Noob: TBDev migration (urgent)

[stanto]

Hello,

Firstly a small overview of my situation:
I recently purchased a tracker site that I had been a member for a few years out of love for the community and the material there.
Problem is, the theme and possibly the code is and looks old! It's based on TBdev but not sure which one and how many mods or not it has....
I think its probably a "slightly" updated TBDev 2008 original.
See a partial listing below:

-rw-r--r--  1 root root     913 2007-01-06 15:11 addmark.php
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root    4096 2013-10-01 01:17 admin
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    1760 2007-01-06 16:36 ajax-poller-cast-vote-php.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   12344 2011-02-05 13:21 announce.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    1914 2007-01-06 15:33 bookmarks.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    8863 2010-12-09 00:14 browse.php
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root    4096 2009-07-06 20:23 cache
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    2870 2006-12-26 05:09 checkuser.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     362 2006-12-11 03:16 clean.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     302 2007-01-15 12:31 clear_ann.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    8472 2011-04-05 18:30 comment.php
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root    4096 2013-09-28 12:39 community
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root    4096 2010-09-28 20:28 config
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    1171 2007-01-15 00:35 confirmemail.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    1554 2006-12-26 05:47 confirm.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    1624 2007-01-12 15:09 contactstaff.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     380 2008-03-11 02:18 delacct.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     749 2007-01-06 15:12 deletebookmark.php
.......
.........

For the last week I spent countless hours reading posts here and googling away trying to understand the "scene" in general and the current situation.
I'm quite technical and familiar with (shared) hosting and Linux in general but still have hit walls for which I am in desperate need for advice and help...

Below, in point form, are the basic issues, in order of importance, that I need help with for now. Any links to posts (that I missed) and advice would be greatly appreciated. I am willing to pay for help and after I get the general direction here I will be posting specific tasks on the "Buy and Sell" section.

1. The tracker/site is hosted in two dedicated servers (site/forum + DB) for no reason right now due to low traffic. I think!... I need to save money and move it to a cheaper server. *What* are the specific things I need to keep track of for a smooth migration????
e.g. how can i check if it's "memcached", what daemons are necessary. etc....
Or is it just a "regular" migration as for any other dynamic (PHP + MySQL) site???


2. Except for everything under /var/www/* and the MySQL dumps is there anything else I should backup for the migration (and for daily backups later on)???


3. After and IF the migration is successful, I would like to upgrade. I read a lot about my options.... what I really don't understand with the tracker scene is that the various versions seem to be in parallel.....
For example, in this forum there are sections/posts for TBDev 2008 and 2009 and an experimental 2010. AFAIK in software once there is a newer version one can upgrade. Is there a reason someone with a 2008 version will install mods etc. and still not upgrade to 2009??


- I have other questions as well but these will be for later. The above are super important as I need to migrate soon! (new invoice already here!)

Admins/Mods: I hope I posted this on the right section. If I screwed up somewhere please accept my apologies and guide me to the right place/process. I did try to read all the Rules.


Thanks in advance for all the desperately needed help !!!

_S_

[DND]

you buy some tracker and you don't know anything about sourcecode? such a shame. honestly.

[stanto]

Originally Posted by DeNeDe

you buy some tracker and you don't know anything about sourcecode? such a shame. honestly.

You are probably right .. in a way.
I do not want to go into boring details here but the person who owned the tracker for the last 3 years had no technical background and also lost interest so it let it die. I tried to contact the original owner but he never answered so I am basically on my own.

Some direction on my questions would go a longer way than a depressing comment about a "probably" bad decision that was made out of love for the community....
:)

Thanks!

[KrackerMan]

First I would suggest choosing a update source code. TBDev has outdated code and no longer has a support forum dedicated to the source code. If you really like the code there is another source code that is based off of it called U232. U232 source code should have all the mods that TBDev had if not more.

1. The tracker/site is hosted in two dedicated servers (site/forum + DB) for no reason right now due to low traffic. I think!... I need to save money and move it to a cheaper server. *What* are the specific things I need to keep track of for a smooth migration????
e.g. how can i check if it's "memcached", what daemons are necessary. etc....
Or is it just a "regular" migration as for any other dynamic (PHP + MySQL) site???

If you are running 2008 source code then AFAIK there was no memcached added to that code. The migration should be about the same altho you will have to change some setting since your forum and MySQL database is currently being hosted on a different server.

2. Except for everything under /var/www/* and the MySQL dumps is there anything else I should backup for the migration (and for daily backups later on)???

If you continue to use this source code I would suggest backing up the error logs so you can go thru and make sure all errors have been fixed.

3. Is there a reason someone with a 2008 version will install mods etc. and still not upgrade to 2009??

I would say lack of knowledge in coding area, laziness, or just don't care.



I would suggest taking a look at the other source codes out there that still have developers supporting them. If I were you I would keep the site on current servers, then get a new server and install a new source code on it. Then you can begin to convert your mysql database over to the new source code.

[firefly007]

I hope you read this carefully as Ive written a bit of a noval!! lol

Don't get hookup with upgrading to 0'9 if indeed that is your motivation. Rather focus on getting your site up and running first., as 09 isn't necessary the shit!!. The most important thing for any tracker is tones of content, but if you hell bent of updating your source code rather use BT.Manager as there is a very easy DB porting script that Joe Roberson has that will move the entire db + torrent to BT.Manager db including added and converting tables if need be.

Don't get hung up with memcache as its for sites that have a lot of users and more importantly lots of users that are on the site at one time and the of course requesting data from the db to simplify memcache, memcache cache mysql calls there for limiting mysql load.
This is not required with a site with limited traffic. This is the same argument could be put forward for Gazelle + ocelot but to include Ocelot which is for trackers that handle million + peers

You said that you don't want to spend anymore money but you should have some kind of auto bot + some servers with some decent space, if you don't have a upload team, seeing that it seems like your site is currently dead!!

