New Forums, but RedWolf needs your input on 'em.

C.w. · Post by **C.w.** » Thu Dec 20, 2007 11:03 pm

Maybe there should be a metaforum forum, since it seems every third thread turns into a discussion of what the thread should be?

Post by **Kisai** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 12:13 am

This is no good.

I did a test run against the test forum. total fail.

Here's how a "convert" works:
It locks phpBB2, then spends the next X minutes/hours/days converting it to phpBB3. This might not work as expected, as anyone who remembers the phpBB1 to phpBB2 convert, it broke, a lot.

For security reasons, the create and drop table permissions are not available, so logically, the install won't work. I'm literately going to have to create new permission data just for installing it. Or I can just create the tables manually. Either way.

What appears to be an issue so far, is that it will be unlikely able to convert the forums at all. There are ways around this, clearly.
...
EDIT
Fail v2
Looks like some usernames are going to need to change due to people picking upper case and lower case of the same... somehow.
...
This is going to take a while. currently on 26000 of 1102741

... about 3 hours it will take, see you at 4am.

... 10% there it just passed 100,000

Dr Neo Lao · Post by **Dr Neo Lao** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 3:07 am

I know everyone loves nostalgia, but how is this for an idea: don't convert the old forum to V3.

Keep the old forum as an archive (there is a HUGE fountain of knowledge in there, especially the Help Center). But instead create a brand new forum using V3. This will allow three things:

old dead-end codes, hacks and workarounds can be ignored.
it will allow easier integration with new stuff (such as AutoGenesis next year).
it will free up valuable time and resources for the (way under appreciated) admins.

I mean really, how much of the data that is in the current forums are really needed, especially on a daily basis?

The only things that would need copying would be the memberships. And there are two ways to do that (which is what Kisai is doing, if I read the above post correctly).

First: top level. The admins convert everything over.

Second: bottom level. The users add themselves to the new Forums.

Which of the two will be better depends on a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that I know nothing about, but that's what would seem best, from where I'm sitting...

Post by **Mercury Hat** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 3:09 am

While that would work if this was a small forum, I'm not sure just how feasible that plan is with so many comic boards and so many users that would need to be moved/recreated.

Post by **Kisai** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 3:41 am

it got to 298000 before I had to refresh manually. ugh.

I should point out this is a test run to see what bugs I'm going to run into, so therefor I'm making a copy TO the main server, figure out what I need to edit, then redo it again on the main server. Otherwise you're going to lose an entire days worth of posts.

EDIT 360000

... at this rate it will take 8 days.

Dr Neo Lao · Post by **Dr Neo Lao** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 5:19 am

Mercury Hat wrote:...with so many comic boards...

Oh yeah, forgot about those...

Post by **Kisai** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 6:07 am

step 16/27

filling table _posts

597616

51 rows/s (2000 rows) |

... yeah... it's just past half way

Sooo it's probably going to take another 6 hours still.

Post by **Kisai** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 11:47 am

Done.

This is a TEST forum

http://www.comicgenesis.com/phpBB3

EVERYTHING posted on the Test phpBB3 will eventually be deleted. Don't reply to existing conversations or start new serious ones. every post or action should be to test if some aspect of the forum works or does not. Do note it's out of sync from forums.comicgenesis.com by several hours. When I actually convert the forums proper I will be disabling the v2 forums so this doesn't happen.

--
Known bugs so far.
- No avatars. The avatars are still on forums.comicgenesis.com, but they don't have the same filenames. Sorry. A proper upgrade on forums.comicgenesis.com should save them.
(likely this applies to attachments as well)

- Not a bug, you have to login to see the forums. This is to prevent any accidental OOPS being indexed by google et al.

- HTML in forums must be removed. Looks like straight HTML is no longer supported.

Dr Neo Lao · Post by **Dr Neo Lao** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 2:58 pm

Checked it out.

At the time that I visited, there were no forums, so couldn't test anything.

My profile showed up, along with all my pm's and such.

Edit: clicking on "view active topics" brought up the forum.

Made a test post - looks like all the basic functions are working...

Garneta · Post by **Garneta** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 7:46 am

Worked for me too....probably a good thing I did it, actually. Learned that I need to redo something in my signature.

Post by **STrRedWolf** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 12:22 pm

One other idea that came out of testing: Move all comic forums into subforums, and split them up a bit more. That way, folks won't be socked with a long load up front.

Dr Neo Lao · Post by **Dr Neo Lao** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 1:47 pm

The question would be, which way would make for better navigation? Alphabetical dispersion would make it easier to reach the specific forum you were looking for (assuming that you didn't follow a direct link). Splitting by genre would make it slightly harder to find a specific comic's forum but would increase the chance of finding other, similar comics that the reader might like...

