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Re: Old Forum

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 7:48 am
by John-B
There were comments on the phpBB community forum in 2008 that said it converted into phpBB v2 which then had to be upgraded to v3 but this may not now be true. If so, it's another stage and carries risk as v3 is quite a lot different from v2. We are on v3.2.5 at the moment.
https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=701695

There's also another converter here https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... 820&hilit= in 2006 but it seems amateurish and risky.

And another program https://profprojects.com/migrate-snitz-forum-to-phpbb/ which looks professional but doesn't say which version of phpBB it converts into.

Ideally we would need feedback from forums that had converted.

As things stand, the old forum is available, but I suppose the biggest risk is that the hosting company might stop hosting a forum on a Windows server.

Re: Old Forum

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 9:20 am
by Chris_R
grahamemmett wrote: Fri Feb 15, 2019 1:01 am Chris, sorry I meant on that topic you referred me to - there’s 18 pages of posts. So quite a debate.
It’s not a reluctance, it’s just new to me and I need to understand it further before deciding what to do.
Right now we’ve paid for the old forum to keep running as it is.
Graham, the link I posted, http://forum.dloc.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f ... &start=110, takes you directly to page 12 of the thread and the information is only 3 posts down on that page. Not too far to look. Coming from an IT background, to me this is no brainer and should have been done when the new forum was setup. It's what happens when softwares are upgraded to something new, the data is migrated as well. I, and others, argued strongly (in both the old forum and the new one) for migrating the posts and keeping the historical data but it all fell on deaf or unwilling ears back then. As far as I recall, the folks setting up the new forum weren't authorised to spend money on converting the old forum and I seem to also remember a request from them was turned down by the board.
Keeping an old obsolete system up and running is bonkers when there is an upgrade path.
ProfProjects looks like an alternative to gConverters but both work on the same principle, 1) make the request, 2) they have a look, 3) they give a price, 4), we accept the price, 5) they do the work, 6) we approve the results, 7) the results are moved to our environment, 8) we pay. Job done. There is no harm in going through steps 1 - 3 for both ProfProjects and gConverters. As said before though in our case now, their converted results will need to be merged onto our current forum and I have no idea about doing this so this will need to be requested of the vendor.

Re: Old Forum

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 10:37 am
by Vortex O'Plinth
Gone again - now you see it, now you don't..... :? :(

Re: Old Forum

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:20 pm
by John-B
Vortex O'Plinth wrote: Wed Feb 27, 2019 10:37 am Gone again - now you see it, now you don't..... :? :(
That's crazy. I looked up an old member less than 15 minutes ago. Perhaps it doesn't like you :o

Re: Old Forum

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 1:21 pm
by Vortex O'Plinth
John-B wrote: Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:20 pm
Vortex O'Plinth wrote: Wed Feb 27, 2019 10:37 am Gone again - now you see it, now you don't..... :? :(
That's crazy. I looked up an old member less than 15 minutes ago. Perhaps it doesn't like you :o
Maybe - but I'm still getting a '503 service unavailable' error, which is usually attributable to the website's server.

Re: Old Forum

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 2:59 pm
by John-B
I can get the site now 2.56pm, and auto logged in.

Re: Old Forum

Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2019 4:14 pm
by bop
I find I still frequently go to the old forum because of the wealth of information stored there. Lately my only means of access is http://archive.dloc.co.uk/forum/default.asp

Bob