Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[FlexibleDogma]

Rather then getting the importer to be perfect, perhaps getting it to 90% and then hacking out a quick perl script or just a few mysql queries to patch up the rest would be best?  I imagine the HTML on this board could be converted to the phpBB friendly equivalents via regexes either via the converter or a script run after the fact. (i.e. $inputtext =~ s/\Q

\E/[CODE]/g);
Hiding email addresses is just on the admin page in phpBB 3.0, and since you have to go to 3.0 pretty quickly since 2.X is dying in Feb of '09, it would be a quick jump till they are all hidden anyway. http://www.phpbb.com/support/documentation/3.0/adminguide/acp_general.php#acp_client _email 
(Going from UBB to phpBB 2.X to phpBB 3.0 all in one sitting sounds like tons of fun, but you really don't want to leave a 2.X sitting around for very long since it's on the brink of death anyway.)
As for converting all old board links to work with the new board, that just sounds like pure, unfiltered pain.  Perhaps just locking down the old board and letting the links still point there would work and letting the community figure out where the links SHOULD be pointing on the new board would be best.  People who care about their posts could edit the links to work on the new board, people who care about other posts could figure out where the links are supposed to go and PM an a mod, and posts that don't matter will still have content to point to, they'll just be pointing to the dead board.
[ May 22, 2008: Message edited by: FlexibleDogma ]

[Armok]

quote:Originally posted by FlexibleDogma:
<STRONG>As for converting all old board links to work with the new board, that just sounds like pure, unfiltered pain.  Perhaps just locking down the old board and letting the links still point there would work and letting the community figure out where the links SHOULD be pointing on the new board would be best.  People who care about their posts could edit the links to work on the new board, people who care about other posts could figure out where the links are supposed to go and PM an a mod, and posts that don't matter will still have content to point to, they'll just be pointing to the dead board.</STRONG>

You misunderstood me, I meant they would still point to the old forum, but there should be some kind of link to the new thread or at least an instruction how to search for it by thread ID or something say at the top of the page or in a last automatically-added post.

[Janus]

quote:Originally posted by Armok:
<STRONG>
You misunderstood me, I meant they would still point to the old forum, but there should be some kind of link to the new thread or at least an instruction how to search for it by thread ID or something say at the top of the page or in a last automatically-added post.</STRONG>

No, he understands, he was stating the facts of the matter. While such a thing can technically be done, it would be far more trouble than it would be worth.

Hiding all user e-mails is also a simple setting in SMF, which then instead offers a contact form that will send an e-mail the user from the forum software itself (thus not revealing their e-mail address). Users can disable the ability for people to contact them that way within their profile, only allowing private messages to be sent to them within the forum.

If the only problem with posts is with line breaks, that should indeed be simple to fix either within the converter script or even later. I just checked through the thread discussing the converter and it looks like others have seen and worked around the problems you're seeing with some HTML code not being converted.
Toady, are you using the 0.3.1 version of the converter, linked at the bottom of his second post in the thread below? http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=169217
You might also want to try the update provided by the guy in this post to fix a couple more issues leftover with 0.3.1: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=169217&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=270#p3153266

[The-Moon]

I actually like the forums how they are. I don't think you should change them right now toady. But if you decide too i think you should at least find some way to move our accounts over so that there wont be no problems with people stealing other peoples names. I would have to say thats a prerequisite for any forum change.

What i would like to see is a better looking main website...
http://www.bay12games.com/

Its nice and simple which is good, but I'm sure you could touch it up a bit and make it better without losing it simplicity.

[Tommy2U]

I quite like the minimalistic look of the current forums. The search function is somewhat lacking though, as is the lack of stickied threads.
Should you decide to migrate, please consider turning off graphics in signatures and avatars as well as post counts (complete with lame titles for the number of posts sent). They tend to encourage flaming and general assholeness and a good game does not gurantee a good online community, Mount & Blade being a good example.

[Toady One]

Yeah, I'm using the 0.3.1 converter.  I'll take a look at that updated version you linked.

