Moving to XenForo... coming soon!

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An update - I've been reviewing all of the aspects of migration to XenForo and there are a few more things I haven't counted on (e.g. post icons don't exist in XF, so we'll have to work around that too) and a few more I'm sure will come up after we do the first test import, but that's getting closer.

As we'll need several bits of custom code and modifying of the existing importer scripts for XF to get as much of our current content over to XF as possible, I've decided to entrust the modifying of the XF code as well as performing the import to the same developer - since it just so happens that he performs professional imports for a fee. Unfortunately there isn't a single vB->XF importer that would import everything (or in the same manner), so we'll have to combine two, plus buy a few addons for extra features like the gallery and blogs that XF doesn't include by default and import our existing content into that as well.

While I expect I could do this myself with the help of a coder, the time required on my part to get it done vs. that of someone who's already done dozens of such imports would be exponentially longer, plus what any XF developer would charge me to help me during the entire process would probably be about the same in the end as if I'd just let them do it their way. I'll have my hands full overseeing everything and making sure that we transition as smoothly as possible as it is.

Of course the entire transition isn't going to come cheap, so here's the costs breakdown so far:

$250 for the base import
$200-300 for various custom coding jobs
$65 for the gallery licence
$50 for the blogs licence
(+$50 to fix a moment of my stupidity where I accidentally deleted a forum )

The core XenForo software we already own thanks to the previous donation drive for the server.

While the final figure might be a bit higher than the sum of the above if anything else comes up during the testing stage (which is entirely possible), I hope that the final figure will be under $800 altogether.

Since $800 isn't exactly chump change, I'll be setting up a donation thread where everyone will be able to chip in and help us raise the necessary funds.

 

And here we go: http://www.sorcerers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=65805

 

Further research indicates that reputation is actually imported as likes as well, so both positive reputation and likes will be combined in XF!

 

Restored the accidentally deleted Mass Effect forums successfully (anyone notice they were gone? ) - thanks BoP5! A couple more things to do and we'll be doing a test import to XF.

 

Imported all the post icons into posts themselves, thanks to BoP5 (mostly an issue for old posts, where post icons were used much more extensively). This was the last pre-move issue I was aware of in advance, so it's time to go ahead with a test import to XenForo and see if we encounter any other issues that need fixing prior to our final import. Getting close now!

Note: I've disabled the addition of new post icons from this point onwards.

 

Upon further examination of our old content in preparation for the XF migration, I've decided to import our pre-vB front page news archives into our current news forums (or a separate news archive forum). We'll be doing this one last thing on vBulletin before migrating to XF as I expect it would get delayed indefinitely again if we switched to XF first and then started handling all the more important post-migration issues. Hopefully this won't delay the migration by more than a week or two.

 

This is taking a bit longer than I would have liked due to the developer being ill, but hopefully he'll recuperate soon so that we can get going.

 

First test import of our old news archives was done yesterday. With a bit of tweaking, it should all import very nicely.

 

Unfortunately we won't be able to attribute all the old news posts to their respective owners' forum accounts as was originally planned and the fixing of the remaining import bugs is also taking much longer than it should have, but sadly it's out of my hands. I'm hoping that it really won't be long now until we can move since there are only a few more bugs to squash.

 

Hah, a week's nothing for a platform move... there's a boatload of work that needs to be done in the background preparation-wise and post-move. Unfortunately the guy who was supposed to do the importer for our old news posts gave up on it before the end, so I'll have to find someone else to finish it now.

 

Ah, well, I don't know the details about that particular forum's setup but having gone through several such transitions in the past I know that it's never easy, especially if the forum relies on a bunch of mods, which is usually the case.

 

Later... much, much later...

The importer for our old news archives is finally complete, so I'll be performing the import of said archives today or tomorrow. Once that is done, we'll schedule a first test import of the entire forums to XenForo and go from there. If everything goes according to plan, this should all happen within a week. Yep, the wheels are finally turning!

P.S.
Since blogs have largely fallen into disuse and the XF addon I wanted to import them into has stopped being developed in the last few months, I decided to simply convert the existing blog entries to threads during the import into XF.

 

I guess when I said "complete" above I didn't figure in, oh, about 20 other fixes that we needed to do as various issues arose, but we like to walk on the wild and unpredictable side here at Sorcerer's Place! We're still largely on track as above, however, so I expect that SPS account holders will get to check out a test install of our XF conversion in the next few days.

In case you're curious about these old archives that I've been wasting crazy amounts of time on importing, you can check them out here. At the time of this writing, the entire first year of our news archive has been imported. If you're looking for a trip down the memory lane to the time of great, but slow dial-up adventures, you need to look no further!

How many of you were there when we posted that stuff in 2000?

 

And about another 20 adjustments, corrections and hours of testing and fixing later, the import is now FINALLY finished. Nearly 3600 of the earliest news posts and comments have been successfully imported, so I've done my patriotic duty of preserving the venerable history of Sorcerer's Place for posterity. Now where's my chocolate medal?

Here's a handy tip - since the archive can now be sorted by the number of replies, you can use this link to see which news were the most commented between mid-2002 and 2004. We've only implemented news commenting in June of 2002, so any news prior to that will have no comments. It's amazing how much of that stuff I've completely forgotten about!

 

I guess I was a bit overly optimistic that we could just move to XenForo right away. The guy who'll be doing the actual import is very heavily booked, so we've been put on the waiting list and I've been waiting for about a week already. Here's hoping that his schedule clears up in the next few days so that we can proceed with the test import!