A forum left half upgraded

The owner of a collectors' forum started a version upgrade himself, it stopped partway, and the board was left broken. I repaired it and finished it to the current release in two days.

The objective

The forum runs on SMF rather than phpBB. The owner had attempted the upgrade himself and it had failed somewhere in the middle, which is the worst state to inherit. The files and the database no longer agree with each other, and neither of them matches a released version.

He had modifications installed and had already accepted they'd be lost, which made the route through simpler.

What I did

I asked for time to look at the state of the install before quoting, rather than pricing a repair without knowing what was left of it.

I asked about the modifications up front, because whether they have to survive changes the job completely.

I repaired the broken install and completed the upgrade to the current version.

And I sorted out the control panel login when the credentials didn't work, instead of reporting it as blocked and waiting.

The result

The board came back on the current release two days after first contact.