Nabble2 migration (Creative Works forums)

[Cordilow]

Hello,

Can you migrate all my forums created with this account to Nabble2? I won't lose any posts in those forums, will I?

I registered with Nabble2 with the same user name, email and all. Will that cause problems? I wouldn't mind having that one deleted and this one placed in its stead (still the owner of all my forums and posts).

Thanks for all you do. This is looking great. :)

How long will it be before all forums are on Nabble2 and one doesn't have to go to n2.nabble.com, or is it to stay there for good? Either way is fine. I just want to know what will end up happening so I can plan accordingly.

[Cordilow]

So, how does that main forum page work on Nabble2 (i.e. the thing with the FAQ and such listed on as I've seen on a few of them)? Do categories convert into those? I'd like to set one of those up with my forums when they convert over (I don't mind sacrificing the categories I have at all).

[Hugo Teixeira <Nabble>]

Hi Cordilow,

Sorry for the delay. See my responses below:

Cordilow wrote:

Can you migrate all my forums created with this account to Nabble2? I won't lose any posts in those forums, will I?

Sure, we will migrate them. You won't lose any post and old links will redirect to the new links smoothly.
We are just waiting for Nabble2 to stabilize, which is about to happen.

Cordilow wrote:

I registered with Nabble2 with the same user name, email and all. Will that cause problems? I wouldn't mind having that one deleted and this one placed in its stead (still the owner of all my forums and posts).

This is not a problem. Your new account will be the owner of the migrated forums.

Cordilow wrote:

How long will it be before all forums are on Nabble2 and one doesn't have to go to n2.nabble.com, or is it to stay there for good? Either way is fine. I just want to know what will end up happening so I can plan accordingly.

The full migration will take time. Also, we must keep Nabble1 running because old links must work (redirecting to Nabble2). So we will keep it for a long time and add new servers to Nabble2.

Regards,
Hugo Teixeira
Nabble.com

[Hugo Teixeira <Nabble>]

Cordilow wrote:

So, how does that main forum page work on Nabble2 (i.e. the thing with the FAQ and such listed on as I've seen on a few of them)? Do categories convert into those? I'd like to set one of those up with my forums when they convert over (I don't mind sacrificing the categories I have at all).

You can choose the forum page. We have different formats for that, including bulletin boards (3-level) and bulletin category (2-level) views. The FAQ you saw is just a sample category that we create to help people understand how things work. The Bulletin board format might be interesting for your case because you have a deep forum structure. In any case, we can help you in organizing that structure if you need.

Note that the old category concept from Nabble1 doesn't exist on Nabble2. So your categories will become normal forums on Nabble2.

We have been working a lot to make things better and more intuitive. We will deliver a lot of new feature soon and this is just the start.

Regards,
Hugo Teixeira
Nabble.com

[Hugo Teixeira <Nabble>]

Hi Cordilow,

Your forums have been migrated.
Please let us know if you have questions, comments or concerns.

Regards,
Hugo Teixeira
Nabble.com

[Cordilow]

Hmm. I've noticed some problems.

First I should say, though, that I've deleted the forums that once were categories. I previously had a category called Creative Works with a forum called Creative Works Forum under it (I deleted the category and renamed the forum to just Creative Works). If I have any other forums that used to be categories, I'd like to delete those, too. Do you have a log of which ones they were?

Anyway, here are the problems:
* My Writing Composition forum and its children are no longer under Creative Works.
* The Critique forum is also not associated with Creative Works anymore.
* Same for Music Topics
* The Reviews Forum has lost all but one of its children (they're probably floating around somewhere).
* Each forum only appears to be able to have one parent. This changes everything for me (a large portion of my forums relied on this feature heavily)—it's probably what caused the above problems, as well. Was this a planned change? Is there a backup of the Nabble 1 version (to re-import it) if multiple parents will end up being allowed? Re-importing it would take a 'lot' less time than doing it manually. I wouldn't even mind if the backup were several months old (if that's all we had to go on).

Anyway, there doesn't seem to be a way to add existing forums as child forums or to move forums anymore. Is this purposeful?

