Migrating content from old forums

[Vinzenz_Mai]

Thank you very much - not only for this, but for your great work to enable the migration. To say “very well done!” is not enough.

[Firefishy]

I’ve noticed that some permalinks for some users profiles /profile.php?id= where not created. It was an edge case in the user merge process. Unfortunate, but not a critical issue which would justify me investing time to fix. Sorry.

[Tilia_J]

Great work. Currently I’m not able to tag topics afterwards. Has this option been deactivated or is tagging onl possible when creating a new topic?

[Firefishy]

The non merged categories are read-only. You will not be able to add tags there.

If you cannot add tags elsewhere then may be a user trust level or other issue. Likely not related to the migration. Best to ask in the help section.

[Map_HeRo (Mikke)]

I have just noticed that even my old browser bookmark leading directly to the german community page in the old forum now takes me directly to the german community page here (and not only to the standard start page) … … that means anyone having been absent for the past 12 month an now returning with an old bookmark will touch down directly in his/her community page here and … … WTF has happened to the forum?!?

[streckenkundler]

@Tilia_J

Yes, I think it’s a question of time and trust level. In any case, I was able to assign keywords to posts I started in the old forum that were converted here, after the fact.
See: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/erinnerung-neues-jahr-neue-zahl-opendata-nutzungsbedingungen/92007

I can no longer edit the post text of my created post myself… Only time will tell whether there will be a need for this.

Sven

[kmpoppe (Kai Poppe)]

Would it be possible to merge two topics?

3422 is the “new” Schwerpunkt Topic, 89445 is the imported one. If those could become one, that would be nice

[Firefishy]

I can merge categories, but I don’t think merging topics is a good idea… All the posts would become jumbled.

[Jakob48]

Does it make sense to link the old login to the new one?

I think some users still have the old login in their browser bookmarks.

[kmpoppe (Kai Poppe)]

But closing a topic is possible, right?

[Firefishy]

Yes, topics can be closed.

[Firefishy]

login.php now redirects to homepage. Tiny number of hits in last 48 hours.

[Tordanik (Tobias Knerr)]

@kmpoppe

But closing a topic is possible, right?

As Grant said, it’s possible. IMO, requests to close or merge topics, where necessary, should be directed at category moderators who can use Discourse’s usual moderation tools for that.

[chris66]

Hi, a small issue: The forum search function is sorting the results by relevance instead of date.

Having all the old migrated content now the chance is high that very old necro threads are beeing re-activated.

I did not check yet whether there is some setting for the default order of search results.

[Pedja]

@nukeador

Do we know how adding almost 1M redirects affects the site performance?

I would keep recommending to check if we agree on the list of problems before jumping into any solution. Might be the case that there is an additional option we haven’t thought about that doesn’t introduce high risks and solves most of the problems.

Always keeping in mind that any solution will come with trade-offs.

I would not expect significant impact especially as that redirects should be triggered as last resort.

In my opinion, what should be done is:

When moving topic from old forum to new community somewhere should be recorded old URL and new URL.

That URL matching list should then be used to create redirections. The best option would be to set 301 redirections on old forum site so once user goes there (following some not updated link) he would be permanently redirected to new URL so he will not ever go there but to new community directly.

Search engines would also follow the same route when indexing old site. all 301 redirect would be permanently replaced with new URLs in indexes.

In short time most traffic would be moved to new URLs and redirects would be rarely used, but should stay there for those rare cases when someone new clicks on old link somewhere.

[whb]

@Pedja

The best option would be to set 301 redirections on old forum site so once user goes there (following some not updated link) he would be permanently redirected to new URL so he will not ever go there but to new community directly.

That’s exactly how it was done.
The migration is complete.

Migrating content from old forums

The import has now been completed. All imported content redirects are in place. There is a simple feed redirect to a static feed asking users to update their feed. The site certificate now has alt names for forum.openstreetmap.org and forum.osm.org The @forums-governance will over the next few days merge duplicate categories and make other clean ups.

[Firefishy]

The import migration was completed more than a week ago. All the forum.openstreetmap.org users and posts have have been imported. All old forum.openstreetmap.org links redirects to the imported content here.

Auto closing this topic on Monday.

[Firefishy]

Using the expanded search dialog it is possible to sort by date, there are a number of extra search functions eg: limit to particular category. Example potlatch2 search