ADN

OK M8...

I have exported the old Forum DB to Excel like you asked...By the way, the people that are ADN are EXTREMELY grateful and thankful that you choose to do this..!!

Old Forum DB zip in Excel...

OK, here are the objectives...

We want to move the users, threads and posts...I have that test board I'm board I'm building, we can test it there...

We hope to ultimately do this...We can go back to the old forum structure, and move the few threads that are here there, easier than moving all of the old threads here I think...

We would have to find a way to attribute posts to new user ID's maybe...

Shit...I don't know, SQL isn't my bag...Any questions you have, just ask, and me and who.am.i will answer or research them...

Ideally, who.am.i will be of greater help, and he will be around to help...

We can shut the forum down for a day, and merge the data, and put it on the new board, which will be finished very soon...

I also think that you might need a sample of the new DB's structure, so that you can align the fields properly...I will post that in this thread when I am done with it later on today, for comparison...

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who.am.i's section
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Heh, my own section, eh? Oh well, I'd better do what A asked me to do instead of wasting space..

To summarise (including some of my suggestions), we

a) move users, threads, posts, topics and possibly groups by exporting from current database.. (also remember to export current topic grouping structure eg Suggestions, Announcements, etc)
/cool.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="B)" border="0" alt="cool.gif" /> lock down registration on the board
c) modify user_id s throught the exported db, that reoccur, eg, user_id 27 might be 2 different people.. so, just add an extra 1000 to the user_id so it won't re-occur for a while, anyway, the system should handle it..
d) shut-down the site for a few hours (just put a php-redirect page to a message saying whats going on..)
e) merge the db back in
f) re-enable the site
g) delete the old board if everything is A-OK

Well, both A and yours truly will be with you all the way in helping move the forums across, and again, thanks for doing such a generous thing for the entire community here..

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who.am.i's section
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Question are you going to put the old threads back and it's access can as if was posted yesterday i mean you can reply, edit, etc?

I thought the idea was to put all that stuff in an archive section for read them, but that they were all closed

Fap,

lemme translate:

QUOTE
Are the old archives going to be integrated into the body of the current active threads of the forum, open for new replies and edits?

I thought the old forum archives would be uploaded in a segregated format closed for submission.  Was that not the idea?


good question, Fap! one that needs to be considered.

My vote is that there be a "indication" in the data map for which version of the forum tht the thread originated in. This would make it possible to keep all the threads with the same name.

Now, its in excel format, the first thing to do is get rid of the duplicate information that was forwarded to the current forum databases...

i got work stuff in a serious way,though...

vertical,
raum

RAUM,

For whatever is worth it, and whatever the outcome, thank you for even getting invloved in this. I think there was a lot of decent threads worth saving and continuing. I don't know if it's a practical approach, but I intend to erase MY posts which are no longer relevant, or dead, or whatever. Thank you anyhow.

I think the better way is to create an archive section, where the structure of the old forum be in it, then all the previous posts closed. and finally by request some of the old threads be brought back to life.

So you'll have at the reach of hand old post without disturbing the current evolution of this new version. There's a lot of crap in the old forum as will be in this new one but i think no one can say this is good this is bad.
And yet we all have the posibility to ask for re-spawning an ancient thread if we consider it valious.

PS: Raum, fucking pointless quoting

With some luck, we should be able to revive all the threads, and then moderate our way through ones that we don't need any more...An archive section would be ideal in that respect, since we can move ALL the threads there, and use the search to find what we want, and yes, move relevant topics (Like those in VU and the Tech Section) to the main forums...

Like I am thinking, it will be easier to integrate the new DB into the old DB, as there is less data to move, only table changes...

As far as an archives section segregated as Fap suggests,... it makes perfect sense for Sports,T&W, Entertainment, and Flame On! for starters... which one may argue why we would even bother with them...

for those that we don't want open anymore, we change the name of the thread from THREAD_NAME to Archive_THREAD_NAME,.. and we drop a line in the FAQ (that everyone has read right?) that says "Some forum topics say "Archive_" before the Thread name. Those are closed for replies and edits, and are from the board before it was reloaded. They are for entertainment purposes only, and sentimental value."

But if a new person has something to say about a Archived VU thread, I wanna let that person drop in on the convo we already had, oif they want.

