Growing Forum needs?

[abishur]

With the forum growing I was wondering if it would be possible to create a "sticky thread" or two and if it would possible for us to edit it directly (I'd prefer to not make any more work for the r-pi team).

The first would be a "introduce yourself" thread (something that pretty common in forums I've found)

The second would be a "read before posting" sort of thing. I doubt we need any kind play nice rules, but a page were we could answer the most common questions that are being asked (a get to know the r-pi sort of page) would be very helpful to new comers. I doubt anyone wants to wade through every comment to find the odd bit of information they desire (even more so as the forum continues to grow)

[ukscone]

personally i'd just like the forum to work with regard to new posts icons and pm and stuff liek that. i have feeling that maybe we need a fullblown forum rather than the wordpress "plugin" that it currently is.

but still can't complain at least we have a forum but i do second abishur's comments

[liz]

This all sounds pretty sensible to me (you can blame Eben for the choice of what is basically a WP plugin for the forum!) - thing is, I'd be very keen to keep the threads we have here already on whatever forum we changed to, and people are already signed up here with usernames and so forth, so moving will doubtless piss lots of users off. Does anyone here have any experience of importing logins, threads and so on to a more substantial forum from MingleForum? Suggestions for what software we should use are also welcome.

If any of you lot fancy writing some Python script to import the data from this forum to something a bit beefier, I'll be eternally grateful and might even have a *small gift* for you in, say, around November!

[abishur]

aw I wish I knew how to do it

[ukscone]

Quote from liz on August 3, 2011, 20:35
This all sounds pretty sensible to me (you can blame Eben for the choice of what is basically a WP plugin for the forum!) - thing is, I'd be very keen to keep the threads we have here already on whatever forum we changed to, and people are already signed up here with usernames and so forth, so moving will doubtless piss lots of users off. Does anyone here have any experience of importing logins, threads and so on to a more substantial forum from MingleForum? Suggestions for what software we should use are also welcome.

If any of you lot fancy writing some Python script to import the data from this forum to something a bit beefier, I'll be eternally grateful and might even have a *small gift* for you in, say, around November!

Probably couldn't write you a python script but i could probably knock something up in Euphoria or lua (this site is on a linux box?) although not for a couple of days unfortunatly as i'm to paraphrase the words of the great DNA "watching deadlines go wheeeeeee over my head" so really do need to finish up a couple of projects but if someone else hasn't done it by the time i get to it i'll raise my hand for that task

[liz]

Ha! You think you've got deadlines! I am laughing bitterly into my hand. (Volunteering for RP means I'm working two jobs at once. My sentiments on this are much like those of Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon.)

[ukscone]

Quote from liz on August 3, 2011, 21:00
Ha! You think you've got deadlines! I am laughing bitterly into my hand. (Volunteering for RP means I'm working two jobs at once. My sentiments on this are much like those of Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon.)

but heh i laugh at your puny two jobs I have 5 going on at the moment (two of which were due 3 months ago and i haven't actually started and the deadline of dealines is monday when they have to go live ) plus S.W.M.B.O. volunteered me to fix 3 of her work collegues laptops this week and they are all mucked up three ways to sunday

[abishur]

Okay this wordpress plugin allows you to export users to a csv

And this phpbb addon lets you take a csv and create user accounts

I'll see what I can find about exporting threads and re-importing them into phpbb

[ukscone]

Quote from abishur on August 3, 2011, 21:09
Okay this wordpress plugin allows you to export users to a csv

And this phpbb addon lets you take a csv and create user accounts

I'll see what I can find about exporting threads and re-importing them into phpbb

darn. but good find

[abishur]

I haven't found any direct information per se on transferring the forums over, but unless I'm mistaken, the mingleforum is built on top of wordpress (more or less) and uses a sql database to store all information on posts.

I know that the phpbb database uses the fields found here

And I would imagine the wordpress database would use the fields in the table wp_posts shown toward the top left of this photo. Is that right, or does the mingleforum plugin create it's own special table for the database?

[liz]

I've found a plugin (which won't upload at the moment because we're out of quota space - I'll get that fixed tomorrow) which will allow you all to send PMs. Once we've got stickies and PMs, I'm thinking we'll have everything we need.

[MDC]

[abishur]

Quote from liz on August 3, 2011, 22:11
Once we've got stickies and PMs, I'm thinking we'll have everything we need.

I certainly can't think of anything else I use in a forum. Which hey, no more worries about migrating! No sense re-inventing the wheel if this works right?

[ukscone]

Quote from abishur on August 3, 2011, 22:19
Quote from liz on August 3, 2011, 22:11
Once we've got stickies and PMs, I'm thinking we'll have everything we need.

I certainly can't think of anything else I use in a forum. Which hey, no more worries about migrating! No sense re-inventing the wheel if this works right?

yup no sense in making more work if we don't need too for the time being

[ShiftPlusOne]

Quote from abishur on August 3, 2011, 22:19
Quote from liz on August 3, 2011, 22:11
Once we've got stickies and PMs, I'm thinking we'll have everything we need.

I certainly can't think of anything else I use in a forum. Which hey, no more worries about migrating! No sense re-inventing the wheel if this works right?

Shush, you! This mingle thing is awful. >=/

[abishur]

really? It's doesn't seem too different from other forums I've been on. A different layout sure, but as far as functions go... seems pretty similar

[ShiftPlusOne]

The thing that annoys me about it is that it doesn't track read posts properly and it doesn't always go to the last unread post when you open a thread. phpBB would be great.

[liz]

Just to let you all know where we are on this: I'm meaning to add a plugin to allow you to PM each other, but we're out of quota space and the support ticket I put in with our hosts this morning hasn't been picked up yet. (This is also preventing me from blogging about the logo competition, so boot up your graphics packages.) PMs are right at the top of the big list o' things to do - I want to PM quite a few of you myself!

[AmyS3]

hmm if you need i have around 1gb webspace and a database on my domain which you could use..
just redirect and done..
im wondering how you guys could run out of webspace anyway since the website is not realy big...
well but i dont know what stuff is on the webspace which we can´t see..

[ShiftPlusOne]

I have a linode VPS which is going to waste right now... I'd gladly donate it. If you don't have the time to manage and maintain it, I'd volunteer for that too. 'course you'd have root access.
XEN
Disk space: 40960 MB
Transfer/mo: 400 GB
RAM: 1GB
Location: Fremont

[liz]

PMs are now activated. PM yourselves silly!