KJToo

The Blockbuster nearest my house is closing in approximately two weeks. Their lease recently expired, and as near as I can tell the owner of the building opted not to extend it. I’ve heard a rumor that the entire plaza is being levelled and replaced with a housing project of some sort.

I’m not thrilled with the idea of having to drive to Eastlake for my movie and game rental needs. The Eastlake store isn’t miles upon miles away, but it’s far enough away that I’ll be cancelling my GamePass and not renewing my Blockbuster Rewards membership.

On the upside, the Willoughby Blockbuster is selling their stock of used Xbox games at a 50% discount. A used copy of Red Dead Revolver, for example, would normally go for $22.99. With the discount, it was $11.49.

I had already made and paid for my DVD selection (Angels in America Disc Two) when I learned about the sale. There were signs plastered everywhere, but I had managed to ignore them. I had actually opened the door of the MVoD when I decided to go back and look at the used games. In the end, I picked up five games for fifty bucks and change:

1. Red Dead Revolver
2. Deus Ex: Invisible War
3. Freaky Flyers
4. Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes
5. Goblin Commander

Yeah, I’ve already got too many games and I really shouldn’t be buying more. But I did. It was a deal I considered too good to pass up.

Despite applying the update to phpBB version 2.0.11, the forum still stubbornly insists that it’s version 2.0.8.

DotEasy has indicated that they will shut down FTP access to any site that hasn’t upgraded to 2.0.11 by Friday, January 14th. Needless to say, I don’t want to lose FTP access to my site, so I’m going to be damned sure that 2.0.11 is installed and installed properly.

So, I’m going to do a ground-up install of phpBB 2.0.11 at some point today. This shouldn’t delete any old posts or anything, but I’ll be making a database backup, just in case. The forum will probably be down for a while today, and once it comes back up it’ll be entirely MOD free. I’ll get those reinstalled later this week.

Here we go again…

[Edit: The forum is up and running again, and reporting version 2.0.11. The problem wasn't the install, but a single value in the database. Unfortunately, I found this out after I'd completely reinstalled the forum code. Oops. Forum is up. Attachment MOD is installed. Calendar and Profile Control Panel MODs will have to wait until I feel like sitting down and wading through the install process. Again.]

All previously installed MODs have been restored to the forum. Everything should be working normally now.

I reinstalled the Coppermine photo gallery today, and I’m working on a theme that will hopefully make it feel more like part of the site. I’m going to build a similar theme for the forum once I get the remaining MODs reinstalled.

There are only a handful of pictures in the gallery right now (just to enough to prove to myself that Coppermine is working properly), but I’ll be adding more as time goes by.

The reinstall was necessary because I installed a “bridge” between phpBB (the forum) and Coppermine (the photo gallery) that technically worked, but not anywhere near as smoothly as I’d have liked it to. Rather than try to remove the bridge (the purpose of which was to allow the forum and the photo gallery to share the same login) and possibly break Coppermine, I opted to simply reinstall it.

I installed phpBB version 2.0.11 this morning in order to take advantage of a security fix included in the new release (and so DotEasy wouldn’t turn off my FTP access next Friday). Unfortunately, that means I need to reinstall the MODs (calendar, attachment, profile control panel) in order to get the forum working again. I’ll be working on that over the weekend.

[Edit: The attachment MOD, which was the primary culprit in making the forum inaccessible, has been reinstalled. Calendar and profile control panel MODs have not, but will be soon. Basic functionality has been restored, as far as I can tell.]