[Hugo Teixeira <Nabble>]

Cordilow wrote:

First I should say, though, that I've deleted the forums that once were categories. I previously had a category called Creative Works with a forum called Creative Works Forum under it (I deleted the category and renamed the forum to just Creative Works). If I have any other forums that used to be categories, I'd like to delete those, too. Do you have a log of which ones they were?

Your previous categories were:
    14604 - Creative Works
    14607 - Critique
    14611 - Writing
    14706 - Advertising
    14714 - Fiction
    14713 - Speculative Fiction
    14710 - Fantasy
    14719 - Poetry
    14720 - Review
    14723 - Compressed Audio

Cordilow wrote:

Anyway, here are the problems:
* My Writing Composition forum and its children are no longer under Creative Works.
* The Critique forum is also not associated with Creative Works anymore.
* Same for Music Topics
* The Reviews Forum has lost all but one of its children (they're probably floating around somewhere).
* Each forum only appears to be able to have one parent. This changes everything for me (a large portion of my forums relied on this feature heavily)—it's probably what caused the above problems, as well. Was this a planned change? Is there a backup of the Nabble 1 version (to re-import it) if multiple parents will end up being allowed? Re-importing it would take a 'lot' less time than doing it manually. I wouldn't even mind if the backup were several months old (if that's all we had to go on).

Sorry for the inconvenience. I'm checking with the rest of the team what happened in your case and I will let you know the details. You are right that Nabble2 allows only one parent and this might have caused those problems. This was a planned change, but I will try to find a solution for your case. I'll get back to you very soon.

Cordilow wrote:

Anyway, there doesn't seem to be a way to add existing forums as child forums or to move forums anymore. Is this purposeful?

To change the parent of a forum, open it and click on "Options > Change parent".

[Will L <Nabble>]

Sorry, on nabble2 we only allow a child to have one parent. We had thought that the multi-parent thing is cool but  you are probably the only one who uses it. The multi-parent design doesn't scale up because the children forums may not be on the same physical server. So, it's a very difficult feature to support and there just aren't enough user using it to justify the amount of work.

You can still find all your forums under your account's page, use the dropdown filter to show only your forums. You have 600 forums, wow, that's a lot! Some are active, but most of the them are empty.

Because we no longer have the multi-parent feature, it will be impossible to recreate the old structure that you have. We can, remove the migration and restore your forums on nabble1, do you want that? The benefit is that you still keep what you have, but the downside is that nabble1 will stay the same and basically fossilize. All the new features and improvement will be on nabble2.

If you decide to move to nabble2, you can still reuse your forums, http://n2.nabble.com/user/UserNodes.jtp?user=228&filter=forums - but they will have to re-orged because each forum can only have one parent now.

Personally, I think the latter option is better, and we will do everything we can to help you rebuild the structure. Your old structure is still on nabble1, so we can still trace it if reference is needed. But looking at your forums, I think the name pretty much captures the structure, but it's just that there are no more multi-parent features.

As a user, (I did browse some of your forums before), my honest feedback is that your nabble1 forums are too deep. It takes many clicks to navigate down to see a thread. So, to me, as a user, less structure and more "meat" is better. But you can decide.

[Cordilow]

Response:

That's cool if you don't want to do the multi-parent thing on Nabble 2. How long will Nabble 1 be around?

As far as why I organized it that way, though (just an FYI since you brought it up), I did have a calculated reason for so doing. It wasn't designed much for people to search through the hierarchy to find forums of interest. It was mostly designed to make forums function independently while still being seen in other related forums. I mean, they could still be found in Nabble searches and Google searches (and I think that actually gets more attention than searching through the hierarchy, anyway—or at least as much).

Ideas:

If we ever get the ability to put a post in multiple forums, 'or' to have labels (i.e. a label could act like a forum) for posts, I wouldn't be put out about the loss of parent forums, since they would pretty much accomplish the same goal I'm after (and probably in a more easily organized and aesthetically pleasing fashion). In fact, with labels, I might only really need one forum (well, I would add a few for the convenience of not having to add a label every time, but you probably know what I mean). Are either of those things planned?

Labels could be good, but only if done properly, methinks. I mean, I would personally want my labels in my forums distinct from labels in other people's forums (I might suggest both Nabble-wide and forum owner labels). I would also want the ability to add labels to people's posts in my forums.

Putting the same post in multiple forums wouldn't be so bad in Nabble 2, I think, as the structure isn't visible in the same fashion as with Nabble 1—so you really only need to show one forum that it's in, where/if required.

Suggested plan for now:

So, in the meantime, I'm wondering if we could get rid of all my Nabble 2 forums. Then, go to the Nabble 1 forums. Take all the categories out before importing to Nabble 2, and then import them. That might solve most of my problems (that way they should all be under Creative Works Forum somehow, instead of scattered abroad; I think the categories were causing problems there since most of them were higher on the visibility priority than the forums I envisioned taking precedence, and so categories would show up as the default parents).

Anyway, let me know your thoughts. Thanks!

[Cordilow]

Thanks for the list!

Please feel free to read my response to the other response as well:
http://www.nabble.com/forum/ViewPost.jtp?post=18210591&framed=y

I'm not sure if you need to read it too, but it couldn't hurt.

[Cordilow]

I don't get the change parent option as described for some reason.

[Will L <Nabble>]

Regarding the label idea, sorry, we won't have it any time soon.

Regarding the one-post-in-multiple-forum idea, it's essentially the same as having one-forum-in-multiple-forum feature which we have given up.

So, we can remove your nabble2 stuff, and revert back on nabble1 and stay there. But we cannot recreate your nabble1 structure on nabble2, because nabble2 has no multi-parent feature.

We will keep nabble1 up as long as there are still users using it. But nabble1 will not have new features because dev is all on nabble2.

[Cordilow]

I was asking it to be imported over as done before—not in a fashion to preserve the multi-parent feature. It's important to have all the categories deleted first, however, or else I'll have to spend forever finding loose forums and adding them in—that's my current problem I'm working with (and as it stands right now, there's no way for me to add them in, even though the option is supposed to be there; the option isn't there where it's supposed to be, to change the parent of a forum).

I do want the forums to be on Nabble 2, even without the multi-parent thing.

Regarding the labels again, are they planned ever to be a part of Nabble? I mean, are they just a really long way off (but still a planned feature for the future), or are they not a current consideration?

[Cordilow]

Hmm. I've got a request for something that would help me out a lot. I don't care if it's temporary, even, or just worked for me.

But, I'm wondering if I could have the following ability:

* to be able to move all posts from a specific forum to another forum, at the same time

This would help me out a lot in the reorganization, anyway. It wouldn't matter if this were on Nabble 1 or Nabble 2, for me (as long as my forums were on that one).


Now, if you really want to help me get it done quickly (I know this is hoping) . . . It would be nice if I could temporarily have the ability to do the following thing (while my forums were on Nabble 1, before importing them over):
* to move all posts from all children of a parent to the parent, and delete all child forums (this includes grandchild forums, etc.)

Anyway, this would really help to move things along for me, and simplify the forums to make them work as intended on Nabble 2.

[Will L <Nabble>]

First, I am real glad that you decide to stay with Nabble2. We have several new "killer" type of features coming out on nabble2. So, nabble2 is definitely a better place to be on.

With Nabble1, our intention is to keep it the same. So, the thing you want with Nabble1 is extra programming and is not easy to do and you will be the only one who will use it and you will move on to Nabble2 anyways ...

So, to us, we want help you achieve what you want on Nabble2, and we want to just forget about nabble1.

Let's look at Nabble2, you have all your content here, it's just that they are not organized as you want, right?

The function you want is to merge a forum with another forum, right?

So, as long as you can merge one forum with another one, you can do the reorg entirely on nabble2, right?

By the way, please don't delete your nabble2 content. Your forum is a placeholder for threads under them. If you delete a forum, it will be difficult for us to re-find the threads under it.

[Cordilow]

Yes—forum merging would work quite well.

