How do I get to all my old pmails/photos/notifications?

[da9000]

Let me start off by saying: thanks for running Amiga.org!

As everyone, naturally, I don't like change, but I'll wait to see how I feel about it in the long run. I know the old software was missing a lot of features, and this has some extra, but surely they aren't all equally important.

Having said that, we now get to the meat of the post: since the site has changed, I've lost a few important items which I couldn't save off because it wasn't clear as to when the switch was happening and all that. Can we get access to the below?


1) ALL the old pmails? (even if they're in a raw dump)

2) Our uploaded photos?

3) Our post notification/bookmark selections? (I used to bookmark interesting threads so I could quickly search for them, later, in one page)


Lastly, it might be a good idea to keep a version of the old forums (like other vintage sites have done), so that links from other web sites still work (and change the new forums to use amiga.org/newforums/ as the base path)

[Argo]

Thanks.

1. The last 100 newest should have been migrated over with a script by Karlos. I assume your missing them.

2. Working on it. We have a photo gallery installed. Just working on how to migrate over the photo data. I know Wayne posted about this today.

3. Gone. Different notificaton system and bookmarks rely on the URL, which under new software is going to be different. Sorry, not much can be done about that. You can try searching and bookmarking. All forum posts have been migrated over since day one.

Lastly, we can't. As has been mentioned numerous times. The reason for the change is due to the PHP scripting engine which runs Xoops and vBulletin plus other web software packages. The version of Xoops we were using used PHP4 and would not run under the new PHP5, which has been out for a few year now. PHP4 been succeeded by PHP5 is not no longer supported by the PHP team. Thus webhosts are dropping support for it as any further issue found with it will not be fixed. So, there is really no where to run the old site even for archival purposes. But the date is being migrated over. We just ran up against the wall being the deadline when out host will drop PHP4.
So, a minor inconveinice in not being readily able to access infomation you have bookmarked.  Upside is the data will be here eventually. Please be patient.

also, read our ever growning FAQ.
http://www.amiga.org/forums/faq.php

[da9000]

Thank you and everyone for all the effort. And for the quick and thorough reply.

1. The last 100 newest should have been migrated over with a script by Karlos. I assume your missing them.

I think the cut-off was/is 250 (in other words I had 247 transferred over). Is it possible to get all the ones I had or at least raise the maximum a bit? (like say 300? I will try to stay below it, I promise :-) ) If we can't raise the max, then at least I'd like to get those old PMs and save them someplace for reference.

2. Working on it. We have a photo gallery installed. Just working on how to migrate over the photo data. I know Wayne posted about this today.

Sounds good. There are too many threads/emails so it's not easy for everyone to be up to date.

3. Gone. Different notification system and bookmarks rely on the URL, which under new software is going to be different. Sorry, not much can be done about that. You can try searching and bookmarking. All forum posts have been migrated over since day one.

OK, I don't mind finding those threads again, however I will need the original list of "notification URLs" so I can search for the thread IDs, because surely I don't remember what threads I had bookmarked. Is it possible to get this information? (it should be stored in some place/file obviously)

EDIT: unfortunately I think the notification URLs won't help. The thread IDs of the old forum don't match the thread IDs of this one :-( I will need the thread subject lines. Unless there's something else that I'm missing.

EDIT: ignore last edit. I can use Google's cached pages to figure out the old thread subjects.

[Piru]

Both the CMS change and loss of private messages were announced beforehand.

[da9000]

Piru, I obviously missed these announcements due to the short time span over which the switch took place and because I've been way too busy lately to check out things daily. Do you have anything helpful/constructive to add?

[Wayne]

Let's stay civil please?  

I'd add something constructive, but I think Argo covered it all correctly (thank you).

If it's not in your mailbox, that's pretty much it I'm afraid.  As we go through and migrate different sections of old db data, it's getting cleared off in order to save space, which is quickly becoming critical (with 2 systems pretty much stored here)

Wayne

[Piru]

Piru, I obviously missed these announcements due to the short time span over which the switch took place and because I've been way too busy lately to check out things daily. Do you have anything helpful/constructive to add?

