RobS said:
A migration to a new forum software worries me in the event you lose posts or data gets corrupted or whatever.
I'd rather just keep the lackluster search function if it meant preserving the database with years of posts.
SMF isn't all that bad. It's miles better than Tapatalk.
You wound me sir; I am renowned for my ability to migrate anything no matter how obscure. I once migrated a non-profit's computer system from an ancient IBM AS/400 to a modern web shopping cart system integrated with Quickbooks (which was actually sad; personally, I liked the AS/400 better and would rather have kept one in service, perhaps upgraded to a newer IBM system running i5/OS, the successor to OS/400; OS/400 is kind of fun in that it's like a mainframe but is actually easy to use). That was a major headache which required extensive automation and coordination with the retired systems programmer on the AS/400, as well as testing on a separate AS/400 in my lab. The AS/400 does not use ASCII to store character codes if memory serves, although it supports exports to ASCII, and there is also a difference in endianness, so basically the trick was to get it to dump its built in database into a text file a modern server could read. Which we could have done easily on i5/OS, but again, you're talking non-profits, and there is no way they would have had the $50,000 needed to buy a new System I machine running i5/OS (our consulting fee, which was considerable, was a bargain in comparison).
Compared to that, in fact, compared to everything, migrations between forum systems are ridiculously easy, and people who screw them up are amateurs and n00bs who have no idea what they are doing. In our case, if we upgrade the software platform, and we're going to have to, because the current platform is fundamentally defective and the patches I have made to protect against security holes are the software equivalent of duct tape, and the system remains fragile, we will of course fully script the migration process so that an automated program will backup the database and then import a copy of that backup into the new system, running on a different server, completely isolated from the production system. That server will then be evaluated to ensure the backup was a success and no data was lost, and in particular, that things like people's avatars, images they have uploaded, and special characters such as one finds in the foreign languages section, were properly migrated. If the script made any mistakes, they will be rectified, and the process will be repeated until we can prove that the migration script works. Then we will switch over to the new software, but we will keep the server running the old software so if the users discover the new software is doing something wrong, we can make an emergency revert. To use a cliche I find terribly amusing, "this is not my first rodeo."
By the way, I would that I could regale you with details of our new production system. It's one of the sexiest server systems I've implemented in terms of its elegance and integrated remote monitoring functionality, but alas, confidentiality and all that. But suffice it to say, the system has been thrilling to implement and just basking in its excellence makes me feel like a UNIX god. I wish Brian Kernighan could see it. I think he would approve of the elegance of its implementation. The only way it could possibly be more awesome would be if I had used the Plan 9 operating system, but alas, there are no widely used Internet forums compatible with Plan9, which is a pity, because Plan9's Venti storage system would be perfect for such an application.
At any rate, rest assured, we won't be using Tapatalk, or any platform worse than SMF, and I have seen a few. There are some specific platforms which we will be evaluating which are fairly vastly superior to SMF, and there is a safe migration pathway to them. I can't guarantee that everyone will be happy, but there will be a consultation with the forum staff, and multiple platforms will be evaluated; I have a favored option which I have worked with in the past, but the decision will be made via consensus, and it will be made with a view towards having a greatly improved user experience.