The Nabble 1 suggestion was only meant to be something to help me prepare for the Nabble 2 export, and only one time (not really a suggestion overall for everyone). It's basically a way to do the forum merging in the desired fashion a lot faster. It should work the other way, though, and that's probably a good idea if it would take much effort to do the Nabble 1 thing.

I'm not sure what you mean about deleting forums. I've deleted some forums, but all of those had no threads under them at the times I deleted them (as it appeared to me, anyway).

A merge all children with parent option would be quite nice, though (in addition to the normal merge).

[Cordilow]

If you'd like to help me in ways that don't involve adding new features to Nabble (at least if there's some script you can do to make it faster than it would be for me to do it), feel free to do any or all of the following:
(in this order, as the order is important, seeing as there were multiple parents before, and I want certain forums to have a higher priority than others)

* Take all my forums that have the word Fantasy in the title, and merge them with Fantasy Writing (as well as merge all of the children of Fantasy Writing to it (including Fairy Tale Writing, which lacks the word); I would 'just' say merge all of Fantasy Writing's children to it, but several of them had multiple parents, and so there's no telling where they are now without a lot of research. But, if you can use a script to automate this, that would be great.
* Same thing with Science Fiction to Science Fiction Writing
* Same thing with Horror to Horror Writing
* '' Mystery to Mystery Writing
* '' Western to Western Writing
* '' Historical to Historical Fiction Writing
* '' Romance to Romance Writing
* Turn all children of Speculative Fiction Writing into children of Fiction Writing instead. Then, merge all forums containing the word Speculative with Fiction Writing
* Merge Interactive Writing and its children with Fiction Writing
* Merge any forum that contains the word advertising with its non-advertising forum parent, if it has one
* Merge all of Poetry Writing's children with it.
* Merge all forums with the word Dream in them with Dream Forum

There are some other things, but this should take care of most of the larger formatting issues.

[Will L <Nabble>]

Okey, I think we can make this work on nabble2.

The forum merge can work like this. Suppose you have two forums, A and B, and you want to merge A into B. You can simply go to A, use Options->Change Parent to set A's parent to B. This makes A a child B.

In Nabble1, A will show up on B's front page as a child forum. But Nabble2 doesn't show this.  You go to B, use Options->Change forum format, change B's format to "Topics View". This shows all threads under B, including A's threads, but it does't show A. You can still click the "Sub-forums" link on B to see what sub-forums it has and find A there, but most users never do that, so to them, A is merged into B, and they only see B now.

I think this should work for most situations. But if you insist on having a "real" merge, i.e. remove A, and move its threads to B, we can do that for you manually in database.

So, you can go through your forums on Nabble2, http://n2.nabble.com/user/UserNodes.jtp?user=228&filter=forums - re-org and use Change Parent function as a supplicate for merging. After you are done with re-org, tell us which part of the structure needs a real merge, and we will do it for you.

Cordilow wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean about deleting forums. I've deleted some forums, but all of those had no threads under them at the times I deleted them (as it appeared to me, anyway).

It's fine to delete empty forums. Just don't delete forums that have threads in them.

[Cordilow]

Regarding your post, and also my post at this URL: http://www.nabble.com/forum/ViewPost.jtp?post=18249375&framed=y

I don't know if you've read the linked post up there yet.

I would definitely prefer clean merges, if possible. But, even without them, I still have problems that can't be fixed that way (though adding the merge feature by itself wouldn't fix it, either). I mean, as an example, fantasy forums are spread out throughout (they're not all children of Fantasy Writing anymore, seeing as some might be under interactive writing or what-have-you). Anyway, is the stuff I mentioned in the post mentioned above practical for you? I mean, can Nabble admins search and automatically merge forums with certain criteria with a database script or some such?

[Will L <Nabble>]

I read your post. We can do that. But you should give us precise orders.

You can do a search by forum name, and then find all your forums, for example, search "fantasy", the top small-font row has "Forum matches for fantasy: view all", click the view-all link, you see all the forums having the word in title. Check out the "Advanced search", you can also specify NOT having certain keywords. This will help you pin point those forum