Relaunch of Nth Circle website

I'd love to have the old posts back, as well. If someone were to volunteer to help with this migration work, then it might be possible. Unfortunately, the chance of me finding the time to do it myself is pretty low.

If anyone is technically savvy enough and willing to volunteer to help restore the old content, please PM me! I'd be thrilled if someone took up this challenge!

For the data migration, any experience with the following tech would be helpful:

  • Docker
  • Nginx
  • Ruby
  • MySQL and Postgres
  • Maybe some Joomla or PHP
  • Any prior ETL experience

If anyone has any of the above, please reach out!

[Edit] I've resolved all the Nginx issues and it turns out a data import can be done completely via Ruby script, without having to touch Postgres directly, so this should simplify things greatly. So, basically, the main tech required for the data migration is going to be Ruby, MySql, and possibly some understanding of Joomla and Kunena db schemas in case there needs to be additional transformation of the data.

Hi, Boz. Good to see you here. I've very much enjoyed your posts on some other forums. (Of course, perhaps you've been here all along....)

Thanks, Kent.

I've been here reading for quite some time, but I just never signed up until now. I figured the new forum was a good excuse to finally do so.

Yes, unlike a lot of people, I use the same username everywhere, although sometimes I need to add a number at the end.

I hate change....
but I like the forum.....
so I will learn, ..... eventually,...... I hope

Thanks for carrying on hungryghost

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Just a word of thanks for Nth Circle and PrepaidCompare.
Two quality resources that are completely free with no strings attached.

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Thanks for the kind words, everyone.

Just a quick update:

I took a preliminary look into importing the old forum content. Apparently, it may be a bit easier than I'd assumed. So there's a possibility we'll regain access to the old forum posts. No promises though, since I haven't actually attempted the data import yet and I may run into unforeseen issues. Also, any attempted data migration will need to wait another week or so, when I have more time.

But just wanted to update everyone that I'm looking into it.

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Good to see the site back up. Thanks, HungryGhost!

Has anything been determined yet as to the likelihood of the original site's content being restored?

I'm still looking into it. Sorry, I don't have any new information to share, but I should know more in the next few days.

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I'm really missing not being able to access old forum content. Hope it is back soon!

Hi everyone. Here's an update on the old forum content:

I attempted a test migration over the weekend, to help surface any potential issues with the data restoration.

It turns out my original pessimism was warranted. The migration is messier and more difficult than I was beginning to think. But, with that said, I do believe that salvaging the old forum content is possible. I've spent many hours already ironing out the kinks and I am planning a real migration attempt sometime this week or possibly over the weekend.

The main question is how clean will the restored content be. The hardest part of this migration is faithfully restoring those parts of the posts that most of us don't think about, things like formatting, quoting, links, images, likes, etc. All of those are handled in a completely different way in the old forum compared to this new system. Without a delicate transformation of old forum posts to new forum posts, some content may not be rendered accurately (although all text should be readable).

At minimum, I believe I can restore all textual content from the previous forum. But, currently I'm uncertain whether I can preserve some of those other parts. Depending on how it goes, the restored posts may contain broken links, images, emojis, or extraneous BBCode markup tags.

I can't promise perfection, but I'll try my best to restore the old content with minimal formatting issues.

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Longtime lurker here. Wanted to thank @hungryghost for this forum and offer a bit of advice.

Please don't waste your time recovering the old content. There is no need for it. It is out of date. Even if you migrate it, it will be messy and pollute the new forum. Those asking for it have not really explained what value it would have except that it would be "nice to have".

While I have your attention, I'd love to know what happened to the old forum. Was it hacked by spammers (Russians?) or did all the coding / customization required break it?

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Nothing I care to remember especially that defunct cell service cellnolo or something.

Seriously though I wouldn't spend time recovering the old site either.

I also am not interested in past posts, but I recognize that some people want certain past threads.

May I suggest a new thread that people can request what old threads and HG could look into the migration of those threads.

I do not understand the wholesale migration of the old site.

If there were let's say 5 old threads requested. I am sure that is more manageable. Then the entire old site.

I'm guessing the bulk of the effort & time involved in getting, say 20% desired threads to transfer correctly & smoothly in an automated manner would be almost the same as then running bulk or batch for the balance of the old threads

I wouldn't necessarily know what I wanted, until I wanted it. Would it be a one time request window? Does hungryghost want to deal with requests down the road, would I still be interested by the time he can do it?

I might be wrong re the bulk of work but if I'm close on that I'd go for all or nothing.

Hi everyone. Here's another update:

There will be an automated data migration of all (or almost all) of the old forum posts. It will happen most likely this weekend, so please expect some website downtime while the migration is underway.

Btw - This is taking a ton of work, but I've taken this project on as a personal technical challenge and I'm too deep down this rabbit hole to turn back now. Who knew I'd ever end up learning Ruby, but I guess that's happening now. It's like showing up 10 years late to a party. :mirror_ball:

I'll have more details to share with everyone soon. There are some peculiarities that will result from the migration, mostly around synchronizing user accounts and restoring image attachments. Everything may not be 100%, but I'll be able to restore most posts to be at least readable. I'll elaborate more once it's all done.

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That's great news! (Except for the ton of work part...) Personally, I don't mind if a lot of the details and extras are lost.
There's a lot of 'nothing' there, and a lot that just isn't relevant anymore. (eg, the boneyard telecoms.) But my favorite thing about forums like this, besides the camaraderie, is that there is so much knowledge and experience gained from a group mind. Of course, if it isn't retrievable, we'll all have the fun of sharing knowledge & experience again.

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Thank you so much for the time and effort to do this. It sounds like a lot of work, and I hope everyone will appreciate the persistence on your part that was required to make this happen!

Can't wait to see the results! Thanks for doing this.

With ETL, the devil is in the details. Presume you are doing this on a separate instance before going into production?

Hi @hungryghost , any recent updates on restoring the old posts? Thanks again!