Geeklog Forums

Hi, I currently have a community that has around 550 members using Invision 1.2. I am really impressed with Geeklog and want to use it for my community, ditching Invisionboard, and also using Geeklog forum.

Does anyone know how I could the import user data (username /passwords) from my IB MySQL database into the Geeklog database so that when my brand new Geeklog site is up I have those 550 members still?

You will have to copy the user and insert them into the geeklog using SQL. Take a look at the database structure and map the fields out. Start by looking at gl_users.

Sadly, I am not a programmer

I reckon if some clever person could write a little plugin that extracts the Invision users/passwords and inserts them into the Geeklog database it would be very helpful to a lot of people!

Actually I just realised, the forum categories/topics would need taking out too and putting into Geeklog forum...seems like a big project.

Well, one way to get something like this done, when it is something that you need, and you are not a programmer, is to hire a programmer to do it for you=) Better yet, get together with some other Invision users and pool your resources to hire a programmer.

(No, I'm not offering, I'm far too busy) But there are many people involved with Geeklog who probably would be willing to spend some time writing some scripts to transfer data from the Invision database to the geeklog database for a fee.

The point I'm trying to make, is that open-source programmer tend to have priorities on what they want to work on. It doesn't mean they are unwilling to help with something like this, but it means there may be other plugins which they feel will ave wdier use. Now for some programmers (particularly any who might be using Invision and have the same interest in Geeklog as you) this type of a plugin/script might be a very high priority, but for those who do not use Invision, there are often other priorities.

So, obviously one way to increase the the priority of an Invision transfer script is to offer some form of payment for the work.

Anyway, best of luck to you,

Exaurdon

What would a programmer charge for such a task, or what should I offer? I suppose I could try Scriptlance.

All very good points exaurdon

Poppet, I'm the current developer of the forum plugin and have also written the migration tool to convert geeklog stories and comments to the forum. I've not looked at the database for Invisionboard but I can bet that even with my knowledge of GL, the forum it will take some time.

The story/comment migration tool was easily 16-20 hours. It takes a lot of testing to ensure it's done well and you have covered all the possible issues. Granted, I also converted all links to stories to new links that pointed to the forum topic.

I'd estimate an initial 8 hours to have a protptype and another 8 hours of testing/tweaking with another 8 hours to finalize - 24 hours.

Maybe a basic dumb script would suffice but I expect that is even 8 hours of work to get the table structure and data format conversion figured out.

I have no use for this so I'd need to be compensated. Oh, and yeh, I would charge more then $10/hr If someone can do it faster and better - great. Many only estimate to phase 1 prototype and don't understand the real effort required to complete.

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