colinpearce wrote:Is it not possible to export all the old data to say Excel, then rearrange/manipulate the fields/data to suit phpbb then import?
Sue has worked hard on the galleries and boat specs to get all of them into the new site.
The "Performance" details giving feedback from members of how fast certain engines were with certain boats could be exported into something, but I don't think I set the format up very well when I created that page on the original site. Although it contained lots of input from the members, I didn't structure it rigidly enough to make the data as useful as it could have been. Each report really needed to force the user to input the engine size, boat size, weather conditions, and how many people and how much gear/fuel was carried. I think it might be a good idea (IMVHO
) if a new facility was started on that basis. I could provide load the original data into some sort of table to start it off with something though.
The task of exporting/importing the actual forum postings is much more difficult though (because of me again
).
When I started the site, free PHP forum software hadn't been invented, unlike the excellent scope that there is today. I therefore cobbled together the basic functionality with raw ASP code, and invented a relational way of linking the posting records into "related" threads. If anyone remembers the phrase "Heath Robinson", then they'll know what I mean. Consequently it would take an absolute SQL genius (and some luck) to import them into the now standard PHP forum data format.
What we have done though, is to streamline the original forum page on the old site, with no loss of data, so that anything that was previously available is still there, and is just as free text searchable and quickly retrievable. The facility to reply, edit or start new posts has been disabled, so that any new content comes to this site.
That code runs on ASP, rather than PHP, so can't be incorporated here, but I will leave that page of the original site running for several years, or for at least as long as the new Association wants me too.
If anyone finds this new site bewildering at the moment, try using this link to access it on a regular basis, it displays a list of only the topics that have been recently discussed or added, from all of the individual sections of the site, so it's easy to keep up to date with what's happening:
search.php?search_id=active_topics