Site Merger with Techist

I work in IT, but I'd still consider myself an amateur (probably because I break more than I fix...) :p

It seems like a nice forum with nice people to be honest, I've recently registered there as "cb600fshornet", and I haven't seen an argument yet...
 
setishock
Golden Master
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: ....
Posts: 9,328

It's taken 10 years to get to 9328 posts. There was an incident a while back where members got the post counts scrubbed off. Somebody hit the recalculate post counts button in the admin control panel. A lot of members post counts are not a true reflection of what all they have posted. Some one got careless. I'm short about 300 posts.

My understanding of VB is some times when databases are merged not all of the member data ports over. I've read a lot of horror stories over at VB.org where that happened. And unless you have a backup you had to rebuild the post counts by hand.
If that happens it will be for sure goodbye. I've stuck it out here for 10 years and would not put up with that for one nano second.

The logical course of action is to make copies of both forums and put then on a non public test server. Test the merger process to see how it goes along and how it comes out. If good then move the merged forum to the live server and point the DNS to that one. If not so good you haven't damaged the two lives forums and we can continue as is until you figure out what happened and remedy it.

If you plan to merge two live forums together, you're playing with fire. If something goes wrong, and Murphy is alive and well, trust me, it's going to be a disaster.
 
setishock
Golden Master
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: ....
Posts: 9,328

It's taken 10 years to get to 9328 posts. There was an incident a while back where members got the post counts scrubbed off. Somebody hit the recalculate post counts button in the admin control panel. A lot of members post counts are not a true reflection of what all they have posted. Some one got careless. I'm short about 300 posts.

My understanding of VB is some times when databases are merged not all of the member data ports over. I've read a lot of horror stories over at VB.org where that happened. And unless you have a backup you had to rebuild the post counts by hand.
If that happens it will be for sure goodbye. I've stuck it out here for 10 years and would not put up with that for one nano second.

The logical course of action is to make copies of both forums and put then on a non public test server. Test the merger process to see how it goes along and how it comes out. If good then move the merged forum to the live server and point the DNS to that one. If not so good you haven't damaged the two lives forums and we can continue as is until you figure out what happened and remedy it.

If you plan to merge two live forums together, you're playing with fire. If something goes wrong, and Murphy is alive and well, trust me, it's going to be a disaster.

It is my understanding that this is the plan, to merge the databases on a test server and work out the kinks there. I shudder to think of trying to merge the databases live without any kind of testing. Plus member accounts will have to be reconciled somehow as there will be duplicated names on both forums, and then we will have to merge accounts of folks who are registered both here and there. That's not even considering how the forums themselves will be merged as the two sites have similar but different layouts and such. Makes me glad it is not my job to handle it.
 
Wow quite a few "BK's" but I am the only "BK_123". Trotter I've probably said this a few times but can you tell us when we can expect this to be done and dusted? Not expecting a definite accurate answer or one at all.
 
Trotter I've probably said this a few times but can you tell us when we can expect this to be done and dusted? Not expecting a definite accurate answer or one at all.

As soon as I know something solid I will let people know.
The future of Tech-Forums - Page 5 - Techist - Tech Forum


setishock
Golden Master
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: ....
Posts: 9,328

It's taken 10 years to get to 9328 posts. There was an incident a while back where members got the post counts scrubbed off. Somebody hit the recalculate post counts button in the admin control panel. A lot of members post counts are not a true reflection of what all they have posted. Some one got careless. I'm short about 300 posts.

If you are more worried about account statistics and a number than about the communities being able to come together to help other people, then, IMO.. Better to not give my opinion on that.

My understanding of VB is some times when databases are merged not all of the member data ports over. I've read a lot of horror stories over at VB.org where that happened. And unless you have a backup you had to rebuild the post counts by hand.
If that happens it will be for sure goodbye. I've stuck it out here for 10 years and would not put up with that for one nano second.
Typical administrators that know their job keep a fresh backup of the forum before anything starts to happen in the event a worse case scenario occurs. As I said, if you are that worried about a silly number...

The logical course of action is to make copies of both forums and put then on a non public test server. Test the merger process to see how it goes along and how it comes out. If good then move the merged forum to the live server and point the DNS to that one. If not so good you haven't damaged the two lives forums and we can continue as is until you figure out what happened and remedy it.

If you plan to merge two live forums together, you're playing with fire. If something goes wrong, and Murphy is alive and well, trust me, it's going to be a disaster.
That tends to be the plan sorta... What would most likely happen is a backup of both forums is created, and put onto a test server, then they are merged, once merged and experimenting as well as potential issues found and resolved during testing the team will most likely take BOTH websites down at the same time, backup both databases, that way they have the absolute latest posts, and start the merger, using the live website. This is the only way to ensure we have the latest data, as well making sure things work, then have others check around and see if they can find anymore bugs before bringing the main website back online, at that time this community URL will start redirecting to Techist most likely.
 
Wow quite a few "BK's" but I am the only "BK_123". Trotter I've probably said this a few times but can you tell us when we can expect this to be done and dusted? Not expecting a definite accurate answer or one at all.

If I had an answer I would give it. We have fallen well behind on the original timeline that was laid out. I am hoping that it is due to the site teams working on merging everything beforehand.
 
Heh, I made a post forever ago to this thread in particular and because of a link it's under review... But I am subscribed, got that going for me I guess. >.> Le'sigh.
 
My 2cents...
I think it's a great idea. We could all use some new activity :D Good luck on all you mods/ admins, hopefully it'll work problem free :) If you need an extra hand on anything and don't have someone else, let me know.
 
Back
Top Bottom