Post by **Mercury Hat** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 2:35 pm

Genre would be way too labour intensive; we'd have to either contact each comic board's mod and ask what main genre they'd want to be listed under, or assign grunts to read each and list them out :| .

The problem I found was there's no way for me to easily set it up so the subforums don't show on the index. The problem is if you have Category A and you put in Subforum B and Subsubforum C so that A>B>C, all the subforums in C will still show up in the board index unless you manually change them one by one to "Do not display in parent's index" or whatever it's called. There's a way to change it in the code itself, but I don't know if it's a simple find/replace or not and we have hundreds of comic boards

.

That is to say right now there's Comic Boards > Locked Boards > Genners MIA and the Genners MIA forums all show up on the main page, even if I set Genners MIA to not show up on the index.

I could live with the active comic boards being listed on the board index, but there are way too many locked boards to deal with.

~~

Tried to enter in something under the Custom Profile Field and when I got to the point of saving what I'd entered, I got a SQL error

Code: Select all

General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

ALTER command denied to user 'keenweb_phpRW'@'localhost' for table 'bbx_profile_fields_data' [1142]

SQL

ALTER TABLE bbx_profile_fields_data ADD `pf_text_area_test` VARCHAR(255)

BACKTRACE

FILE: includes/db/mysqli.php
LINE: 143
CALL: dbal->sql_error()

FILE: includes/acp/acp_profile.php
LINE: 1278
CALL: dbal_mysqli->sql_query()

FILE: includes/acp/acp_profile.php
LINE: 697
CALL: acp_profile->save_profile_field()

FILE: includes/functions_module.php
LINE: 471
CALL: acp_profile->main()

FILE: adm/index.php
LINE: 74
CALL: p_master->load_active()

But that's the first error I've gotten so far.

Dr Neo Lao · Post by **Dr Neo Lao** » Sun Dec 23, 2007 2:45 pm

I was about to suggest something, had a look and then noticed that it is a default feature of V3 - Search Topic Title Only.

This is available on some V2 boards, but it usually needs to be added manually. In the current CG forum, searching the topic titles only isn't an option - something I thought would be quite obvious on such a large board.

Anyway, it's there, so I'll be quiet now...

Edit: Personally, I don't like the 'Save' button. What is the point of saving a draft of a post and then posting it later? Maybe if you are going to post a long and technical post that needs to be accurate, but then it'd be better to write it off-line and then copy + paste.

I vote for the removal/disabling of the Save button.

Another Edit: Oh, and need to re-hide the post count on the main forums (but not in profiles) to discourage posting for the sake of posting...

Post by **Mercury Hat** » Sun Dec 23, 2007 5:38 pm

I'd also say get rid of the "Foe" feature if it's possible because you can't ignore anyone who's a moderator which, since we have so many users with comic boards, makes it a worthless feature.

I'll need to play around with the warning and report systems, they seem neat.

Post by **Kisai** » Tue Dec 25, 2007 10:50 am

Mercury Hat wrote:I'd also say get rid of the "Foe" feature if it's possible because you can't ignore anyone who's a moderator which, since we have so many users with comic boards, makes it a worthless feature.

I'll need to play around with the warning and report systems, they seem neat.

yeah, the warning system would allow moderators to have their attention drawn to flamewar stuff, and would hopefully result in less people replying to spam.

Rkolter · Post by **Rkolter** » Wed Dec 26, 2007 7:29 am

I'm liking 3.0. This is pretty nice.

I'd go with Alphabetical and not Genre based, simply because we have the Wiki you can use to find other genre-based comics. If you should get dumped to the list of forums, make it easy for a person to find the forum they want. Besides, many comics bridge genres, and if you had to look for a sci-fi furry anime comic (for example), you could be looking all day.

I would like to suggest that if we move to 3.0, we use it as an opportunity to par down the comic forums - perhaps by putting a notice on each forum of the impending move and asking the forum moderator to request the forum be moved. I'm suggesting this because I suspect there are a lot of comic forums that don't get a lot of use, and that cleaning them up would be a good idea. If I'm wrong, ignore the suggestion. I haven't done any sort of analysis of the use of the comic forums.

Yeahduff · Post by **Yeahduff** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 7:50 am

Dr Neo Lao wrote:Another Edit: Oh, and need to re-hide the post count on the main forums (but not in profiles) to discourage posting for the sake of posting...

Should we bother?

Garneta · Post by **Garneta** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 2:13 pm

Aw geez, not this whole thing again. Just leave it as is, and have the option where people can have them show up or not as they want.

Keffria · Post by **Keffria** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 4:05 pm

yeahduff wrote:
Dr Neo Lao wrote:Another Edit: Oh, and need to re-hide the post count on the main forums (but not in profiles) to discourage posting for the sake of posting...
Should we bother?

I vote 'no'. It's not like it's done anything to stop newbie hazing (such as it was to begin with) or the rampant post-whoring.

edit: Also, please merge GD and OT.