Forum software upgrade (for real now)

[Shademp]

GAIS WHEN DO WE MOVE, GIBE DATE NOW. Given at least two weeks notice, I can do the weekend of 10/11/12 August

I can do the weekend of 10/11/12 August

Make it so!

 

[Deleted member 546]

10/11/12 August has my axe.

 

[ForceStealer]

Works for me too, not the 10th strictly speaking, but the rest of the weekend

 

[Kionae]

I can do the weekend of 10/11/12

... I need to be careful scanning posts. Thought we were going back in time for a second there.

 

[Lex]

Yeah I'm down for 10/11/12th August.

@Force, Yop will start the transfer in evening EU time on Friday and then we'll start working on it when the transfer's done on Saturday morning(ish) whenever it finishes, so that date seems to suit most of us.

Staff should have a meeting (on discord, over voice) at some point beforehand to click around the current test backend for a while and get used to where everything is (and discuss it).

 

[X-SOLDIER]

Yes to those dates as well. I will ensure I am Discordant on said weekend.





X

 

[Cthulhu]

All right, I'll mark it in my calendar or will order my flunkies to remind me, .

ALSO THIS IS IMPORTANT: Shademp reported two issues yesterday:

* Japanese texts in the forums do not transfer over correctly - probably has to do with how they're encoded in the current database. There's a question outstanding on the Xf support board.
* Related, quotes within spoilers or vice-versa did not show the 'read more' button, so not all their content could be viewed.

I'm hoping there's going to be an answer for that - and I will do a bit more research - but there is a chance we will have to fix things like that manually.

I will keep the old forums around indefinitely - I'll see to putting it in archive / readonly mode, which probably involves turning off post / edit / etc permissions for all usergroups, and I'll have to hide it from search engines. That will be a lot easier if we can reduce the number of usergroups before the migration. So if there are older posts that are becoming illegible, there WILL be a way to retrieve the original. Restoring the posts will probably be a matter of editing / quoting the original post and copy / pasting the raw text field contents over. Xf does / should support native japanese characters (and probably emoji too, lol), making it moar future proof than vB was.

 

[Lulcielid]

Will our thread subs transfer to Xenf or will we have to do re-sub once Xenf is up?

 

[Cthulhu]

I'm not sure, I could set up the mail configuration on Xf so we can test that though.

 

[Cthulhu]

Right, I'm doing a thing, I'm merging and cleaning up usergroups.

Until we've finished moving, I'm putting all donators into the single donator usergroup (we had separate usergroups for each individual colors). Once we've moved we'll have to revisit this thing.

You'll get to pick a new color,

For now, I've made it so that donators are a secondary usergroup set to the display usergroup. Actually please help me with this, can anyone check if they still have the right permissions and access level? Else I'll have to set donators as primary usergroup anyway. It's no biggie, just need to remember to not move staff to have donators as primary usergroup.

EDIT: OKAY heck I'm figuring it out now. Here's what:

* All secondary / colored Donator usergroup memberers have been moved to the regular Donators usergroup (both primary and secondary usergroup members)
* All non-staff users (Registered Users) that are donators have Donator as their primary usergroup
* All staff and other such users that aren't Registered Users have Donator as their secondary usergroup

Please let me know if shit's fucked.

 

[CrashOuch]

As far as I can see, I can still view threads that are in the donator's bit and that, so I reckon it looks good

Nice work man

 

[looneymoon]

RIP my special spooky goth user group

 

[Lex]

I'm prodding about in the junkyard and once again baffled by the amount of mixed up shit in there. For context there's a mix of actual spam and legit posts from newbies that the Check For Spam service has dumped in there, and because it's gone to the junkyard it's not been checked by anyone. So we've potentially lost members because of it. It's not anybody's fault but the system's really, but it's still a downer because I actually want to "approve" a shitload of the threads in there but you'd be seeing a thousand threads of "hi I'm this person and I thought this FF news was really interesting" threads going all the way back to 2011. But I don't want to delete them.

