Vlad Hrybok's Tech Notes

I was looking for someone like http://www.startssl.com/ for a long time: a real, trusted Certificate Authority with very good root cert ubiquity (wich would include iOS) that would issue free server certificates.

AffirmTrust, which is supposed to go online any day now, promises to issue free server certs for three year period. If their root CA certificate is going to be as widely distributed as StartSSL's, then it may be even a better deal than StartSSL, especially given that StartSSL web site and provisioning process are a little corky.

Old UltiDev Forum engine, YAF 1.9.0, lacked some important features: it didn't support SSL SMTP; user registration didn't have captcha allowing user store to be filled with fake users; search didn't work properly in IE; and topic URLs were not search engine optimized. YetAnotherForum 1.9.5.5 had all that fixed and some additional valuable features.

Although the process of preparation and practicing the upgrade was as protracted as I expected it to be, the end result is good. Here's what I had to do:

1. Backed up web.config and modified default.aspx.
2. Switched database compatibility mode from SQL Server 2000 (8.0) to SQL 2005 (90).
3. Cleaned up database from fake users.
4. Stopped IIS application containing forum.
5. Removed all old YAF files from forum site folder.
6. Copied new YAF files over.
7. Customized default.aspx to be look the previous one.
8. Renamed 1.9.1 upgrade web.config as web.config.
9. Modified db.config, mail.config and app.config according to my needs.
10. Re-started forum IIS application.
11. Ran http://approot/install/ and followed the steps.

After that forum was working. Since I practiced the upgrade before and had all the .config files ready, the entire downtime was around 5 mintues required to replace files and run install wizard.