IPB3, conversion - Latin UTF8 & Nexus.

[ColinD]

Hi folks,

I'm still musing over a migration to XF, brain catching up to heart. Test site on a empty DB everything feels great.

I have what I'll call a legacy IPB forum. It's 3.4.5 but a mish mash state of an ongoing concern. That is most of the tables are latin1 still. It's in need of a dam good clearout 10+ years of upgrades/mods/uninstalled ipb junk etc. Around 3.6+ million posts and100k+members.

I'm about to convert it all to UTF8 inc data, or I'm considering it. The conversion of data, may erradicate some of the now unsupported gremlins I have. It needs doing before the v4 release in 202#. I see this as a call to reset, XF and v4 will be as new as each other in that sense.

Really trying to establish what data state the importer to XF expects. Rubbish in rubbish out etc.

Does the, or is it wise to use, the XF importer on a latin db into a utf8_... I've not done a test run yet on the full data, its on the cards.

In essence, if I'm playing with downtime of a data conversion and then a migration of platforms in x months. I'm not sold on the v4 release/date or packaging anymore... JFDI to XF

Thoughts from those who have migrated, specifically on the migration process?

PM me any you have on the IPB v XF pros and cons post migration if you want

Something I've not looked at yet though, and it's another barb holding me back. Is the migration of nexus subscriptions catered for, anyone got any thoughts/experience on that?

If needs be I'll extract and do some SQL post migration. But if this path is already travelled and shared, all the better.


PlanB is to archive the old site and head in fresh with empty post tables, the summer is a quieter period for me hence I'm debating again.

 

[Mike]

The character set conversion should be handled during the import. I think the data inside the DB is assumed to be Windows-1252 (ISO-8859-1) and we'll adjust it when bringing it in. The DB collation/conversion can be set if necessary when setting up the import, though it can usually be left as is.

Unfortunately, it's hard to know whether the conversion is correct unless you can look at some non-ASCII characters after the import. If they're wrong, it would normally require redoing the import.

Nexus subscriptions are not imported.

 

[ColinD]

Mike,

Thanks for the reply. I'll get the data I have straight first then trial the importer.

Thanks re nexus too. I'm actually more hung/concerned on that than anything as it's the supporters

Time to clear the desk and whiteboard

 

[petertdavis]

How many supporters do you have? If it's not a huge number you might find it easier to import them manually.

 

[ColinD]

Over a 1000, if it was more than 100, I'd still do it by SQL/process, just so it can be repeated/tested. Need to identify any pre/post hook operations that may occur during XF account upgrades. Also how to downgrade them when the time comes.