The main thing you must check with the current source you just acquired is how secure it is, I'm assuming that the $_POST and $_GET are sanitized against injections. You could proberly judge how secure the source code is because you have been a member for sometime.

You will need to get fulltime or parttime coder pronto, due to changes and upkeep including a new stylesheet or two.

[joeroberts]

Originally Posted by stanto

Hello,

Firstly a small overview of my situation:
I recently purchased a tracker site that I had been a member for a few years out of love for the community and the material there.
Problem is, the theme and possibly the code is and looks old! It's based on TBdev but not sure which one and how many mods or not it has....
I think its probably a "slightly" updated TBDev 2008 original.
See a partial listing below:

-rw-r--r--  1 root root     913 2007-01-06 15:11 addmark.php
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root    4096 2013-10-01 01:17 admin
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    1760 2007-01-06 16:36 ajax-poller-cast-vote-php.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   12344 2011-02-05 13:21 announce.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    1914 2007-01-06 15:33 bookmarks.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    8863 2010-12-09 00:14 browse.php
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root    4096 2009-07-06 20:23 cache
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    2870 2006-12-26 05:09 checkuser.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     362 2006-12-11 03:16 clean.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     302 2007-01-15 12:31 clear_ann.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    8472 2011-04-05 18:30 comment.php
drwxr-xr-x 10 root root    4096 2013-09-28 12:39 community
drwxrwxrwx  2 root root    4096 2010-09-28 20:28 config
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    1171 2007-01-15 00:35 confirmemail.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    1554 2006-12-26 05:47 confirm.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    1624 2007-01-12 15:09 contactstaff.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     380 2008-03-11 02:18 delacct.php
-rw-r--r--  1 root root     749 2007-01-06 15:12 deletebookmark.php
.......
.........

For the last week I spent countless hours reading posts here and googling away trying to understand the "scene" in general and the current situation.
I'm quite technical and familiar with (shared) hosting and Linux in general but still have hit walls for which I am in desperate need for advice and help...

Below, in point form, are the basic issues, in order of importance, that I need help with for now. Any links to posts (that I missed) and advice would be greatly appreciated. I am willing to pay for help and after I get the general direction here I will be posting specific tasks on the "Buy and Sell" section.

1. The tracker/site is hosted in two dedicated servers (site/forum + DB) for no reason right now due to low traffic. I think!... I need to save money and move it to a cheaper server. *What* are the specific things I need to keep track of for a smooth migration????
e.g. how can i check if it's "memcached", what daemons are necessary. etc....
Or is it just a "regular" migration as for any other dynamic (PHP + MySQL) site???


2. Except for everything under /var/www/* and the MySQL dumps is there anything else I should backup for the migration (and for daily backups later on)???


3. After and IF the migration is successful, I would like to upgrade. I read a lot about my options.... what I really don't understand with the tracker scene is that the various versions seem to be in parallel.....
For example, in this forum there are sections/posts for TBDev 2008 and 2009 and an experimental 2010. AFAIK in software once there is a newer version one can upgrade. Is there a reason someone with a 2008 version will install mods etc. and still not upgrade to 2009??


- I have other questions as well but these will be for later. The above are super important as I need to migrate soon! (new invoice already here!)

Admins/Mods: I hope I posted this on the right section. If I screwed up somewhere please accept my apologies and guide me to the right place/process. I did try to read all the Rules.


Thanks in advance for all the desperately needed help !!!

_S_

Attention

Be very Careful You asking to get taken with this!

Fare peace of advice DO NOT PAY MORE THEN £50 for any one to convert your script!

I can do it from any source to any source for that Prices so if some one wants you to pay them more then they are out to robb you.

Conversions are EASY wether you have 1 user or 50000000000000000000 users
dont be a fool and jump on the First offer you get!

[DAKz]

LOL why are so many holding so tight to the ancient code geezzz, Go ahead Joe convert them to something new.

[stanto]

Well .... THANKS !!!

I really appreciate the comments and help - especially from seasoned and experienced users.

Conversions are EASY wether you have 1 user or 50000000000000000000 users

Thanks joeroberts - you are so right. One user through PM actually told me when I asked his price: "it also depends on the number of users..."...
Like I said: I'm pretty technical and if i had time and did not care about the possibility of breaking things, I would do it myself.

LOL why are so many holding so tight to the ancient code geezzz, Go ahead Joe convert them to something new.

Thanks for the suggestion DAKz. If you read my top post more carefully you will understand. If you are referring to the original owner, I don't know.
That's one of the things I try to find out. And as one user suggested it may be that the code has been "patched" and "secured" (i doubt it!) so why change it?
Like I said: I'm trying to familiarize myself with the whole "scene" and understand so that I can take better decisions. The site is not dead. There are users who have torrents and accounts and history. If I screw up they will loose all that!!!

What I still have difficulties understanding are the following:

1. What are the most popular trackers and what is their interconnection?
I still haven't found a tutorial or extended post explaining the differences etc.
Advantages/Disadvantages may be more subjective (stability, active community, security, etc.), but the actual characteristics are subjective.
And what are the 'related" ones that is easier to migrate to?
For example I know that U-232 is based on TBDev code so probably easier to migrate. But what about xBTiT for example???
etc.

2. I accidentally (!!) discovered that i was wrong and actually have TSSE v3.1 and not TBDev. I noticed that somehow (common user table in DB?) the forum is myBB and the front-end login gets carried over. Can i install SMF for example without too much hassle? Can i update the myBB version without problems?


Your thoughts would be appreciated ....