Hello Mist,

Hm, downgrading is pretty tricky as we have never tested this before but ideally it's just a matter of uninstalling and reinstalling again.

By the way, perhaps if it's not too much to update on your custom template, you should move forward?

It seems that a lot have been changed on ES template from 1.4.X version (folder structures and so on) and i have to start all over again if i want to make the template customizations work for 2.X version

The only way i can make the site functional quick (users contacted me asking what happened) is to try and downgrade back to 1.4.12 version.

Unfortunately files on our backup server are corrupted for some reason ... and we are really screwed for the

So, is there any way i can download version 1.4.12 to try a re-install ?

EasySocial 2 is definitely worth going forward. I noticed a huge performance difference as well as other great additions.

As someone who develops my own Joomla template I had to spend some time today to make EasySocial 2 display like my ES 1.4.12 site. To make the transition easier I kept a dedicated test site in ES 1.4.12 so that I could simply copy a lot of the styling "mods" and apply it to different classes. It was actually pretty easy. ES 2.0 required a lot less code than my ES 1.4.12 in terms of custom CSS styling.

I happened to keep a copy of the ES 1.4.12 launcher. Due to it requiring an active API license I think it's safe to say I can email you the launcher to install on a test site. So what I recommend you do is create a sub-domain (test.site), create a copy of your current site and place the files into the sub-domain folder. Then copy the database, create a new one, insert the SQL file. Then configure the root configuration.php file of the test site to access files from the new database. It should theoretically look like your current site on the sub-domain. From here you can either risk breaking the test site by installing the launcher which I think has a decent chance of working or you can uninstall EasySocial from the test site. Then install the launcher if you haven't already.

From here it's a simple game of copying your custom styling (should be in a consolidated area of a style sheet). In my case I put it into a backup.css file using Notepad++. On the real site I would inspect elements that are lacking the styling I was missing. In some cases modification was needed, however ES2 is pretty well suited out of the box.

Hello Mist,

I believe we have already sent you those files but as Josh pointed out, do consider moving forward with ES2. It's definitely worth the time to update your custom designs

Thanks for the help Josh. Mark was prompt and kind to send me the package already via their helpdesk.

I have a subdomain on our server for testing purpose where we used to run an exact replica of the actual live site.
We deleted the content on our dev subdomain to play around with a fresh Joomla install for some new stuff thus relying on our single server level backup setup.

I updated the live site thinking that if something goes wrong we have our backup in place. Guess what, backup files where corrupted on our backup server.

Unfortunately, in my case is not a really easy fix since our template override is really robust, i didn't customize things only at css level. In the newest EasySocial it seems that a lot of things have been changed (template folder structure, different files and so on)

Since i don't have enough knowledge to build our stuff from ground up using some big boys frameworks out there like Ruby, Django, Laravel and so on, i must leverage Joomla but i will try to build our own custom stuff on Joomla, taking advantage of the core as much as possible.

EasySocial is great for it's purpose, StackIdeas team is amazing helpfull and kind but sometimes you have to build your own things, keep them as simple as possible and so on.

EasySocial is an amazing "one pack fits all" solution for a "facebook style" social-network but sometimes you don't need all the burdain and you start to cut things down, turn options off and heavy customize everything. In this case is better to start from scratch and just build your stuff the way you want it, only the features you want it ....

Thanks for sharing this Mist We have something new which we are working on that leverages on what you have mentioned and I whole heartedly agree with your points