Seeking someone to write custom import

U

UUD3

New member
We are exploring a purchase of XF but need to bring the existing forums with us. The current site is small but a home-brew so I need someone who can code a custom import. Some deets:
  • There are three forums, together approx. 155,000 posts in 10,000 threads.
  • There are 1000 registered users.
  • MySQL dump of the home-brew db (posts and users) is approx 90MB.
  • Attachments are kept separate, mostly .jpg/.png, approx 4GB.
Important to us is to bring the threads over with proper ownership, and to fix cross-references so we can get from one thread to another.
It is not important who owns the images as long as they show when they should.
I am technical and can help wrangle the source db but I don't know XF's target schema. That's where you come in!

If this sounds like something you can do, please contact me. Thank you.
 
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FTL said:
I'm curious, which forum software were you using?
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Hand-coded in LAMP (=> not a product).

The forum currently sits on a corporate server. Boss wanted it, tasked his Admin to write it, and it has been good enough since 2008. It's bare-bones but the community didn't care (until recently 😎). It's paid-for, so no ads. We like our privacy so no bots or spiders. It's a total throwback and, in a way, it's paradise.

But, for a month now, the machine has been messed-up and Admin seems unable to fix it. Lots of "Forbidden" and "Permission denied" errors on every activity. Admin claims he found multiple webservers running -- which is a logical way to get those errors -- but he has not made it stop. People are grousing and I don't want them to go away for good.

(btw, I am forum admin, not server admin)
 
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Hand-coded, so yeah, you'll definitely need a custom importer and I hope it goes well for you.

You won't be disappointed with the performance and features of XF, I promise you. :)

If you go for XF Cloud, then all that server stuff is done for you. It runs really well and I've had 100% uptime in the 10 months or so since I've had it. Just pay the monthly subscription and off you go. Super easy.
 
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virgilmerk said:
I disagree. I mean the forum is a product, even if it was hand-coded in LAMP. For me as a user, it's important to maintain and update the forum to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of its users.
You should hire a consultant to help us diagnose and fix the problem:) Or develop a communication plan for the community and consider making some changes to the forum.

I wanna say just that the forum is an important part of our community, and it's important to make sure that it's well-maintained and supported.
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This sounds like AI generated non-sense or a poor translation which doesn't address the issue migration concerns the OP has.
 
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virgilmerk said:
I disagree. I mean the forum is a product, even if it was hand-coded in LAMP. For me as a user, it's important to maintain and update the forum to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of its users.
You should hire a consultant to help us diagnose and fix the problem:) Or develop a communication plan for the community and consider making some changes to the forum.

I wanna say just that the forum is an important part of our community, and it's important to make sure that it's well-maintained and supported.
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I think people found this weird because the original poster was asking about moving the forum to a Xenforo site, which to most of us here, qualifies as "making sure that it's well-maintained and supported" since off-the-rack software is easier to maintain and support than custom.

The site that mine spun off from was custom and died because the sponsoring organization balked at a huge bill to upgrade it when they moved to a new version of Drupal (there was also a shift in priorities involved, to be fair). We went with lightly customized (just styling and a few add-ons) Xenforo precisely because of that experience.

So if you're worried about the future of the community, I'd say that it will be in good hands if they are moving it to a Xenforo site.
 
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Thank you, everyone, for your interest and concern.

Wrt whether bespoke software should be considered "a product", I think not because, with an installed base of n=1, it is hard to distinguish what is the product from what are our customizations.

And, an update: The server admins at my original site have bought a new machine and pushed it into service, and the troublesome HTTP errors have gone away. Which means we will likely stay on the original site for a while yet. It's a shame, really, as XF runs so well and has so many good, modern features compared to my current bare-bones forum. But it is hard to resist "free" and the feeling of home (...and demands for better features are relatively few).

Till our paths cross again.
 
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UUD3 said:
Thank you, everyone, for your interest and concern.

Wrt whether bespoke software should be considered "a product", I think not because, with an installed base of n=1, it is hard to distinguish what is the product from what are our customizations.

And, an update: The server admins at my original site have bought a new machine and pushed it into service, and the troublesome HTTP errors have gone away. Which means we will likely stay on the original site for a while yet. It's a shame, really, as XF runs so well and has so many good, modern features compared to my current bare-bones forum. But it is hard to resist "free" and the feeling of home (...and demands for better features are relatively few).

Till our paths cross again.
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I really wanna see this custom forum!
 
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UUD3 said:
Thank you, everyone, for your interest and concern.

Wrt whether bespoke software should be considered "a product", I think not because, with an installed base of n=1, it is hard to distinguish what is the product from what are our customizations.

And, an update: The server admins at my original site have bought a new machine and pushed it into service, and the troublesome HTTP errors have gone away. Which means we will likely stay on the original site for a while yet. It's a shame, really, as XF runs so well and has so many good, modern features compared to my current bare-bones forum. But it is hard to resist "free" and the feeling of home (...and demands for better features are relatively few).

Till our paths cross again.
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Tech debt is never free 🥲.
 
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UUD3 said:
Thank you, everyone, for your interest and concern.

Wrt whether bespoke software should be considered "a product", I think not because, with an installed base of n=1, it is hard to distinguish what is the product from what are our customizations.

And, an update: The server admins at my original site have bought a new machine and pushed it into service, and the troublesome HTTP errors have gone away. Which means we will likely stay on the original site for a while yet. It's a shame, really, as XF runs so well and has so many good, modern features compared to my current bare-bones forum. But it is hard to resist "free" and the feeling of home (...and demands for better features are relatively few).

Till our paths cross again.
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Whatever you do. Make sure you take regular backups for when things go tits up.
 
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Oh, yes! Wise words. In fact, the current forum is already the second incarnation of this community. The first began as a Snitz forum in 2000 which ran, ahem, under-moderated until it collapsed in a heap in 2008... database gone, spammers run amok... hence the current custom version. (We run a much tighter ship!)
 
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