And I know:

EVERYONE WOULD HATE if the pictures in the gallery were segregated by an arbitrary point in the history of the board... and most people would just create a link to the old stuff in the new threads, so there would be no difference, until the links have to be updated, and the new ones are fixed by luvbugins scrutiny, and the archived ones all expire... and you waste a good piece of space on broken links.

but for some, such as the Galleries, Art and writing and VU, it really defeats the purpose, and will ultimately result in redudancy and paradox, which will mean the board will slow down...

xen's biggest point was relevance, which can be an issue in certain cases, and everyone will do well to consider that that which does not need to be advanced to the new board, will slow down the process, and due to its own sheer bulk, will drop the response rate of the current databases which are outstanding.

vertical,
raum

I over-understood that the galleries was going to be added to the current section.

And concering VU threads and Art threads i still think they should be there aside. If any reader ask for a specific thread to be brought from archive to current section so be it, but just for their category bring them back? no i'm totally against it.
And though the now sacred VU section had very intresting discussion let's just bring back only the requested ones (you still can request all of them, that's ok) but some discussions are over what's the point in bringing them back if no one has something else to add?

I think that way the forum would be cleaner, and still as i said you can bring back any intresting to you thread.

Wouldn't it just be possible to have the old board placed inside the Archives topic, and as has been said before, and simply request for a thread to be retrieved so that it can be access by the users in the topic, that it was originally in, on the old boards?

Since some of the requests may be inappropriate (eg requesting a thread that is of no value), moderators could decided whether or not a thread should be revived. The requests would most likely be in a pinned thread in each topic (eg Tech, VU etc).

Also, the extra threads will no make much difference on performance. Some sites have millions of posts, and their speed is not sacrificed in any way (good ol' MySQL)..

A possible layout for the forum structure can be seen below (expand is handy here):

CODE

FORUM

|---------------------------------------------------------------------

|-    Welcome to ADN

|    |-    Reception Area (no request thread neceesary)

|    |-    Announcements (see above (revive all posts in here?)

|    |-    Site Help and Suggestions (request thread here)

|    |-    The Network (see ^^)

|

|-    The Clique Stimulus

|    |-    God's Gift

|

|-    The Perfect Stimulus

|    |-    Vertical University (request thread here)

|    |-    AYHJA Tech (above)

|    |-    ADN Worldwide (ditto)

|    |-    Sports (Yup, again)

|    |-    Entertainment (^^)

|    |-    Miscellaneous (request thread)

|    |-    N.S.F.W. (revive all)

|    |-    The Word (request)

|    |-    Optonology (revive all)

|    |-    T & W (no idea, pls discuss)

|    |-    Flame On..! (also discuss)

|

|-    The Carnal Stimulus

|    |-    Gostosa (revive all, except discussion posts (request))

|    |-    Sabrosuras (revive all)

|

|-    The Archives

|    |-    Archive Listings

|  |-    Welcome to ADN

|  |    |-    Reception Area

|  |    |-    Site Help and Suggestions

|  |    |-    The Network

|  |

|  |-    The Clique Stimulus

|  |    |-    God's Gift

|  |

|  |-    The Perfect Stimulus

|  |    |-    Vertical University

|  |    |-    AYHJA Tech

|  |    |-    ADN Worldwide

|  |    |-    Sports

|  |    |-    Entertainment

|  |    |-    Miscellaneous

|  |    |-    The Word

|  |    |-    T & W (depends on discussion)

|  |    |-    Flame On..! (also depends)

|  |

|  |-    The Carnal Stimulus

|  |    |-    Gostosa (discussion posts only)

|

|---------------------------------------------------------------------


NOTE: The above is merly a suggestion..

BTW: If some of the things I've said have already been mentioned, I apologize. Reading each post this early in the morning is so bloody complex, and hard to understand..

ok, I gotta be more specific...

first of all, a quick export like this makes a csv file, and that is useless in almost all cases. What this does is offset all of your colums for each comma that was in the original post... overwriting and offsetting the data and making the sheet useless to use for this. Unfortunately, with databses nothing is ever as simple as a quick comma delimited form, despite what they teach.

comma delimited (csv) is the most useless form of datasheet there is, because the comma is a common character in the english language.

i will try and explain what i need:

either export to .xls

or

take the original database open it, and copy/paste it to excel inside excel

MAKE SURE IT IS IDENTICAL TO THE ORIGINAL DATA.

open and check it before you send it my way. just send me AYHJA sent to gostosa first, and i will look at it from there...

I appreciate the appreciation for this, but I can't really do all the work...

unless you wanna gimme access to your webpage through ftp... and i can go in and out of all the stuff i need and ask you if i need to.

*not holding my breath for that to happen*

raum