Start Fresh?

Guys I would be happy to donate a Xenforo license and port all the content and users to the new setup. XF is one of the most solid forum softwares around. I have been doing web development for about 20 years now. That is easier than making a video game for sure.

I think a modern system would definitely help.

Edit:
I can…

  • Port site and retain working forum links (including google results) and profiles
  • Setup reward/medal system
  • Setup Latest showcase games
  • Create dedicated homepage
  • Add request/feature here

I would recommend checking out Xenforo forum software. It’s so fast that giant forums use it, like GameSpot.

Support is there for it, but it’s not been configured yet. There are a few auth services available. It’s on the list of things to do. The priority was to get a working forum available for people to view and comment on. There needs to be a decision at some point that this will be the way to go.

What is the issue with JOGL and LWJGL?

Don’t think there is an issue, JOGL has their own forums and they like you to go there, LWJGL have their own forums too but they want to move here.

With xenforo don’t you need to renew the license every year ($55)?

I have no comments really on the software as I had never heard of it before today, the game spot forums looks like most other forums but the big difference being that you pay for it.

Anyway, I’d like to have them together under one unique place, but this is up to gouessej and sven. Last time I bring up the subject, years ago, it was a sharp no from them.

Sadly, I don’t think anything has changed

Latest update :

  • I uploaded the banner from this site and favicon.ico
  • URL redirects now work

Use the below as an example

change to (the temporary url for testing to emulate the issue)

it changes automatically to

Next steps are to look at

  • setting up email so people can create accounts
  • setting up other authenticion methods other than email (like gmail)
  • fix some of the issues with image and youtube on message migration

Latest update :

  • I have email working, using Gmail SMTP. I’ve tested with a new account and it worked. Gmail limits to sending 100 emails a day.

  • fixed the issue of images displaying as links when imported. Turned out to not be an issue on import but rather needed another command to run to fix things in discourse. I noticed that by editting a post and saving with no changes resolved the issue.

  • I set up Oauth using the Gmail account I created but you need to get approval from Google to do this (I have a request pending). For any eventual migration we would need to use the existing settings as they are tied to java-gaming domain.

@riven - does the current setup meet all your conditions?

@everyone_else - over to you to make a decision on whether the discourse solution is they way you want to go.

I’m done on my part as things stand, don’t think there is much else to do for this proof of concept.

One more thing I forgot to add, discourse doesn’t come with a captcha system. People instead are encouraged to use

So this would need to installed at some point

It looks good, I’m on it

It’s looking great. The only main reasons to try Flarum apart from Discourse are the stack (Discourse is based on Ruby) and the memory limits. Great job @abcdef.

There are a few minor changes required with this. The logo is still the discourse logo on the discussion pages, scroll down a bit and you’ll see that.

We need a way to map the medals to Discourse’s likes.

Other than these, it’s great. I never knew it could import the old SMF schemas too. By the way, how did you set up the redirection? I’d like to learn.

It seems to give 200 instead of 301. Are we planning to add a new URL format to support?

EDIT: It is indeed giving 301. Postman is set to follow redirects by default so it worked for me.

To redirect I just added this to the nginx conf file.

location /topics/ {
rewrite ^/topics/([^/])/.$ /t/$1/ permanent;
return 403;
}

Docker has a template file you can add this too so it is persistent on container rebuilds.

The logo issue you mentioned just needs an image to replace it, there is a place in the admin settings to set the logo.

For the likes, likes are imported as part of the process so we just need @riven to import the medal data in to the likes table. I’m on my mobile at the moment so I can’t check if this was somehow incorporated in to the data dump that was available.

Please don’t talk about that here, it’s exactly the kind of discussion that we mustn’t have here, I assume that even Riven would agree with me but obviously he should feel free to contradict me if necessary.

I was doing some experimenting today on a few things. Doing a brand new import to reset everything. Import is running again now so users and post will appear over the next number of hours

@riven - any comments?

Seems like you guys got the ball rolling, if you need anything, please let me know. I’ll be here occasionally.

So… what’s the status.

Cas :slight_smile:

@riven - here is a list of things that would be useful

  • you had a list of criteria for any migration to happen, has this been met in your eyes?
  • what involvement do you want in the site post any migration?
  • what are the Google Oauth credentials linked to (ie which Gmail id)? Are you willing to hand these over?
  • if you don’t want to be involved are you happy to hand over the hostname? For me to create Google Oauth I need to have access to the domain DNS record and add in proof that I am affiliated to it (it would also be easier if the hostname had to change)
  • your test data set didn’t have any like data in it, is it possible to get this? Subsequently is it easy to export your appreciates in to likes?
  • can you provide all the image files you have?
  • if you want to answer these privately please drop me a message, maybe we can email offline

Separately this is the remaining item on the migrate list

  • enhance the rewrite rule to include URLs with the post id in, those can’t be re written to point to a specific post in a topic but it can be converted to the new topic
  • need to sign up for an anti spam service, no capatchas for discourse.

@everyone else

  • Any takers for being an admin?
  • who wants to help out?
  • are you happy for the migration to take place
  • when should any migration happen?
  • should we re organise the categories post migration?

As mentioned before on the Discord, it would seem to me to be the best option if you yourself and Cas would share that position for now.

One who has shown to be up to the task from a technical point of view, and one whose face the people know* and who is actually involved in the relevant industry.

*metaphorically, obviously.

wow, I miss all this discussion, let’s move to new platform :smiley:

I’m perpetually busy so I’m only volunteering lip service to server maintenance chores and things that generally require money. I would prefer to leave the administration of the software stack to someone else more competent.

Cas :slight_smile: