Dear bestofjoomla fireboards

I have encountered the absolute worst instructions on the planet and they are yours. I read the instructions several months ago and saw they were farked up. It wasn't until I had a problem with Fireboard that I decided to take the plunge. I tried to log into your forums to find out wtf was going on with these instructions but luckily I wasn't able to.

I will say this much: it's worth what I paid for it.


Below are their instructions with my notes (in red) inline.

Upgrade from Fireboard 1.0.1 (Beta)

 WTF IS THAT? I see a box that says F0DB or something. Double byte character says what? Backup your MySql tables and file structure as described above.

1. Download the 1.0.4 Patch files zip file.
2. Extract the “FireBoard_1.0.4_Stable_PatchFiles.zip” files on your local system. You will notice that it has the same structure as the files on your server
3. Connect to your website via FTP and overwrite all the local files over the remote files. This way your server will have latest files of the stable version Keep in mind this is a total of 452 files and if you read ahead you'll find that you're going to have to move some of them. Move isn't such a big deal for me because I can log in through a terminal. I'll bet those on hosts that don't support such features or users that don't know how to use it got a bit miffed at uploading man of these no-longer-compressed files twice.
   
4. Fireboard 1.0.2+ stores the common files, such as uploaded files, avatars, uploaded images,… under “Joomla_Root/images/” directory. Please make sure that your “Joomla_Root/images/” is writable. Also, you might want to CREATE that directory.
   
5. Copy “components/com_fireboard/_fbfiles/” directory in the extracted package to “Joomla_Root/images/” directory and rename it to “fbfiles/” and ensure that it is writable (and also all its subdirectories). At the end you will have such a path: “Joomla_Root/images/fbfiles”. You can do this in Linux by applying the following command: Command: chmod –R 777 images/fbfiles/ Here's the one that pushed the donkey over the edge. I was told to download 1.0.4 patch files. I did. No such _fbfiles directory exists in this zip file. I downloaded the 1.0.4 stable complete package and I find only an _fbfiles_dist. Which do I use, the one that doesn't exist or the one that doesn't exist? Quite the choice you've left the end user with. I only know my images no longer work. swell.
   
6. Move (old) directories and all contents of Remember when I said if you'd read ahead? “components/com_fireboard/avatars”, “components/com_fireboard/category_images”, “components/com_fireboard/uploaded/files”, “components/com_fireboard/uploaded/images” to the new “Joomla_Root/images/fbfiles”. The final structure should look like this: Yes, this is quite useful, this emptiness that says it should look like this.
   
7. Open “Upgrades/Fireboard_101_to_1.0.3.Stable.sql” file. You can download it here: Fireboard_101_to_1.0.3.Stable.sql
8. If necessary, rename all the “jos_” occurrences to your own database prefix. Hence, if your db prefix it “boj_” then you should rename all “jos_” to “boj_”.
9. Execute the queries on your remote host; either inside phpmyadmin or your favourite database manager. If you don’t know how to do this, please read: http://community.mybboard.net/showthread.php?tid=4720 If you get any error during the execution, e.g. you had done some modifications to the database before, then you should execute the rest of the queries and not all of them. The queries are executed in the order as they are listed in the upgrade. First at the top and last at bottom.
10. Now, head on to Fireboard Configuration and check if you have the latest version, by looking at the bottom of the page.
11. Enter Fireboard configuration section and modify the settings to your need. See, I got this far and then something happened. I clicked save and all of a fucking sudden the root of my web site, you know public_html, is no longer readable. Ergo I get 403 forbidden on anything in my root. Hey, thanks! That made this upgrade something I'll never forget! Right about this time, about 2.5 hours into the install, I finally get the lost password request / reset password from the good folks at bestofjoomla. I use the new password to log in and guess what? I'm blocked because I didn't reply to my confirmation email. Where do I get another? Beats the living shit out of me. Not from them. I believe I'll go back to hand coding pages. I've had enough of this shit. I emailed my web host and asked them to look into what had happened with the permissions and to please reset them so I have web access again. Once that's done I'll be kicking this POS joomla and fireboard to the curb forever.
    
12. Enter the control panel, and click on “Recount Categories Stats”. This will recount all the posts and update your frontend statistics. You should apply this action from time to time to ensure consistency in your forum statistics.

If you have any further questions or problems, please visit the BestofJoomla.com forums. Yeah well I'd fucking love to. Do I have to make a whole new account because I can't find the stupid email you sent at some random point, 2-6 hours after I request something? fuck it. Fireboard sucks.

Update:

My host fixed my problem. They said:

The root of the web directory was set as 770, when it should be 755. I made the needed change and all is working fine for me now. Now to make the final decision on kicking all the code to the curb and rolling my own again. Either way its a hassle.