Sure, here's some more constructive stuff:

Never store anything critical (pictures, music, video, messages, any kind of text documents or mail, specifically anything you've created yourself and have no way of obtaining elsewhere) on a remote website or forum only. Always keep local backups, at least two physically separate locations (can be two different HDDs, but preferably should be on a separate physical location, too, in case of a fire, flood or other local catastrophe). You cannot trust some remote site to keep your data safe, as there is always a possibility of a catastrophic data loss due to HW failure, the site being pwned or some other unforseen reason (such as a company pulling the plug due to financial reasons).

Check the validity of your backups periodically, and make sure you can actually restore the data, too.

[da9000]

@Piru:
It's funny how snide remarks are taken for signs of intelligence these days.

What you wrote is neither helpful nor constructive, because simply: I already know that information and it doesn't help solve my problem which happens to be post-facto regarding the migration. For whatever reason what happened, happened. What can you do or say that will actually have a positive material difference in my current situation?

Anyhow, none of the above cases you mentioned took place. The data is still existent, just not available due to changes in interface/configuration. Furthermore the previous system didn't offer any exporting functionality, so if you wanted to keep a pmail you'd have to copy and paste the text, which beyond arduous, if I recall correctly weren't even complete (containing detail headers, the sent messages, etc. like emails).

Oh, and most importantly: anyone servicing thousands clients, for free or not, ought to keep backups too. So if the data's gone, that is a primarily failure of the service provider. And let's not start with this is a free service and all that mumbojumbo, because as everyone understands a forum is nothing without content and content is added by the members, therefore it's not a "one way" service. It's an ecosystem.


@Wayne:
If the data is around, would it be possible to get a raw dump of them? At the very least the pmails. Who can help me here? Pmails are theoretically text only and couldn't be possibly taking that much space. The photos I have on my disks as that's where they originated, but pmails didn't.

[the_leander]

PMs: If they're not there now, chances are thats that.

Photo galleries are being worked on.

[zipper]

PMs: If they're not there now, chances are thats that.

Seems to be there.

[Karlos]

If you had more than 100 private messages at the time of the import, only your most recent 100 remain. This limit was considered to be sufficient for the vast majority of users.

If you had any private messages from users that were deleted, they were not imported as it is never a good idea to flood a new database with broken relational links.

The old gallery data still exists and an import solution for the new gallery is being worked on.

[da9000]

If 100 was the cut off then how come I saw 247 transferred over?

Once again, is the data somewhere or some disk? Can I have a raw dump of those pmails emailed to me? I don't know what my user id was, but I'm sure it won't be hard to find out.

Thanks in advance.

[Karlos]

If 100 was the cut off then how come I saw 247 transferred over?

Once again, is the data somewhere or some disk? Can I have a raw dump of those pmails emailed to me? I don't know what my user id was, but I'm sure it won't be hard to find out.

Thanks in advance.

I can only assume the import was run a second time when the site was formally transferred to vbulletin. The original import limit was set to 100.

As for a raw dump, that's not up to me. However, I don't think it's likely. If you make an exception for one, then you can't refuse the next. There are 6000 odd users. I'm sure Wayne has a lot better things to do than manually make database dumps on a per user basis for anybody asking.

[da9000]

Sorry but I don't know how the importing and transfer all works as I've never played with forum software, even though I do software, but if it was run one more time (in order to get over 100), is it possible to have it be run yet one more time to get all of them?

If not, is the database still around? Or are there multiple databases/files for each user?

Thanks in advance for the explanations.

[cecilia]

3) Our post notification/bookmark selections? (I used to bookmark interesting threads so I could quickly search for them, later, in one page)

what I did was go to my Notification page and made a mht copy of it so I would have  all the titles of my links. I planned on doing a search (when I have NOTHING to do, haha) to make new "subscriptions" in this new board.

and i stated this in one of the threads that this was discussed before the change.

sorry you didn't catch it