After being active on the Node-RED forum for the last few weeks, I have been very impressed with Discourse, and my eyes have been opened.
https://www.discourse.org/
but not the paid /hosted offering, but using the open distribution:
https://github.com/discourse/discourse
Soon, I will build everything (in a test bed) and attempt to port our core database over to discourse (for testing only).
I am also considering paying around $1000 to $1500 to have a professional who has done this before do the migration; but I need to try it myself first to see if it is better for me to do it myself, or pay to have it done.
I think, seriously, it is time to 'retire' the legacy vBulletin code base and "move on"....
In the past i participated sometimes at Monitoring Portal . They changed to discourse 1-2 years ago. The usability seems fine for me. Since discourse is based on ruby on rails(RoR), the resource requirements are higher than the php based vbulletin. I had never run discourse on my own so far. I just had a quick look when searching for a forum solution, and discarded it, because it would have required a newer stronger machine. (Statement of a former programmer-colleague on ruby on rails: "i do not care about memory - developer time is far more costly.").
I had a glance at nodebb, which was very quick in terms of response times. I liked that very much. Home | XCP-ng forum is based on NodeBB. NodeBB is based on Node.js.
phpBB has gotten another major rewrite with version 3.3. I used it as an internal communication board(version 3.2). The administration felt very awful back then. then Since it's fully OSS maybe they constantly improve over time?
I like discourse, that is why I decided to go with it (testing, migration testing, etc). No verdict on production, since porting the DB over is fraught with dragons and goblins....
In addition, had a chat with the mods, and both Akshay and Ravinder are on board.
Ravinder loves the features as well how discourse runs on mobile (very important).
Akshay likes as well.
Currently, we are working on building test bed using Docker on a VPS.
Regarding performance, I have been on the Node-RED forum a lot lately (maybe good much), which is discourse, and is it blazing fast.
I think one of the main reasons I like the Node-RED forum, besides a robust Node-RED community, is the fact that discourse is so good and fun to use.
There has not been another forum which has brought be to this "retire old vBulletin" except discourse.
Of course, we can customize discourse as well.... which we will do for sure! That is a given... custom code.
Just upgraded the test bed slice from 2GB to 8GB and increase RAM and quadrupled the CPU power and disk space (was getting tight)..... Hopefully it will chug along every faster.
8 GB 4 Cores 160 GB SSD 5 TB 40 Gbps 5000 Mbps
This server is only for migration and test purposes.
Let's see how it progresses......
IF (and that is a BIG IF at this time) and the migration goes well, will consider the next steps, for example, where to host the docker image, etc. But I don't want to get ahead of the tips of my skis since we have no idea how the migration will go.
I may also consider porting over the legacy user avatars.... not sure about this yet.
importing children categories...
Traceback (most recent call last):
5: from script/import_scripts/vbulletin.rb:942:in `<main>'
4: from /var/www/discourse/script/import_scripts/base.rb:47:in `perform'
3: from script/import_scripts/vbulletin.rb:84:in `execute'
2: from script/import_scripts/vbulletin.rb:287:in `import_categories'
1: from script/import_scripts/vbulletin.rb:287:in `each'
script/import_scripts/vbulletin.rb:289:in `block in import_categories': undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)
Workaround (temporary?); Commented out this "buggy section" with :
The CODE and ICODE tags seems to not be ported into discourse.
The "not parent" categories of forums (child forums) are not getting moved into the new DB and case an "error".
So, current way ahead is looking like:
Continue to let the migration process run until finished.
Study the results and at least do the following:
Move avatars to the DUMPED DB before DUMPING, so the AVATARS will port (maybe).
DUMP the Forum DB again.
Do a search and replace in the DB (DUMPED VERSION) and change all CODE tags to ``` (markdown three back ticks).
Ditto for the ICODE tags, convert the all to ``` for markdown ; but I am not sure 100% this will work, but we can try.
Change all forums to "parent, top level forums" in the DUMPED DB, so we I import again, they will work (not be children to parents).
Something like that.....
Looks like the CODE tags are just getting stripped out of the migration. Need to confirm when we get back up to 2019 / 2020 time frame. Right now the migrations is in the 2009 time frame.
This is what is looks like so far..... take lessons learned from this migration, make adjustments, and do it again.
Looks like the CODE tags are migrating OK, better than I thought looking at the earlier results... that is a big (and very good) surprise. I am however seeing other BBCODE tags not working (some custom and some basic) but at least they are being transferred and not stripped out, so we can deal with this easy enough later. This is very encouraging.
During topics / threads migration, there were a few errors
201290 / 240477 ( 83.7%) [412 items/min] Exception while creating post thread-243715. Skipping......
