Last night I upgraded my WithKnown installation from 0.7.5 to 0.7.7.1 and was shocked to see all of the social media integration of my instance had completely disappeared!  

Suddenly POSSE wasn't POSS-I-ble!

Starting with 0.7.7, Known had taken out the old social media plugins and replaced them with Convoy. While I'm sure Convoy is awesome and makes social media integration for POSSE dead simple, something in my gut told me that it just wasn't for me.  I also didn't want to throw away the hour or so I spent configuring all of the plugins in the first place only to end up paying $50 a year for the same thing I'd already had. Those who haven't dealt with it already, will probably find Convoy a great value, though it'd probably be better billed as a one-time fee rather than a recurring one.

I'll admit that I panicked for a while and contemplated restoring the original 0.7.5 server code from back-up.

Fortunately a cooler head prevailed and some research and internet searching began.  I didn't find much immediately - the drawback of living so close to the bleeding edge of technology when still learning how all of it works.

I tried to see if I could uninstall the Convoy plugin by going into the site configurations and changing the plugin to disable it. Sadly, of the dozen or so plugins, Convoy is the only one that didn't ship with an "enable"/"disable" button. I'm sure they'll fix this shortly, but for those who want to do it manually, simply add the following line of code to your config.ini file:

     antiplugins[] = 'Convoy'

Eventually, I spent some time digging into the code and comparing/contrasting all the files.  Noticing that 0.7.6 had six or so additional folders for each of the social media plugins hiding within the IdnoPlugins folder (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, SoundCloud, etc.), I simply dragged and dropped all of those over into 0.7.7.1 and voila! We're back up and running.

As a fine point, one should notice that both the FourSquare and Twitter plugins have been updated since 0.7.6, so they should be copied and dragged over from the main GitHub repository.  Following a similar procedure will also need to be watched/followed for future updates on occasion as well.

For future UX, I'm hoping that Known will at least as a minimum install and make Convoy available directly, but that disabling it will make the other original plugins viewable and configurable for the more technically minded, particularly as POSSE is one of the cornerstones of the IndieWeb movement.

As a quick recap for those doing general Known upgrades, try the following:

1. Back up your database and your code, just in case;
2. Download the new repository (either GitHub or on WithKnown);
3. Delete the "dummy" Uploads folder from the new install and keep your original on the server which has all of your photos, etc.;
4. Keep your config.ini; 
5. Keep your .htaccess (unless it needs a serious change; the htaccess.dist replacement file can be easily copied over, but will need to have its name changed from the version with the .dist extension);
6. Keep the social media plugin folders in IdnoPlugins that you intend to continue using; or upload newer versions which are availble from https://github.com/idno ​;
7. Upload all the new files to the server directory.

Those with an adventurous spirit may also find some of the other available plugins fun to play around with too.

It's only been a short time since I installed my own copy of WithKnown (GitHub) and there have been a few small upgrades since that time, but I was overdue for upgrading. I'd also seen one or two errors when posting, and figured that the small bugs I was seeing would have been worked out.

When I went to upgrade earlier in the week, I figured I'd wing it since at the time there weren't any instructions for upgrading in the documentation (or at least that I'd noticed at the time.)  Somehow I got sidetracked and finally just came back to it today.  Following the general procedure for upgrading projects like Drupal and WordPress, I trundled along and found generally reasonable results until I realized that URLs weren't mapping quite properly, photos were missing, and something was a bit "off". (I had tried reinstalling my original config.ini file along with the Uploads file, but that didn't seem to work somehow.)

I went back to check the documentation, and lo-and-behold, in the intervening week,  there are now some scant upgrade instructions available which follow below: 

Upgrading Known is designed to be very simple.

• Take a backup of your Known directory and database.
• Overwrite your Known files except your upload directory.
• Access your Known site homepage.

I was reticent upon visiting my homepage as I received a splash screen exactly like the original set up, and was very worried that I might manage to blow out some of the primary data and crash the whole thing. (I did remember to do a back up before starting, but who wants to deal with that if they don't have to.)

I decided to plunge ahead and proceeded like I was setting things up for the first time. I was directed to a page to enter in the database name, login, password, etc., which creates a config.ini file in the root, and was then redirected to my site, with all the links and data perfectly intact and functioning properly. 

For those who haven't done it themselves, and have the same reticence I did, I'd recommend adding a few additional steps to the process:

4. Click on the set up button

5. Enter in your database name, user name, host name and password

6. Update the path for the "Uploads" folder. (It may automatically default to the proper path name, but double check it.)

7. Hit enter and you'll be taken to your site.

Depending on what one is using for the update, I might also recommend blowing out (deleting) the original Known files in your root directory in step 2, and installing the new ones rather than simple overwriting so one isn't left with out of date files.

I just installed Known 0.7.1 "Makeba" release on 1&1 shared server and configured in less than an hour (while puttering around doing other things). Despite system not definitively confirming that module for rewriting url's was working, nothing really required any tweaks or real work. I did have to create an "Upload" folder and give it the proper permissions which could have been included in the instructions I didn't see/review (and I suppose that I can blow out the entire IDNO install except for that folder for future upgrades?)

Previous versions weren't so quick and straightforward, so I put a pin in them and kept waiting. The hurdle for self-install for the mid-level user is now nearly at no-brainer level.

My new social stream is now up and running with almost no muss or fuss!  Great job WithKnown team!!

One question, however, I see that my previous http://chrisaldrich.withknown.com/ non-self-hosted site allows for export of data, but is there a simple upload into my freshly hosted site (other than brute-forcing my database?)  Similarly, are there roadmapped projects to allow for importing my previous libraries of downloaded data from Twitter, Facebook, etc.?

Keep killing it!