28
Posts: 2,372,
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Hi All, I'm just a little excited to announce our InstantForum.NET 2012 BETA 1 update is now available for download to existing InstantForum.NET customers from within our My.InstantASP client area at http://my.instantasp.co.uk/MyLicenses.aspxThe beta will only be available within your My.InstantASP client area if you purchased InstantForum.NET 2010 on or after 9th August 2011. If you purchased before this date but would still like access to the BETA please email me directly on ryan@instantasp.co.uk with your request. To help you get started using the BETA I've compiled some FAQs below. If you have any questions not covered here please don't hesitate to contact us or email me on ryan@instantasp.co.ukHow do I update my existing InstantForum.NET 2010 installation to the InstantForum.NET 2012 beta?Installing the 2012 Files 1. Download InstantForum.NET 2012 BETA 1 from your My Licenses page at http://my.instantasp.co.uk/MyLicenses.aspxOnce the download is complete open the InstantForum2012BETA1.zip file and extract the contents to your desktop. This will create a new folder on your desktop called "InstantForum2012". 2. Copy the "InstantForum2012" folder to your web site root. If your installing locally you can copy the "InstantForum2012" folder to your "c:\inetpub\wwwroot\" folder. If your installing to a production server simply copy the "InstantForum2012" folder to your web site root. 3. Open Internet Information Servers (IIS) and ensure the "InstantForum2012" folder is marked as a web application. By default we would suggest using a Classic or Integrated .NET 2.0 or 3.5 application pool. .NET 4.0 is supported however this will require an updated web.config file which we will be providing with the final release. If you don't have access to IIS you can typically define applications within your web hosting control panel. 4. Copy your existing "Uploads" folder form the root of your 2010 installation into the root of your new 2012 installation. Choose yes when prompted if you wish to overwrite the Uploads folder. Due to the number of changes made to various skin files with the 2012 update we would suggest starting with the 2012 skins and re-applying any visual changes you made in 2010 to a new InstantForum.NET 2012 skin. Upgrading your 2010 databaseIMPORTANT: Before upgrading your database we would strongly suggest taking a backup of your current InstantForum.NET 2010 database. This will allow you to revert should you encounter any issues during the upgrade. Whilst we've tested the 2010-5 to 2012 upgrade script on several live databases already this release is a BETA and as such we would suggest taking a backup of any existing database to be safe. 1. Connect to your instance of SQL Server using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 2. Take a backup of your current InstantForum.NET 2010-5 database. 3. Restore this backup to a new database for example "InstantForum2012". 4. Within SSMS Open "\InstantForum2012\DatabaseScripts\UpgradeScripts\2010-5_to_2012.sql" 5. Execute the "2010-5_to_2012.sql" file against the restored 2010 database backup. This will update your existing 2010-5 schema to the new 2012 schema but will of course keep all your existing data. Update the InstantForum.NET Connection StringOnce you've installed the InstantForum.NET 2012 files and upgraded your existing 2010 database the next step is to point the fresh InstantForum.NET 2012 installation to your upgraded database. You can do this by updating the database connection string value that can be found within the web.config file. The web.config file can be found within the root of your InstantForum.NET 2012 web site folder. The default connection string is shown below… <add name="InstantASP_ConnectionString" connectionString="server=localhost;trusted_connection=true;database=InstantForum2012" /> You'll need to update the connectionString value to point to your upgraded 2010-5 database. You can find more information on configuring connection strings at http://docs.instantasp.co.uk/Docs/Updating-the-InstantForumNET-Connection-StringIf your not sure how to update the connection string it may help to take a look at your existing InstantForum.NET 2010 installation and review the connection string within the InstantForum.NET 2010 web.config file. It could be you can use the 2010 connection string as a basis to configure your 2012 connection string. How do I install a fresh instance of the InstantForum.NET 2012 beta?To install a fresh instance of InstantForum.NET 2012 please follow the steps below. Installing the Files 1. Download InstantForum.NET 2012 BETA 1 from your My Licenses page at http://my.instantasp.co.uk/MyLicenses.aspxOnce the download is complete open the InstantForum2012BETA1.zip file and extract the contents to your desktop. This will create a new folder on your desktop called "InstantForum2012". 