Xenforo Conversion Announcement

[Vekseid]

So, this has been a long time coming.

Every member should read and understand this - ask questions if you need to - else risk ending up very confused.

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As many of you are aware, continuing with our current forum software has become completely untenable. As of this posting, we are roughly a month from reaching the twenty million private message mark.

The software is only working because of various custom changes I made to the database. 'Working' is a very generous concept, here.

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Why Xenforo?

1) By going with an actively maintained piece of commercial software, I can make sure Blue Moon maintains a healthy number of features while remaining distinct from Elliquiy.

2) Xenforo has private conversations rather than PMs, which means after the conversion you will no longer have to rely on those quote towers so many of you love.

More importantly, this is a properly normalized structure that is far more suitable to the sort of usage most members put this site to.

3) Like Elkarte and the planned move for Elliquiy, Xenforo comes with e-mail management now, which will take a significant load off of staff duties.

4) Unlike SMF/Elkarte, the styling and layout still follows the same sort of 'path' that MyBB does.

5) Everrything else Xenforo does that MyBB can't. Galleries, chat, whathaveyou.

6) All the addons done for Xenforo that just don't happen for MyBB. Or are directly integrated into the core.

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When Xenforo?

Once I have finished fixing the PM->PC import, I will announce when the conversion will occur. There will be at least a one-week warning.

After the initial conversion, the forums will remain open while the Private Message import runs.

I will then upgrade the software from Xenforo 1 to Xenforo 2, add styling, addons, ajax chat, etc.

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What the conversion means

1) Due to some bugs in Xenforo's converter, we are going to be paring down groups to the bare minimum. The Top Posters group for example will go away, but we will work something out once back on Xenforo.

2) Private messages are going to take an extremely long time to convert. The rest of the forum will take a couple hours (though the theme will be sad for a bit). I am going to be rewriting the PM conversion entirely but, nonetheless, it may take days. Looking through the source code, it's running a query for each PM.

Meanwhile, private messages may be unusable during the conversion period. I will see what I can do to address this.

3) The converter doesn't convert the personal notepad. I've been thinking of converting it, but a lot of people misunderstand what it does, using it for their bio thinking others can read it.

Make a backup of your personal notepad, now or after I put up the notice.

4) Some BBCode doesn't convert over well. Please feel free to point out problems, but some things like predefining the size of an image tag doesn't convert well at all.

5) Make sure you know your password. Make sure you can get e-mails from us in case you need to recover your account. You will be able to log in with your current password, but I know some of you rely on staying logged in forever.

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Options for Private Messages

1) Option 1: Remove the efficiency block in Xenforo's official converter, and run as-is. Simple and should be relatively fast. May take a day.

2) Option 2: One Private Conversation per member (that you've actually has PMs with). Somewhat memory intensive, but not exactly a problem when I run the server. Otherwise, this should be fairly straightforward and about as fast as the first option, just taking a bit longer to setup.

3) Option 3: Breakdown by title. The thing is this would require text matching. Across twenty million private messages. And heaven help you if during your roleplay one of you decided to be snarky and change the title.

Right now, I am heavily leaning towards the second option, though I will listen to opinions. This isn't a democracy, yadda yadda but if someone thinks they are really fucking clever I have ears.

Note: This is just for the conversion. After the conversion you'll be able to make new conversations with people as needed.

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Finally, obviously this was not free. I do hope some of you who have come to enjoy using the site will consider supporting us - see the Paypal and Patreon links at the top of the forum.

Every bit helps.

Thank you. : )

 

[GildedDragonfly]

I'm assuming that I've read this right and those are the options for the conversion for old PMs only...

Option #3 - Breakdown by Title
Some partners talk a lot OOC or have multiple RPs with the same partner and it could lead to confusion with everything being converted to one, singular message. Certainly, they could back things up or use some other method to preserve them in the meantime, but that requires a great deal of reworking on an individual basis and can take a while for members with lots of messages and slow down their browser immensely if they're on a poor computer. Woe to the person who is gone during all of this, too.

 

[MysteriousD]

I know very little about these sort of things. I'm guessing that this things like our personal profiles and our friends' list remain untouched?

