Serendipity Forums

Guys,

I'm writing this to vent my frustrations with S9y and especially the archaic upgrade system.

Each time I have to MANUALLY ftp or SFTP files, check setting and stuff and EACH time I do this I end up having some problems killing my blog that has over 5 years of entries in it.

I am so fed up with this.

WordPress on the other hand has a BUILD-IN upgrade tool that checks and upgrades your installation!

In the past I have had several discussion with the developers of S9y telling me this can not be done.

And once again I have a problem now I upgraded from 1.2.1 to 1.4.1.

It killed my damn blog. EVEN though the whole upgrade process said it was successful!

I have not been able to do ANY upgrade or update without some kind of problem...

I really have had it with S9y..

I'm seriously considering to change to WP.

Doesn anyone have any experience with this tool: ?

http://technosailor.com/2007/01/02/new- ... available/

hgoor wrote:Each time I have to MANUALLY ftp or SFTP files, check setting and stuff and EACH time I do this I end up having some problems killing my blog that has over 5 years of entries in it.

Do you make room for the possibility that this is not something general about s9y but specific to your installation and/or webspace?

I have never had a single problem updating s9y in over four years. As far as I can remember, said installation has been smoothly updated from 0.7 to 1.4.1 (including the releases inbetween, of course ) without any issues related to the update process itself. I have, however, experience some issues with the spartacus plugin and permissions, but they have been resolvable using the right tools, some patience, and a calm approach.

So maybe there are some problems with your installation, either specific to your hoster, the plugins you're using, maybe the FTP client ... but I believe none of this would be 100% resolved by an automated upgrade feature.

hgoor wrote:And once again I have a problem now I upgraded from 1.2.1 to 1.4.1.

Maybe you should've kept up with the releases inbetween. Then again, I have just now updated a client's blog from 1.2 to 1.4.1 without any problems.

hgoor wrote:I'm seriously considering to change to WP.

Yeah, right. Since upgrading WP is always without problems

If you believe this to solve all your problems, go ahead. My sources and my clairvoyance say you're gonna run into similar problems with WP sooner or later.

YL

I am using the regular "tools of the trade": i.e. putty and WinSCP.

My hosting party has a vanilla install of CentOS Linux and I have had no problems with them whatsoever.

The upgrade process ended telling me everything was succesful and OK.

This has been the case with all previous upgrades as well: each time "OK". But even though the installer says "ok" I end up with problems EACH time..

Whatever the build-in checks are for the upgrade process: they are not working ok.

I am testing WP and so far the build-in upgrade process works flawless.

Now, you can act all snotty about my complaints, but bottom-line is that the S9y upgrading requires more skills than the average user has or should need.

Troubleshooting is hard.

Another good reason to switch is the fact that there are way more WP users and developers than S9y.

As a result getting help and support is easy..

I have used S9y since 1.0 and I always liked it.

But I hate the upgrades!

I have asked my provider to put a backup back so I can at least use my blog again.

But seriously: I don't want this kind off hassle!

i've been using s9y for about 5 months now 1.3 and 1.4.1 and the upgrade process was straight simple step.. just upload and load the site!

on a side note.. i'd love to see s9y upgrading files much easier.. just like joomla; in joomla i was only Uploading the upgrade files and not the whole installation http://www.joomla.org/download.html

there is always a full and Upgrade packages

ameo wrote:i've been using s9y for about 5 months now 1.3 and 1.4.1 and the upgrade process was straight simple step.. just upload and load the site!

on a side note.. i'd love to see s9y upgrading files much easier.. just like joomla; in joomla i was only Uploading the upgrade files and not the whole installation http://www.joomla.org/download.html

there is always a full and Upgrade packages

Well, S9y supports this - sort off - there are the LIGHT versions you can use...

i'm not that good in s9y inside support but it appears to be some problem with Smarty.class.php when you were uploading it !

bundled-libs/Smarty/libs/Smarty.class.php

it's just a suggestion though

ameo wrote:i'm not that good in s9y inside support but it appears to be some problem with Smarty.class.php when you were uploading it !

bundled-libs/Smarty/libs/Smarty.class.php

it's just a suggestion though

Yeah. Well to exclude any upload problems I did a wget on the latest S9y files, unzipped it and copied it directly from one dir to my www dir.

So no error for FTP or aything there...

hgoor wrote:But even though the installer says "ok" I end up with problems EACH time..

Which in my humble opinion would be another reason to think that the problem is not the install process but the installation itself. The installer can only check if the installation process went accordingly. I don't think it can check whether the whole installation is fine. That's something not even the new "Verify installation integritry" function can do, unfortunately.

hgoor wrote:Now, you can act all snotty about my complaints

I really don't see what's snotty about suggesting to extend your view on the issue. You're suggesting that the s9y upgrade process doesn't work. I'm saying it does, but the "surroundings" in your case might not work well with it. What's snotty about that?

As for my comments on WP, it's simply a fact that a lot of people experience problems with updating WP every single time it is actually updated, period. I, for instance, usually turn off my twitter client on days a new WP update is released, simply because all the update complaints by WP user cause too much noise for me. Again, that's not snotty, it's just the way it is.

hgoor wrote:Another good reason to switch is the fact that there are way more WP users and developers than S9y.

Funny, I have always felt that the smaller community is actually a plus for s9y since competent(!) help is usually available faster and on a much more personal level. I also prefer the fact that I don't have to wade through an ocean of plugins every time I'm looking for a little extra feature. We usually have one plugin per task, not 10.

Of course, your mileage may vary, and apparently, it does.

YL

yellowled wrote:I really don't see what's snotty about suggesting to extend your view on the issue. You're suggesting that the s9y upgrade process doesn't work. I'm saying it does, but the "surroundings" in your case might not work well with it. What's snotty about that?

I was referring to your comments about being "clairvoyant".

Also: just check the installation threads to just see how "problem free" upgrading and installing is.

In the past surely my problems where caused by a dingy installation of the server but I now run on a good webserver.

Whatever the trouble is, it's not worth the hassle each time...

hgoor wrote:I was referring to your comments about being "clairvoyant".

I read quite a number of blogs by people using WP. I also follow some people using WP on twitter. I have had a WP installation on my local host for quite some time to check out potential port candidates.

So it's not like I'm doing WP-bashing simply because it's not s9y - I have actually used it myself, although not in a public installation for a long time.

But I think I have assembled some experience with that particular blog engine, all of which makes me predict that sooner or later, you're going to experience similar updating problems with it.

The "clairvoyant" part referred to that experience. It was not meant to suggest that you or your webspace/hoster would be a factor in those problems, they are strictly related to WP and it's update history.

Sorry if that was ambiguous.

YL

yellowled wrote:

hgoor wrote:I was referring to your comments about being "clairvoyantThe "clairvoyant" part referred to that experience. It was not meant to suggest that you or your webspace/hoster would be a factor in those problems, they are strictly related to WP and it's update history.

Sorry if that was ambiguous.

YL

Yeah no problem.

If people like to try and assist, here's my post with several edits and updates:

http://board.s9y.org/viewtopic.php?t=14617