2. Copy the "InstantForum2012" folder to your web site root. If your installing locally you can copy the "InstantForum2012" folder to your "c:\inetpub\wwwroot\" folder. If your installing to a production server simply copy the "InstantForum2012" folder to your web site root. 3. Open Internet Information Servers (IIS) and ensure the "InstantForum2012" folder is marked as a web application. By default we would suggest using a Classic or Integrated .NET 2.0 or 3.5 application pool. .NET 4.0 is supported however this will require an updated web.config file which we will be providing with the final release. If you don't have access to IIS you can typically define applications within your web hosting control panel. Creating the Database 1. Connect to your instance of SQL Server using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 2. Create a new database called "InstantForum2012" or whatever you choose. 3. Within SSMS Open "\InstantForum2012\DatabaseScripts\InstantForum2012.sql" 4. Execute the "InstantForum2012.sql" file against your new "InstantForum2012" database. This will create all the tables, stored procedures, indexes and default data required by InstantForum.NET 2012. You can safely ignore warnings when executing the "InstantForum2012.sql" file. For example you may receive several warnings similar to be message shown below…. The module '[procedurename]' depends on the missing object 'iprocedurename]'. The module will still be created; however, it cannot run successfully until the object exists. These warning are generated due to the order in which we create the stored procedures. They won't effect the application at runtime and can safely be ignored for the BETA. Update the InstantForum.NET Connection StringOnce you've installed the InstantForum.NET 2012 files and created your 2012 database the next step is to point the fresh InstantForum.NET 2012 installation to your 2012 database. You can do this by updating the database connection string value that can be found within the web.config file. The web.config file can be found within the root of your InstantForum.NET 2012 web site folder. The default connection string is shown below… <add name="InstantASP_ConnectionString" connectionString="server=localhost;trusted_connection=true;database=InstantForum2012" /> You'll need to update the connectionString value to point to your upgraded 2010-5 database. You can find more information on configuring connection strings at http://docs.instantasp.co.uk/Docs/Updating-the-InstantForumNET-Connection-StringIf your not sure how to update the connection string it may help to take a look at your existing InstantForum.NET 2010 installation and review the connection string within the InstantForum.NET 2010 web.config file. It could be you can use the 2010 connection string as a basis to configure your 2012 connection string. I've just purchased InstantForum.NET 2010 is this update free for me?Yes. The InstantForum.NET 2012 final release will be free to all customers who purchased InstantForum.NET 2010 on or after August 9th 2011. For customers who purchased before this date who don’t' have an active support plan you'll need to purchase the 2012 upgrade. This will follow our usual pricing modal of $79 for the single web site end user license upgrade and $189 for the single web site developer license upgrade. The 2012 upgrade will be free to all customers who provide valuable feedback during the BETA period. What skins are available with the beta?We currently only have the Classic and Mobile skin available within the beta download. For the final release we'll instroduce again the Dark skin and the Right to Left support. What language packs are available it the beta?We only have the US English language pack available for the BETA. Why are the new user achievements not awarded with the beta?By default the service which awards achievements is disabled out the box. We do this to first allow you to customize the achievement thresholds based on the traffic and activity you anticipate within your community. For example if you have a very active web site you may wish to first increase the thresholds user much reach before achievements are awarded to make them difficult to achieve. To view and customize the various achievements awarded by InstantForum.NETr you'll need to first login as an administrator and then visit the Admin CP > Manage Achievements page. On this page you'll see a list of achievements. You can edit each achievement by clicking the edit button. Once your happy your achievements are suitable difficult to earn based on your anticipated traffic you should ensure the achievement awarder service is enabled. This will poll your database & award achievements over a period on a IIS background thread. You can enable the achievement awarder polling you'll need to visit the Admin CP and locate the "Forum Settings" link on the left within the "Manage Settings" panel. On the Forum settings page ensure the "Enable Achievement Polling" option is set to "Yes". Can I use the InstantForum.NET 2010 Active Directory Module with the 2012 BETA?No. We will need to release an active directory module update for this to work correctly with the InstantForum.NET 2012 update. We'll have further news as we near the final release. When can I expect the final InstantForum.NET 2012 release?We are working to make the final InstantForum.NET 2012 release available early December. This largely depends on BETA feedback and issues discovered during the BETA. How do I get support during the BETA & submit feedback / bugs?Please send all feedback and support questions related to InstantForum.NET 2012 to my personal email ryan@instantasp.co.uk or use our feedback form. What's new in InstantForum.NET 2012? To help you get a quick feel