 

[Jeufufns]

Not sure what to think of this. Great obviously that you put in so much work, but I don't quite understand the conversion. I was on elliquiy for a short while, so their conversation system will be what ours is going to be similar to from now on?

 

[PhantomZAngel]

All I can say is...I'm OCD. I care about your site and your rules. Change is going to happen and I get that. But it sucks for people like me whom solely use Private Message for roleplays and do multiple roleplays per person. I have made a habit to delete after 30 days all inactive roleplays. I really have a feeling this will adversely effect me.

 

[Chaos]

Oh ya. Havig only one PM train per person youre talking with sounds like a huge issue for a lot of people including me.
I have partners that only RP in PM. One of those parters we tehnically have 3 RPs. And i handle OOC seperatly o top of that.
Hopefully there will be a system to have multiple conversations per person.

 

[Prose]

@GildedDragonfly

It is only one of the three options of how the transfer will be done and yet to be decided. It really comes down to what is the easiest method to get the most accurate transfer. The quote trees will be done away with, so it'll look more like a YIM/SKYPE/DISCORD style chat conversation as opposed to quote stacking.

Yes, there will pose a crisscross problem should messages be titled similarly, but be of different discussions entirely. It will (should) then go by post date, so there should be at least some flow to the content, newer first and so on. A lot of my quick PM's to staff members are often just me putting the stick figure wave in the subject header 'o/' so that would compile all of my 'o/' messages as one conversation, even though they're actually multiple conversations.

There isn't much we can do about it simply due to how the quote trees/threading will be done away with by swapping to a top to bottom/bottom to top conversation formula. Vekseid will select the option that converts the best.

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@MysteriousD

The overall snapshot of BMR will transfer over. Your user name, PW, post count, old threads, etc. Your profile info will mostly transfer over, as long as there is a field for it on the new software. Things like AIM & such won't transfer over (I've actually already removed AOL IM on here). There will be more profile info & options as well, such as Twitter & Facebook linking and the like. If anything, your profile should be offer more customization, with the core of what you already have transferred over.

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@Jeufufns

The conversion is needed due to this site's coding/scripting (or lack there of) starting to bog down. There are quite a few glitches that most just aren't aware of. Some members have to start new threads after 65 pages, and others aren't getting notifications after a new page due to page change over glitches. The system is bogging down, so there are hiccups occurring. As it stands now, there are some staff moderation glitches going on as well. The PM system has it's issues as well as it simply wasn't designed to be a primary source of writing (I personally use PM system to roleplay with partners). We're approaching 20 million PM's, so from top to bottom, the weight of the site is just getting to be a bit heavy for what it was originally designed to do. BMR has grown fat & happy, and the bones (site backend/coding) is starting to show signs of fatigue.

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@PhantomZAngel

Will look into options, but this will be an issue, yes. While your PM will be conversation based to the particular member, thus limiting you to an OOC convo and second RP convo, we will look into options. One option that might be possible is private threads, where only you and the other writer(s) with the link are able to access it, outside of staff moderation - meaning other members are not able to view it. We will be looking at options the closer we get to live, because then we will be able to further test what works and what doesn't on the Admin Control Panel.

 

[GildedDragonfly]

Vekseid will select the option that converts the best.

Did I misunderstand his willingness to listen to feedback?

Option #3 is the best out of them for the users IMO, so I was giving my opinion on that particular option.

 

[Revelations]

I admit i'm not a huge fan of making all PM's with one partner one long thread. I try not to keep RP's to PM's, but I have a few, and a few OOC PM 'threads' with partners as well. That just sounds like a trip to headache city for me. But I don't know how well the other options would convert.

 

[Prose]

Vekseid will select the option that converts the best.

Did I misunderstand his willingness to listen to feedback?

Option #3 is the best out of them for the users IMO, so I was giving my opinion on that particular option.

No, not at all. Perhaps I just worded it poorly? The best most practical method will be what he tries to make work in favor of the community, and of course he will read the feedback before he moves forward. It is the very reason why he's listed the three options, so that people could chime in.

 

[Vekseid]

I edited the top post to reflect this, but just because it all gets merged into a single conversation doesn't mean you need to keep it that way.

