Question Preparing Users for K1.6

Hi Everyone:

I'd like to know the best way to prepare my users for the switch to K1.6? Do we just dive and in let the chips fall where they may and help people sort out challenges along the way or.. are there some steps we might be able to take ahead of time to pave the way for the transition?

Sincerely,
Howard

surprise them lol

If you have the new template ready to match the old one, I dont think many of them would even notice the difference as many of the basic functions are same.

That's a very good question, Howard, and thank you for asking it. I asked myself the same question, too, over 6 months ago and posted about 50 or 60 messages trying to prepare users of Kunena for what to expect: see Kunena 1.6 - a moderator's view .

As far as your users are concerned, lafanter is pretty much right: most ordinary forum users won't notice the differences to any great extent. As far as the people who administer and run Kunena forum software are concerned, they will notice a whole world of differences (and that's what my "'blog" topic was intended to explore and to prepare you for).

There are structural differences, design differences, differences in the way things are organised, differences in terminology, differences in CSS architecture, database architecture and the very software foundation upon which Kunena is built. Will you notice these differences? Maybe you will and maybe you won't. But, for many site administrators, the issues involved in K 1.6 will be as different from K 1.5 as the issues in running a Mack truck are different from those involving a horse and cart.

Thanks, sozzled. I sent you a PM mentioning that I will be able to install K1.6 on a separate Joomla site as soon the 1.6.0 stable is announced. Looking forward to it.

Sincerely,
Howard

People may have often seen us recommend the importance of having a test site - one that mirrors exactly everything that you currently have running on your live, production site. At no time has this recommendation been more important than now, before you consider taking your live site and upgrading it to K 1.6.0.

Although the process of upgrading an existing website from K 1.5.x to K 1.6 is quite simple - the actual installation time is about 2 minutes - for some people the pre-installation activities can take hours or days.

Here is a very quick checklist of activities that I have considered, based on my own experience and on the experience of the users who have written the thousands of questions about K 1.6 over the last 6 months:

• Upgrade to J! 1.5.20
• If you are using J! 1.0 software - any software (including templates) - find an upgrade for it/convert it/eliminate it
• If you are using social networking software like JomSocial or Community Builder, install the latest version
• If you are unsure about any other software that might not work with K 1.6, search this forum for any reports of problems that other people have had with it.
• If you have other software components that run on the same webpages as where you have Kunena, make sure that they are all Mootools 1.2.4-compliant. If you're unsure, remove those other components or contact the developers of those other components and ask them the same question.
• If you are running any software designed for FB/K 1.0/K 1.5 then you'll have to get rid of it.
• If you are concerned about your Kunena template that you may have spent gzillions of hours working on then you should be concerned - K 1.5 templates won't work in K 1.6
• If you want to know how a new feature works, from the user's point of view, use the Playground area here at www.kunena.com to experiment and find out for yourself. If you want to know how new feature works from the administrators' point of view, spend the hour that it takes to create your own test site and experiment with the feature there. ;)
• If you're unsure about whether your site can upgrade to K 1.6 on your current webhost, then now's the time to find out by trialling an upgrade using the release candidate version (at least) on a test site built on your same webhost.