VaBeach_Guy

That's what I figured, and no, I don't have database access. We're trying to get the database, and were initially told that we'd be given it, but so far no word on actually getting it. It's not the end of the world, of course. We just hate to lose so much forum 'history', so I'm looking into every possibility.

Hi everyone. I've posted a couple of times explaining that a major sports franchise is doing away with its message board. The members of that board and I have created a new forum to take its place, and are in the process of 'ramping up'. The old forum will still be around for about a week, so it gives everyone time to get the news and move to the new forum. The team has shown a willingness to give us the old database, if all member data (not including posts), is deleted. But it's nearly a week since they said that, and we haven't gotten any word from them on the transfer, since then. So I'm going to go under the assumption that it won't happen. That said, there's a few threads that we'd really like to preserve. I've made some archive.org archives, so as a last resort, they do still exist there. But some of the threads are a few thousand pages long, Archiving that much in such little time is impossible (as far as I know). Is there a way to export threads from one forum and import them into another from the ACP? We don't have database access, but we do have ACP access. Or is there another method 'out there' like Archive.org where we could set it to archive an entire thread? Any other ideas that might help? We have until the 30th (at 5 PM Eastern US time) to salvage anything that we want to save.

I'm just getting up and running on the latest version, so I'm still working out some of the little bugs. I've noticed that whenever someone sends a PM, there's a double notification. One on the Notification Bell and one on the Message envelope. Is there a setting to stop it from giving the dual notifications? Just a notification on the envelope is enough.

Privacy concerns, apparently their legal department required it. The thing with sending out an email to see if everyone's ok with it is that they (the team) has had this iteration of their message board going since 2003. So there's a lot of inactive members, but there's the possibility that some of those inactive members would object and there may be no way to get their approval before April 30th. The board with over 10 Million posts, will have to become an 'archived' board. It'll be moved to a host that I pay for, and it'll be in my name. But registrations and posting will be frozen in time... but preserved. A new board will pick up where the old one left off though, and everyone will have to register anew and build a new posting history on the active, new board.

That's exactly how I wanted it to appear. I showed your explanation to an Admin there and he did a test, to make sure of how to do it, and it worked perfectly. I just don't know how quickly 250,000 or so members will purge lol. It sucks that we have to do it that way, but I completely understand the privacy issues that come up if it isn't done.

That's great! I'll see about doing that immediately... well, as soon as the replacement forum is ready. Doing that will allow preservation of the post history, correct? That would defeat the purpose, otherwise lol. I don't think the team has updated the board in a little while, I think they're currently using 4.3.6, but I could have them upgrade to the latest version if need be, if 4.3.6 doesn't have that capability. Thanks again for explaining that, it's been multiple years since I've fooled around in an ACP and back then, I think it was something like version 3.something. So it's been a while.

Yeah, I'm no SQL expert (to say it mildly), I don't have access to the database anyway, I'd have to request that and likely be told no. Deleting the entire membership one member at a time in the ACP would be a very long and tedious process. More time than is left to get it done in, so it may be a lost cause unless I can convince them to some special arrangement that would keep it available for an extra month and they let me pay the cost of keeping it available but they retain ownership while I (and a few of the board admins) get the work done to their satisfaction. I was hoping that there might be an easier, quicker process, though.

That was what I thought too, but wasn't sure. If those tables are purged and the member list is blanked out, would the board be 'broken' and give an error or would all posts be there and readable? Also, it's been a while since I've messed around in the ACP, can the purge be done from within the ACP? Getting access to phpMyAdmin might not be possible.

Hello all, this may seem like an odd thing to want to do, but I need to be able to purge all members (quickly and easily), while keeping all posts intact from a message board that has upwards of 250,000 members and maybe upwards of 10,000,000 posts. The reason for this is because a major sports franchise is discontinuing their message board at the end of this month and they've agreed to hand the database over to me, but only if all users are purged first (privacy concerns). We (the existing community), want to at least preserve the board history (posts), even if all user accounts are purged. We're forming a new privately owned community to carry on, but would really like to preserve 20 years worth of community history it possible. Any ideas on how this can be done? Our deadline is ticking away.

Will this also work to purge the entire membership and start from scratch? Believe it or not, this is something that I need to do. I am being given a large message board's database, but only if all user accounts are first purged. All posts and history can remain, but the members have to re-join when I get the new location squared away. I'm looking for an easy way to do this.