Xenforo's default conversion would leave many of us with thousands upon thousands of conversations, which I find to be less than acceptable.

It is far easier to navigate a single private conversation than it is to navigate pms as-is.

 

[Vekseid]

I'm assuming that I've read this right and those are the options for the conversion for old PMs only...

Option #3 - Breakdown by Title
Some partners talk a lot OOC or have multiple RPs with the same partner and it could lead to confusion with everything being converted to one, singular message. Certainly, they could back things up or use some other method to preserve them in the meantime, but that requires a great deal of reworking on an individual basis and can take a while for members with lots of messages and slow down their browser immensely if they're on a poor computer. Woe to the person who is gone during all of this, too.

It's also slow, fragile, and will require far more effort on my part.

Basically if someone is willing to write the converter, maybe incorporating some crazy idea with folders.

I think the best option would be, once the conversion date is announced, is for people who have multiple rps with a single partner to keep some snapshots of their individual active rps.

They can then start up new conversations for their rps, possibly even before the conversion proper is even finished (if testing goes well).

 

[Chaos]

That sounds good. I think.

 

[DarkDreamer9110]

I don't really understand the first option and how that functions, so I can't really weigh in on it.

However, even though I'm not very well-versed in the inner workings of coding and all this fancy stuff, I did have an idea. I don't know if it's feasible, but is there no way to combine the second and third options? Something that compiles them into the single conversation between two individual members during the initial conversion and then, once that's complete, automatically separates them out into their own appropriate conversation trees? Or maybe something that matches by the quote identifier links inside each message?

Again, I'm nowhere near an expert, or even a novice, in this kind of stuff, so maybe I'm sounding like an idiot and you've already considered and discarded those possibilities as unworkable.

 

[gtortoise]

Hi, programmer here.

Might it be possible to convert conversations that have not been updated past a certain date (for instance: 3 months ago) into a single thread, and allow the rest of the conversations to convert 1 to 1? Assuming there is an available var to check dates against this might be the 'best-of-both-worlds' where you end up with far fewer 'legacy' conversations but maintain active ones (which people are going to re-open in any case).

Just a thought, I don't have any special insight into either piece of forum software so consider this post an optimistic shot in the dark.

 

[PsionicCuttlefish]

Woo, Xenforo. This has indeed been a long time in coming, and since the original announcements of BMRs troubles that were requiring it to be considered, I have looked forward to the now-soon-to-come day with both dread and relief. I am a member of some other forums that run Xenforo software, so I am familiar with how it's laid out and how it works, and I am in full agreement that the "conversations" system that Xenforo uses will be far more suited to how people commonly use BMR, even though I myself personally prefer threads.

For those who aren't familiar with Xenforo and don't know how the "conversations" system that is going to replace PMs works, think of it like this: You basically send an "invite to conversation" to at least 1, up to X number of people (the forums I surf max it at 5. Don't know how Vekseid is going to set BMR for this). The conversation that is created then works in just about every way like a thread, except only people "invited to the conversation" can read it and reply to it (there's a few extra features regarding that but I won't get into them now). I'm preeetty sure you can start more than one conversation with the same person, so for people like me who do keep multiple different discussion chains with certain people, and for people I RP through PMs with, I almost always keep an IC PM chain and an OOC PM chain. (Ironically, when I first got to this site, the PM "quote towers" was absolutely horrid to me with how it lagged up my browser, so now for me it is completely routine reflex to just automatically highlight and delete anything further than one quote back when I'm responding. It was an extremely necessary habit for me to form, but makes roleplay through PMs a hell of a time to work with, especially rereading later, or going back to specific parts.) Honestly, I'm not sure yet which of the options is even best for me, personally. They'll all muck with me in some manner, but it does need to be done.



However, Vekseid, I do have a question. What is going to happen to unsent PMs that are living in the Drafts folder, with no recipient even specified? I have multiple rather important and sometimes large sets of "personal notes" that I keep in Draft PMs, private stuff that I just view and edit as needed, without ever sending them to anyone. What is going to happen to those?


Oh, and second question. BMR -used- to have an in-built chat function that anyone logged in could access at any time--is anything like that going to make a return in Xenforo?