for what you can expect to find in this update I've provided a brief list below... New Features- New Mobile Skin & Automatic Mobile / Tablet Browser Detection - Over 80 new built-in customizable achievements awarded to members for participation milestones - Support for custom achievements (allows you to create and award unique achievements) - New completely rewritten reputation system with over 20 customizable actions that can award reputation - We now output pure HTML 5 W3C validated mark-up and use the HTML 5 doc type - We now leverage CSS 3 features to reduce the need for images (again fewer requests) - New button style throughout (fewer http requests, easier to customize & localize) - New Private Message Notifications (no longer do we have to put up with alert boxes) - New Single Sign On With Other InstantASP apps (we call this User Replication) - New ability to mark posts as answers, these are highlighted in the topic & tie into our new reputation system) - New Facebook style "Like" Button for Topics & Replies (again this ties into the new reputation system) - New Share button for each post (allows you to share by email or on various social networks) - New Post Info button for each post (showing the location of the poser, who has read, rated & liked the post) - New indicator within forum & topics to show number of favourites / subscriptions - New Inline Spell Checker (built from the ground up by InstantASP) - New ability to rate replies now (not just topics) - New more interactive jQuery based 5 star rating control - New Google Maps Integration - New ShareThis.com Integration - New Options to easily hide all social networking links & share options (for installs on intranets, behind firewalls) - New Facebook Login Option (we'll pull in your name, email and profile photo) - New Topic Preview Option on forum pages to quickly review the first and last post - New option to control if custom words can be added to the spell checker dictionary through permission sets - New optimization options for large communities - New Live Preview When Composting Posts (no need to click preview now) - New YouTube Style contextual help tool tips for all buttons - Over a dozen new permission options allowing you to hide various panels (Recent Activity, Tags, Popular Topics etc.) - New Support For Central Shared Upload folders (for load balanced environments - supports UNC) - New dynamic Image Resizing & Thumbnail creation for images added to posts to suite screen size / device - New better performing method for returning & caching forums based on roles - New Script Bundler (Bundles all CSS and JavaScript into a single file automatically at runtime) - Rewritten OpenID (Google, AOL, Yahoo) authentication to use updated standards - New Script Minifier (minifies all JavaScript includes automatically at runtime) - New quick filter & sort menu within forums (allows you to show all posts with no replies or answers) - New Latest & Popular Posts view on homepage (cycle through posts with brief message abstract) - Improvements - Improved follow / un-follow button on friends page - We've improved many areas of the UI to focus on responsive design techniques - Reduced the amount of mark-up generated by several dozen controls - Reduced the number of requests to external resources (css, images, js) for key pages - Improved member editing options within Admin CP (you can now view & upload profile photos) - Improved tool tip information pop-up when you hover over the small "?" icons - Improved poll control to move away from tables for rendering questions & results - Improved Private Message Flow (now shows original message when reading message responses) - Improved feedback from many AJAX requests to move away from alert boxes which block rendering - Improved tag editing options (you can now update tags globally) Fixes - Fixed issue with rich text editor not always using the text you selected when creating hyperlinks - Fixed issue with caused you to be logged out if you marked all forums as read due to cookie limits in some browsers - Fixed issue with forum not using the IIS default documents list if you had SEO URLS enabled and requested a page that didn’t exist. - Fixed issue with forthcoming events sometimes not showing on homepage - Fixed issue with OpenID provider authentication sometimes showing a 500 error - Fixed issue when deleting topics if you where a forum moderator but didn't belong to the moderator member group. - Fixed issue with delete, queue or approve post options if you were a forum moderator but didn't belong to the moderator member group. - Fixed issue when sorting topics by polls first (previously sorted by pinned) - Fixed issue when creating new permissions sets not inheriting from selected existing permission set - Fixed issue with forum sometimes redirecting to UserInfo0.aspx after login producing a object reference error - Fixed issue which prevented you adding words to the spell checker dictionary - Fixed issue if you clicked PM icon in user card if you had SEO URLs enabled and was not in the forum root folder. - Fixed issue with new PM count & notification halting page rendering - Fixed issue with who's on list showing blank activities - Fixed issue with JSON encoding which caused some forums to not load in newer browsers |
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