I thought that "companions" would be interested in the status of theold posts.
I see it as these steps:
1)Gain access to the old posts using php (the programming language of this forum). Partially done. 21,000 are available and just the last few hundred "live" posts need to be added which will be done at the last minute.
2) Write php code to insert a new topic. Done - found and modified from phpBB.com
3) Write code to go throug the 20,000+ posts in the right order.
4) Write code to cross reference the email address of the post with the user id in this forum.
5) Lock new and old forums.
6) Clone live to development server
7) Cross fingers.
8) Run transfer.
9) Clone development to live server and unlock live server.
Have beer.
There are the following issues:
Users with more than one login will not see their "usual" name.
The old forum had topics that could "split". I can only stick all the posts, in order under the original topic I am afraid. No other solution without heinous coding (N.B. In this forum, moderators can "split" a topic themselves if an original question goes on to a new path
I would be interested in anyone's opinion on what to do with posts that I cannot recognise the user. It is around 30% of all the posts in the forum (7,000 posts) - I have been making progress on the loading...
I think these are the options:
1) Ignore them. Do not post them. Easy;
2) Assign them to their user id but ignore the email. Easy, and probably the best option;
3) Assign them to the user "Anonymous". Easy;
4) Create a new user for each post and assign the post to them. Nightmarish.
2) Looks much the best and I will proceed that way.
It was bit of a nightmare in the end, with each batch of 300 posts needing to be kicked off manually. Because each batch of 300 is likely to have broken across a topic, some threads will not be complete and the conclusion will be in the thread above. Not such a big problem.
The other thing I was unable to easily fix was the lss of some paragraph markers - you will see paragraphs that run up against each other.Like these two just did. I decided that this was not such a major problem and fixed it after a mere 9,000 posts had been archived. I was NOT going to go back and do those 900 again!
The forum can be searched as well. It goes back to the posts that followed the loss of all of the first 3,000 posts in early 2002.
amyntoros wrote:Thank you. This must have been a mammoth task, yet you've accomplished it with great speed.
Thanks. It was a big job. Done at great risk to my marriage and relationship with my daughters In fact I have promised to give them my full attention today so this will be my last post this weekend I hope unless something goes badly wrong!
I rather missed all this going on, having been away - but thanks, and well done!
Now, what I'm really interested in, is what the various 'ranks' are - I note that I'm a "companion", while Paralus is a "bodyguard" ... just my natural pride coming in, here, of course.
marcus wrote:Now, what I'm really interested in, is what the various 'ranks' are - I note that I'm a "companion", while Paralus is a "bodyguard" ... just my natural pride coming in, here, of course.
I know you have seen it in the moderator's forum, basically you get ranks according to your usage or role on the site. This is in flux! At the time of writing, it is now:
25 - 'Friend of pothos.org'
250 - Companion
1000 - General
I slipped in a special one at 10,000 but guess it will be a while before you finnd out what that is.
And all moderators are somatophylax.
Thomas
P.S. I think they just about do recognise me apart from Harriet who barely knows she is alive yet.
In fact I have promised to give them my full attention today so this will be my last post this weekend I hope unless something goes badly wrong!