Also, just something that strikes me as worth saying, to everyone, users and staff alike...No matter what happens, no matter how this is done, it's -going- to be painful, and a lot of people are -going- to be pissed...but, it is a very much necessary, and positive, step forward for this forum's long-term health. The transition period is going to suuuuuuck hard...but, in time, it will pass, and BMR will be much better off for it. Just everyone better be braced for this place to become an absolute zoo in the immediate aftermath, until the furor dies down.

 

[Viktoff Samson]

All together? This is an exciting update and a change I wholeheartedly welcome with open arms. Even the worst case scenario in this conversation should ultimately make me happy. I miss Private Conversations from the days I called other forums home. If this change means allowing for such a feature, thank god. I was never a happy sailor with the private messaging system of BMr and the only reason I've clung here for as long as I have would be the people I can find here. Frankly, roleplaying forums aren't insanely popular. A functioning community that this site has provided simply can't be replaced.

Moving forward, I can't find interest in a particular conversion method for pms with any base in convenience for myself. I'll just make some copy pastes of my previous interacts via PM and delete almost all of the ones I've been keeping for the sake of it. Which conversion method I would prefer? The quickest and easiest. What's convenient for anyone else? I'm sure my opinion here is unpopular: I can go with 0 PMs into the conversion and after quite happily.

I cannot wait to see what this change will bring to BMr in full. Hopefully the features that can come with it will bring some life back into the significantly underused thread-based rp section. I do miss group rps(and my own mismanagement in this area has not helped). Perhaps Private Conversations will bring with it the ability to privately rp or plan with more than one person(I missed this if it was mentioned in the OP)? If not, then maybe the displaced and momentarily curious Pm only rp'ers would turn their attention to the rest of the options this forum has available?

I see nothing but positives moving forward and it excites me greatly. Thank you!

Edit: Cuttlefish's post above was rather informative. It answered a question of mine in this post. Thanks bud.

 

[Vekseid]

I know very little about these sort of things. I'm guessing that this things like our personal profiles and our friends' list remain untouched?

Xenforo 1.5 doesn't really have a buddys system as such. It's really designed to clobber vBulletin, and misses a lot of interesting features of MyBB and SMF/Elkarte.

I don't see the ignore list getting converted either. I'll make a note of this in the top post and see what can be done. The superior alert system does moot this to some extent.

I don't really understand the first option and how that functions, so I can't really weigh in on it.

However, even though I'm not very well-versed in the inner workings of coding and all this fancy stuff, I did have an idea. I don't know if it's feasible, but is there no way to combine the second and third options? Something that compiles them into the single conversation between two individual members during the initial conversion and then, once that's complete, automatically separates them out into their own appropriate conversation trees? Or maybe something that matches by the quote identifier links inside each message?

Again, I'm nowhere near an expert, or even a novice, in this kind of stuff, so maybe I'm sounding like an idiot and you've already considered and discarded those possibilities as unworkable.

Hmmmm.

Might be able to do something where I can add a new column to pms, storing a hash of a reduced form of the old title (remove Re:, convert to lowercase).

Then after we're settled I could make an extension that would allow users to extract old conversations into new ones, if desired.

However, Vekseid, I do have a question. What is going to happen to unsent PMs that are living in the Drafts folder, with no recipient even specified? I have multiple rather important and sometimes large sets of "personal notes" that I keep in Draft PMs, private stuff that I just view and edit as needed, without ever sending them to anyone. What is going to happen to those?

Oh, and second question. BMR -used- to have an in-built chat function that anyone logged in could access at any time--is anything like that going to make a return in Xenforo?

Drafts aren't converted in the official importer but I can easily stick them in a private conversation to yourself I think. I'll test it and make sure it works anyway.

There are a number of robust chat options for Xenforo. Alternately I could make my own.

 

[PsionicCuttlefish]

Hmmmm.

Might be able to do something where I can add a new column to pms, storing a hash of a reduced form of the old title (remove Re:, convert to lowercase).

Then after we're settled I could make an extension that would allow users to extract old conversations into new ones, if desired.

