For around a month now we have been openly discussing our intention of moving to a different forum package. Due to the amount of time which has elapsed since we first began doing so, I thought it was time to write up a post on the progress we’ve made, what stands between us and beginning the migration process, as well as what is likely to survive the migration process, and what is not.
Outright replacing our forum with another is a drastic step to take - and one of the reasons we are interesting in doing this is the comparatively limited feature set of our current forum. While the forum we are moving to has many additional features, it does not have built-in support for the forum badges included in our supporter packs. While this may sound like a single feature to implement, work on it has comprised of four distinct tasks: 1) create the supporter badges, 2) neatly integrate them into the design of the forum, 3) assign them to people as new orders come in, and, finally 4) assign them retroactively to people who have supported us in the past.
Of these tasks, we already have completed the first and third. The other two remain works in progress, which is why we have not yet begun the migration process. We can’t offer an ETA for the move just yet.
The following is expected to survive the forum migration process;
- Forum sections (e.g. Announcements, Bug Reports).
- Forum threads and the majority of forum posts (see below).
- Relevant account information.
We are not currently able to confirm if the following will be migrated;
- Attachments.
- Private Messages.
The following is not expected to be migrated to the new forum;
- The list of threads you have subscribed to.
- The list of threads you have marked as favourites.
- The list of threads you receive e-mail notifications for.
- Posts marked as 'Private' in Customer Service, Technical Support, and Bug Reports were submitted to the forum with the intention of not being publicly visible. This intention will be honoured, and I will be manually deleting these posts or rendering them otherwise inaccessible.
- I have previously announced that custom avatars will be deleted. Contrary to my post, I chose to delay this until it was absolutely required. If you have uploaded your own avatar it will not survive the migration process. The new forum will allow you to choose between a library of images, which we aim to expand over time. If you do not have a local copy of your forum avatar and wish to save it, we have a support article which explains how to grab it before it is too late. I cannot guarantee that we will be able to retrieve your avatar after the migration. If you would like to request this regardless, send me a Private Message.
- Threads will receive new URLs, and existing links to them will not be updated automatically. Expect 404s.
I recognize that some of this may not have been what you were hoping to hear, and that we aren’t yet able to answer every question - the obvious elephant in the room being which forum package we’ve chosen. We’ll be announcing our choice soon after we have finished all of the work on implementing support for our supporter badges. Nevertheless, I hope this post proved to be an interesting information dump, and I’ll be happy to field any questions you may have - provided that we’re sure of the answer ourselves!