Should we migrate away from SMF version 1?

[Seth King]

This forum is running SMF v1. It's unsupported. Outdated, and a recent security upgrade likely is the reason we lost the youtube flash plugin.

Upgrading to either SMF v2 or something like phpBB would modernize the forum, make it more robust, but also mean losing all the old posts.

Thoughts?

[Syock]

The loss of the old posts makes it seem like a huge loss to me.  Maybe I am just becoming one of those grumpy old posters that hates 50 threads on the same topic though.  If the posts can be migrated, I wouldn't care either way.   The youtube issue isn't a big deal to me.  It is an easy fix that you requested anyway since you don't use flash, just post the links. 

[SinCityVoluntaryist]

 Keeping the old content might be a good idea for new members who want to view our history of discussions. I agree, the Youtube issue really isn't that big of a deal.

[JustSayNoToStatism]

For historical reasons I like having the old posts, and I think some of them are really valuable.  We've had some good conversations here. We even have classics that we link back to all the time (Syock seems to have a very good memory).

I find it very hard to believe we have to lose all posts to upgrade. Worst case we recruit programmers here to convert the data to some intermediate representation that can be put into the new forum.

[Victor]

Yeah dude are you sure that upgrading would entail a loss of all the old posts? A glance at the smf wiki gives instructions on backing up the database. And I had a forum I ran once using phpbb and I could upgrade that without loosing old data. I'm not quite as familiar with smf, though.

If nothing else, I can use HTTrack to download a copy of the website, including the forum, and you could upload that copy to your site as an archive. I think we could then link to individual posts in that archive. We just wouldn't be able to resurrect old posts for discussion.

But I agree we definitely need access to copies of all those old posts.

[Seth King]

From the website:

Upgrading, is moving from any earlier major version of SMF, to a more recent major version, or moving from an earlier version, with mods installed, to a clean install of the same version. If you are moving from an older major version of SMF [for example 1.1.1] to a more recent incremental version [for example 1.1.2] and you have mods installed, you may consider Patching. If you want to install a Forum, from scratch, please see the instructions on Installing SMF. If you want to convert to SMF from another Forum software, please see the instructions for Converting to SMF. If you want a clean start with the same version you have now, take a look at How to upload a fresh set of files.

None of those include migrating from v1 to v2. They are essentially two completely separate forums. There are instructions on how to do so, but I tried them shortly after v2 stable was released and the migration failed miserably, so I remained at v1.

Part of the reason that I'd like to leave v1 is that it is not free software. It's gratis, but not libre. V2 is both gratis and libre software.

[Victor]

Hmm, alright. Well, in that case my vote depends on whether you make an archive available or not. If we have to loose access to the old posts completely, then I vote no, but if we can link to an archived version without being able to resurrect the old threads for new posts, then I'd be ok with it. And using free software is certainly a plus.

[Victor]

By the way, speaking of forum software, I've had trouble sometimes posting a large number of links in a single post. Is this an error with smf Seth?

[Seth King]

By the way, speaking of forum software, I've had trouble sometimes posting a large number of links in a single post. Is this an error with smf Seth?

I don't know what that's about. You shouldn't have any difficulty that I'm aware of.

[Victor]

By the way, speaking of forum software, I've had trouble sometimes posting a large number of links in a single post. Is this an error with smf Seth?

I don't know what that's about. You shouldn't have any difficulty that I'm aware of.

Hmm, alrighties. Thanks!

[JustSayNoToStatism]

If v2 is open source, the conversion should be possible.