So... what about the phpBB2 -> 3/SMF step?  Since phpBB2 is a newer board, I imagine the conversion is a bit more standardized, but exactly what does that step involve?  Once I feel like I understand that step, I can open up a more official thread for discussion of a move.

I'm all for keeping things simple, without having giant banner signatures or other images.  SMF came with a bunch of actor and pop star pictures that I probably won't be utilizing if we go with that board.  It's very easy to change the settings (and I already did it on both of the new boards as a test when the issue was mentioned earlier).  I don't anticipate suddenly having a bunch of ranks people step through with their post counts and so on, and if people in general don't want the counts displayed at all, that's fine with me as well.  I'm under the impression that the forum isn't forced to be a glitzy place, and I think it would be more effective at simple forum tasks and would be able to do more things that a lot of people take for granted these days, so I'm definitely leaning toward it now that most of the conversion issues are out of the way.

[I3erent]

Dude can you make the DF music play in the background when you enter the forums?
That would "PWN".

[Armok]

quote:Originally posted by Tommy2U:
<STRONG>I quite like the minimalistic look of the current forums.</STRONG>

Didn't they say that was customizable? So we can get it to look like this one?

Edit:
Also, I assume my post count I have here will be lost... Err I mean not like I care about such stupid things heh heh heh... *looks nervously around*

[ May 22, 2008: Message edited by: Armok ]

[Capntastic]

quote:Originally posted by I3erent:
<STRONG>Dude can you make the DF music play in the background when you enter the forums?
That would "PWN".</STRONG>

No, it would not, since some people listen to music while browsing forums and having two different songs playing at once would ruin both.

[Toady One]

I imagine the bandwidth for me might also be a hassle with the music, though I have no idea.  And I'm not really happy when my browser starts bursting out in song anyway.

Post counts were preserved, actually, I think.  Although if most people don't want post counts in the new board, that won't matter.  We'll sort that out once I start the new thread.

You can customize the look of the forum.  It takes some work though, and it doesn't seem as easy as it is here (I can just change colors and a few pictures here), but it's much more powerful.  I don't really have the time to set up a new theme, and it would likely take me many iterations until it doesn't look like ass, so it seems like the kind of thing I'd have to ask others to do, or something.

[Janus]

quote:Originally posted by Toady One:
<STRONG>So... what about the phpBB2 -> 3/SMF step?  Since phpBB2 is a newer board, I imagine the conversion is a bit more standardized, but exactly what does that step involve?  Once I feel like I understand that step, I can open up a more official thread for discussion of a move.</STRONG>

The general method is to fully install a fresh copy the target forum system, then proceed with the converter utility.

For phpBB3, it should be fairly straightforward though I've never done an upgrade to it (only played around with a fresh install of it). You may possibly have problems with the process timing out or exceeding your host's database query limitations, which the phpBB people even mention. Not too likely I would think, but possible, and it would probably require the assistance of your hosting provider to get around. Other than that possibility, it should be smooth sailing.

For SMF 2.0, it would be a bit more involved of a process. You would actually first need to install SMF 1.1.5 since their phpBB2 converter is not yet rewritten for the new SMF 2.0 version. After running the converter, you would then upload the upgrade package for SMF 2.0 and run the upgrade utility for it. So, definitely an extra step and a bit more work involved to get to SMF 2.0.
On the other hand, the converter and upgrade utilities for SMF are well designed to break up the upgrade process into smaller chunks which are automatically walked through, so that there's no real worry of overloading the server.

[Dasleah]

Man, I remember when Invisionboard and phpBB were the be all and end all. In the past 6 months I've seen SMF pop up all over the place. Janus seems the expert on all that, so I'll bow to his wisdom, and from what I've played around with and seen, SMF seems to be Rather Quite Good (tm).

Poke me when you need some CSS help for the themes.  

[Toady One]

Okay, having looked over that stuff, I'll probably have a few more questions (mainly about how to properly scrap the test boards I've put up that I'd need to scrap before replacing them with upgrades, if it isn't obvious), but I've set up the official discussion thread, now in a more prominent location.