Oooh...while I am not yet sure how things will shake down in the conversion, this does sound like a decent idea The auto-conversion initially groups every PM into single conversations based on whoever they were sent to/from, then having an option to be able to divide up the new mega-conversations back down into appropriately categorized conversations(by whatever method...) if desired, seems like the best option I've heard thus far.

Drafts aren't converted in the official importer but I can easily stick them in a private conversation to yourself I think. I'll test it and make sure it works anyway.

Oh wow, that's nifty! I didn't actually really think preservation of drafts would even be plausible, I was expecting I'd have to just manually back them up myself. Even if what you try doesn't work out, I am very appreciative of the attempt!

Also cool to hear that we ought to be getting forumwide chat back after the conversion

 

[LoveIsEnergy]

Thanks for this information, and particularly for the note about the notepads. I do use that feature, and I'm pasting everything I have in there into a Word document now so I won't lose it!

 

[Death by orgasm]

Sup ya'll.


I'm rather PM dependent, but now I don't mind other people seeing my writing, so I'm feeling rather neutral about this PM conversion?

If I'm understanding this correctly, PMs should be saved* when transferred depending on how the transfer from PM to PC happens. And we're trying to ensure we pick the best method? *Correct me if I'm mistaken.


Option 1 appears to me the be the best option? But I'm honestly a little confused by all of this stuff.

Option 2 seems limiting, as people have pointed out. Option 3 looks most work/time consuming to ensure everything transfers exactly as it was in the quoted format?

But yeah, if everything is maintained/converted over, I think option 1 would seem to be the best?

 

[Raina Reader]

It is how the Private Messages will be converted when the switch to Xenforo is made. Option 2 seems to be the best for Vek. basically all of your messages between a single user will be converted into a single chat. This does not mean all future PM's with said user has to be a single chat, it's simply how present ones will be saved, so if this is the option that is used, it will be recomended to make a note or organize certain logs in a word doc.

Once all is settled you can create new conversations with a user for seperate RP's. All in all the system will be far superior to what we have.

 

[Charlotte Honeycutt]

Whichever option is the least painful for Veks to do works for me.

I don't play much in PM's anymore, but can understand that plenty of others do.

The move to PC from PM will be incredible from what I'm led to believe.

I'm excited for this switch.

 

[DarkDreamer9110]

I don't really understand the first option and how that functions, so I can't really weigh in on it.

However, even though I'm not very well-versed in the inner workings of coding and all this fancy stuff, I did have an idea. I don't know if it's feasible, but is there no way to combine the second and third options? Something that compiles them into the single conversation between two individual members during the initial conversion and then, once that's complete, automatically separates them out into their own appropriate conversation trees? Or maybe something that matches by the quote identifier links inside each message?

Again, I'm nowhere near an expert, or even a novice, in this kind of stuff, so maybe I'm sounding like an idiot and you've already considered and discarded those possibilities as unworkable.

Hmmmm.

Might be able to do something where I can add a new column to pms, storing a hash of a reduced form of the old title (remove Re:, convert to lowercase).

Then after we're settled I could make an extension that would allow users to extract old conversations into new ones, if desired.

Hmmmm.

Might be able to do something where I can add a new column to pms, storing a hash of a reduced form of the old title (remove Re:, convert to lowercase).

Then after we're settled I could make an extension that would allow users to extract old conversations into new ones, if desired.

Oooh...while I am not yet sure how things will shake down in the conversion, this does sound like a decent idea The auto-conversion initially groups every PM into single conversations based on whoever they were sent to/from, then having an option to be able to divide up the new mega-conversations back down into appropriately categorized conversations(by whatever method...) if desired, seems like the best option I've heard thus far.

I'm quite happy to hear that my humble suggestion might actually be workable. I just figured, "Okay, option 2 seems like the least likely to cause Vek a massive headache, but is liable to have the lynch mob buying torches and pitchforks. Option 3, which is most likely to cause him a massive headache, seems least likely to get the lynch mob up in a tizzy. But is there some way to do both, or at least figure out a workable compromise that doesn't have Vek going through headache meds like crazy AND that doesn't have too many people buying the torches and pitchforks?"

 

[NerdsofSteel]

I believe guilty pleasures role playing uses xenforo so this is fine with me