201308 / 240477 ( 83.7%) [411 items/min] Exception while creating post thread-243734. Skipping. .............
201335 / 240477 ( 83.7%) [411 items/min] Exception while creating post thread-243762. Skipping............
But will need to run the migration again from scratch (or learn how to rake or otherwise modify the DB in discourse) after I figure out all the custom Ruby code I need to add to the migration script.
However, I'm learning Ruby a little bit now, something I never thought I would every do.
To me perfectly honest, this is actually pretty easy to do (technically speaking), and I think I can easily improve and customize this migration script with a few iterations.
Reported bug in the vbulletin.rb script at meta discourse but will not post any more bugs regarding vB3.8.X migration to discourse over there.
Back to working on the migration.
Also, I am also considering to keep both forums up and running and leave this one at www.unix.com and keep the discourse.unix.com forum separate. Need to think about this and how it might hurt SEO for one site or the other in the future..
I compared the "forums which ported to categories" against "forums which did not port to discourse categories" and the forums "which did not port" all had a parentid of -1 ,
So, I think this can be fixed by altering the "dumped DB" and changing all forum parentid to -1 .
I will do this as a part of "round 2" after this migration test is done.
def import_categories
puts "", "importing top level categories..."
categories = mysql_query("SELECT forumid, title, description, displayorder, parentid FROM #{TABLE_PREFIX}forum ORDER BY forumid").to_a
top_level_categories = categories.select { |c| c["parentid"] > -1 }
create_categories(top_level_categories) do |category|
{
id: category["forumid"],
name: @htmlentities.decode(category["title"]).strip,
position: category["displayorder"],
description: @htmlentities.decode(category["description"]).strip
}
end
puts "", "importing children categories..."
children_categories = categories.select { |c| c["parentid"] != -1 }
top_level_category_ids = Set.new(top_level_categories.map { |c| c["forumid"] })
# cut down the tree to only 2 levels of categories
children_categories.each do |cc|
while !top_level_category_ids.include?(cc["parentid"])
cc["parentid"] = categories.detect { |c| c["forumid"] == cc["parentid"] }["parentid"]
end
end
create_categories(children_categories) do |category|
{
id: category["forumid"],
name: @htmlentities.decode(category["title"]).strip,
position: category["displayorder"],
description: @htmlentities.decode(category["description"]).strip,
parent_category_id: category_id_from_imported_category_id(category["parentid"])
}
end
end
On work around I have which am looking at is to just rerun this script with a small change, making all categories top level for now:
top_level_categories = categories.select { |c| c["parentid"] > -2}. # make all forums top-level categories
create_categories(top_level_categories) do |category|
{
id: category["forumid"],
name: @htmlentities.decode(category["title"]).strip,
position: category["displayorder"],
description: @htmlentities.decode(category["description"]).strip
}
end
and "false out"
if false
children_categories = categories.select { |c| c["parentid"] != -1 }
top_level_category_ids = Set.new(top_level_categories.map { |c| c["forumid"] })
# cut down the tree to only 2 levels of categories
children_categories.each do |cc|
while !top_level_category_ids.include?(cc["parentid"])
cc["parentid"] = categories.detect { |c| c["forumid"] == cc["parentid"] }["parentid"]
end
end
create_categories(children_categories) do |category|
{
id: category["forumid"],
name: @htmlentities.decode(category["title"]).strip,
position: category["displayorder"],
description: @htmlentities.decode(category["description"]).strip,
parent_category_id: category_id_from_imported_category_id(category["parentid"])
}
end
end
I'm fairly confident now that, after the first "test migration" if over (in a day or so) , I can make this port work nicely with some simple modifications to the Ruby import script in the area of:
Forums to Categories
Custom BB Code Tags
Now, waiting for all the posts / replies to import and then the attachments.
I think there is a potential problem with attachment, so after it is all "done" in this test round, I will have info info to make more adjustments in the Ruby migration script.
Plus, I get to learn a bit of "Ruby" along the way.
The only "cautionary" comment I have so far is that of the two people on the "discourse side of the house" I have interacted with so far, both "had their hands out" looking to make money off this migration. One guy was a hired gun "migration expert" who wanted money to help me and the other person was in the discourse forums, the other was a discourse server provider.
This jives with some of the posts I have read which stated that discourse was free and the developers and other make a lot of money on associated hosting and services.
That's a lot different than the Node-RED community I have been interacting with where both Node-RED is free and the community is a robust, friendly group of "makers" all showing off their skills and talents and sometimes over-projecting their skills to attract attention; but they are truly helpful to all, especially noobs.
Discourse, on the other hand, seems to want to steer noobs to paid services.
That is not a big negative; as everyone has a right to make a living; and I heard the owners of Discourse make a fortune.