Thankfully XF has a super obvious moderation queue. vB really is a dick, I'm glad we're moving :/

The move is happening tonight btw guys. Whatever we don't get done this side of the move will be done tomorrow prior to the new board going live. Please bear with us while we work out the kinks and get stuff up to the way everyone wants it to be - XF is far superior to what we have now and we'll work really hard to get everything done as fast as possible but just bear in mind that it's a big change so be patient while we sort everything out.

IMPORTANT

While a version of the board as it is will be archived, posts made after the transfer is started will be lost/ may not transfer. Keep this in mind. The board might also behave strangely while the transfer is in progress. May also be some downtime tomorrow while we test the new board before it's open to public.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

I'm prodding about in the junkyard and once again baffled by the amount of mixed up shit in there. For context there's a mix of actual spam and legit posts from newbies that the Check For Spam service has dumped in there, and because it's gone to the junkyard it's not been checked by anyone. So we've potentially lost members because of it. It's not anybody's fault but the system's really, but it's still a downer because I actually want to "approve" a shitload of the threads in there but you'd be seeing a thousand threads of "hi I'm this person and I thought this FF news was really interesting" threads going all the way back to 2011. But I don't want to delete them.

Thankfully XF has a super obvious moderation queue. vB really is a dick, I'm glad we're moving :/

A lot of those legit posts from non-spambot users ended up reposting within a couple minutes without the links and whatnot that got them flagged, so approving those posts in the Junkyard were irrelevant almost immediately and thus just left there, because restoring them would result in duplicates. I've tried to keep a close eye on things that ended up there, but I am quite glad we're finally moving to a system that'll hopefully be a little bit less shit at telling spambots and users apart & letting us deal with them accordingly.



X

 

[Lex]

I get what you're saying X, but regardless there are posts in there from people who never tried to post again. It's not obvious at all to mods when there are posts that need moderator approval, just makes me super glad we're getting away from this system now :/

 

[Claymore]

Excited! Hope it all goes well and looking forward to the new forums!

If you need any normal users around to test things btw before going completely live, I should be around.

 

[Tashasaurous]

This caught me completely by surprise and shock. I have no idea what to do or if I have start up a new account all over again over the new server.


Can any of you guys tell me what to do before I end up losing my current account?

 

[Roger]

This caught me completely by surprise and shock. I have no idea what to do or if I have start up a new account all over again over the new server.


Can any of you guys tell me what to do before I end up losing my current account?

You'll have the same account.

 

[Lex]

Excited! Hope it all goes well and looking forward to the new forums!

If you need any normal users around to test things btw before going completely live, I should be around.

This will probably be helpful, I might pop you a link when it's up

 

[Fangu]

I'M ORANGE

also my username is gone

hahaha this is great xD

 

[Tashasaurous]

This caught me completely by surprise and shock. I have no idea what to do or if I have start up a new account all over again over the new server.


Can any of you guys tell me what to do before I end up losing my current account?

You'll have the same account.

Okay, but, do I have to go somewhere else in order to access it or is the style of the forums changing? I haven't really checked. Sorry.

 

[Cthulhu]

After the migration you'll be able to log in with your existing account; none of your posts will be lost, your PMs will remain, etc. Nothing to worry about.

The look and feel of the site will change though. Check out https://thelifestream.net/xforums/ for a preview, you should be able to log in with your current account details there as well.

 

[Lex]

I'M ORANGE

also my username is gone

hahaha this is great xD

OMG fangu that text post colour, NOSTALGIA.

 

[Tashasaurous]

After the migration you'll be able to log in with your existing account; none of your posts will be lost, your PMs will remain, etc. Nothing to worry about.

The look and feel of the site will change though. Check out https://thelifestream.net/xforums/ for a preview, you should be able to log in with your current account details there as well.

I managed to do that and well, I'll get used to it. It'll take a while, though.

 

[T@ctic]

so when the migration is done, we will be given a new site or will it be automatically redirected when we go this url?

 

[Strangelove]

RIP my special spooky goth user group

right this wrong now