Geeklog Forums

(Article written by Cavebear) With the decision by the GL developers to backtrack to the 1.1 development track, those of us who had deployed one of the 1.5 releases need to "reverse" direction and catch up with the rest of the GL community. I've written a script that adjusts the GL1.5 database to conform to the 1.2 schema. Unfortunately, this is the easy part. There are not many differences between the two databases. Alter a few default values here, add a couple of tables, insert a handful of fields into various tables. It's really rather easy, since all but one of the table names are the same (blocks.blocktype in 1.5 is blocks.type in 1.2). However, due to the vast difference in the layout engine between the two, adjusting from one to the other will require a few hours toil. Here's a step-by-step guide to move an existing GL1.5 to the 1.2 track.

Please note this conversion was done using v1.5rc2 and moved to v1.2.2 (1.2.4 works as well). I can't guarantee it will work with earlier versions of 1.5, and you probably shouldn't make this effort unless you're going to update to the current stable release. Also, please be aware that my GL1.5 installation was mostly default (only a couple of minor custom mods). If you've extensively hacked 1.5, you'll probably have to spend more time on this.

1) Please, please, please set up a development server in order to do most of the work without affecting your live site. Installing Apache, MySQL and PHP on a desktop PC (even under Windows) is very easy and very worthwhile. The remainder of these instructions assume you have a development server to work on.

Note: PHPTriad is very good for this. It combines all 3 into 1.

2) Download Geeklog 1.2.2 to your development server (DS) and install it with the default set of data. Spend some time studying the layout engine, and then customize it to fit your needs for your live site. The layout engine consists primarily of header.php, footer.php and smartstyle.css in the public_html/layout directory. You'll also need to edit the blockheader and blockfooter entries in the blocks table. (You can do this through the Admin section of GL.)

3) Download convert_geeklog.tar.gz

3a) Gunzip and untar convert_geeklog.tar.gz to get convert_geeklog.php.

3b) Edit line 3 of convert_geeklog.php to point to your Geeklog config.php file.

3c) GL1.2 has an extra field in the stories table that flags whether the story should be placed on the front page. By default, convert_geeklog.php only puts stories less than two (2) weeks old on the front page. If you want to change this, edit line 51 of the conversion script.

4) Once you've customized 1.2.2 to your liking, download a dump of your live database for testing. Create a new database on your DS, and dump this data into it. Point your local install of 1.2.2 to that data (in config.php), copy convert_geeklog.php into your public_html directory and run it through your Web browser. If you get no error messages, you should be good to go. Test it by running GL on your DS and making sure all your data is available. Don't worry about the color of the blocks yet, the conversion script installs the default gray boxes. You'll be able to update those later.

5) Take your live site offline.

6) Do another dump of your live data, and backup all your current GL installation.

7) Delete all GL1.5 files from your Web server and upload your customized GL1.2.2. Change the configuration variables in config.php to point to your live database and current Web server domain and filepath.

8) Upload convert_geeklog.php into your live public_html directory and run it. (Make sure you edit line 3 to point to your newly uploaded config.php)

9) Log into Geeklog as Admin and change blockheader and blockfooter to the values you had developed for your customized layout.

You can see a converted site at www.sacredcowdiner.com This is the site that was running GL1.5rc2, and the conversion to 1.2.4 took about 4 hours total (not all in one chunk). Actual amount of time the site was offline was less than 30 minutes.

That should be it. Trust me, it sounds easier than it is. However, the effort will be well worth it as you'll be able to keep up with future development efforts.

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Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

Maybe it´s a little late, but i need this program. Where I can find convert_geeklog.tar.gz?

thank you