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Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Posts: 3186
Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
Member Is Offline
Mood: Waiting for spring
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converter still fails
I tried deleting thread 18275 to see if that ended the error, on the theory floated above that the iframes in that thread might throw off the process.
It didn't work. I get almost the same error as before, except it's now "Duplicate entry '18277'" instead of '18275'. Any insights from inspecting the
code?
PGP Key and corresponding e-mail address
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bfesser
Resident Wikipedian
Posts: 2114
Registered: 29-1-2008
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Mood: No Mood
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No progress to report yet. Hopefully soon. No promises.
Sorry for my delay in responding to this. I had appendicitis shortly after my previous post, and my offline life got a little complicated thereafter.
Things are slowly getting sorted out, and I hope to get working on this again in the near future. However, moving the last of my glassware to my new
apartment takes priority. 
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WolfPack
Harmless
Posts: 9
Registered: 3-2-2013
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Mood: Chelating
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First of all, sorry for my bad english, and for resurrecting this thread. Maybe you've finished yet with the migration.
Most of my experiences in forum software is from SMF, so I'll try to summarize them. As I suppose you already know, SMF has a lot of user-contributed
tools like ReCAPTCHA (which requires an account in google mail) and Akismet (AFAIK, checks the content of the message against an online engine and, if
detected as spam, reports it to the moderators before showing it publicly), to avoid spamming and automated registration. There are other useful tools
like "Users mass actions" that allow deleting/changing group/etc. a whole page of members from the Admin > Members submenu.
Nevertheless, and due to security reasons our server don't use the FTP port for updates/upgrades, which forces to patch the code manually.
Obviously, we suffered a huge attack several months ago and we found that, in fact, there are groups of spammers that do the registration process by
hand and using utilities that do a search for texts that match the thread topic and insert links, thus bypassing protections, and the only way to
avoid this completely was using email confirmation plus validation by admin/mods. Also the forum was changed to other IP and server and a honeypot was
mounted at the old server.
The database is somehow prone to corruption if you modify it by logging on to the database server and use SQL even being careful with foreign keys and
things like that (SMF has a lot of indexes on each table); this can be noticed if the statistics/total amount of replies/threads on the main page
disappear; but you've got a database tab on Administration>Maintenance
Forum Maintenance>Database to fix these issues, IIRC. Also, backups of the database and table optimizations can be done from there.
I don't know if you're adapting that script or using a backup of this forum, a fresh install of SMF and with SQL sentences, but I'll try the latter
since you can make a replica of the VM. Surely you have noticed that there are several main tables: smf_members, smf_boards, smf_categories,
smf_topics and smf_messages. Some other tables are filled by the installation code. I've never used XMB so I don't know its internals.
Hope my post is of some use.
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Glucose Oxidase
Harmless
Posts: 37
Registered: 31-12-2012
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Mood: Researching Alchemy
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Sorry for resurrecting this thread again but i recently found a good forum software called FUDforum http://www.fudforum.org maybe that will help.
[Edited on 1-3-2013 by Glucose Oxidase]
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bfesser
Resident Wikipedian
Posts: 2114
Registered: 29-1-2008
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Apologies for not making any progress on this since my last post... I really need to find employment first.
[edit]
Oh, and I'll have to recover all my data from my fried laptop's HDD.
[Edited on 3/2/13 by bfesser]
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Random
International Hazard
Posts: 1120
Registered: 7-5-2010
Location: In ur closet
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Mood: Energetic
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Polverone it seems the guy managed to convert the database itt:
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?P=759b39b9...
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bfesser
Resident Wikipedian
Posts: 2114
Registered: 29-1-2008
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Mood: No Mood
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Polverone, I'm trying to set up a
server (again) to work on the migration, but this file seems to be missing. Any chance you could re-upload it? (I'm sure I have a copy somewhere, I
just don't know where...)
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Texium
Administrator
Posts: 4580
Registered: 11-1-2014
Location: Salt Lake City
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Mood: PhD candidate!
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Is this something that is still happening? I'd never read this thread before until now, and hadn't realized that there were previously plans for a
wiki. Is the forum still going to be migrated to new software, and if so, is incorporating MediaWiki and migrating the wiki going to happen after
that, as discussed earlier in this thread?
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JAVA
Hazard to Self
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Registered: 9-1-2014
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Just a question: is it so hard to implement a spelling corrector in the preview mode? With for example a anchor.
I also suggest to make a hidden tread to fix a anti-spam code.
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Etaoin Shrdlu
National Hazard
Posts: 724
Registered: 25-12-2013
Location: Wisconsin
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Quote: Originally posted by JAVA  | | Just a question: is it so hard to implement a spelling corrector in the preview mode? With for example a anchor. |
Firefox has a built-in spell-check.
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JAVA
Hazard to Self
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Registered: 9-1-2014
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Yes, but many, many members don't write in English by default. If you are from The Nederlands then the corrector shows that every word is wrong.
I'am native Dutch, write in German, Bahasa Indonesia and English. It's a great idea for people from the USA but not for the majority of other
members...
In addition: we can reduce spam if you work with filters that don't allow things like chinese, rude things,...
We can use a checkbox to sign-in and validate the e-mail adress. If they don't do it: it are spambots.
[Edited on 16-11-2014 by JAVA]
[Edited on 16-11-2014 by JAVA]
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Etaoin Shrdlu
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Posts: 724
Registered: 25-12-2013
Location: Wisconsin
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Mood: Insufferable
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| Quote: Originally posted by JAVA |
Yes, but many, many members don't write in English by default. If you are from The Nederlands then the corrector shows that every word is wrong.
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If you don't write in English, your post is going to wind up deleted anyway, am I missing something?
EDIT: Ohhhh, I get it. It's because of comparing to another language by default. You can add on other dictionaries though. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/language-tools/
[Edited on 11-16-2014 by Etaoin Shrdlu]
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JAVA
Hazard to Self
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Registered: 9-1-2014
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It does work for English (problem solved), really thank you. I did learn finally one thing that makes sense in everyday life.
I don't answer on messages with too much errors anymore 
Apart from that I was thinking about a rather technical aspect to prevent these daily UK Spam messages. I see that the administrators really DO a lot
of efforts to prevent Spam, administrators and moderators aren't stupid at all.
The solution that I propose is to create a "apply to join Rador labs" button on sciencemadness, all members have to do that within
say 6 months. If they do apply they will get the message: "a email is send to your mailbox, check your mailbox to be a and follow the instructions to
be a member approved member and click on the link that is embedded in your mail"
Just click on it and you are a approved member of Sciencemadness AND Rador labs. Once Rador labs or SM did write a code in javascript to make smart
filters, check their IP address, GMT time zone, provider: these Spambots have no chance anymore.
This is the only solution that I see: the forum software is simply too old and not updated. A by-pass system with a confirmation mail and a new
database of users have only good things.
1) It's a Win-Win situation between Radorlabs and sciencemadness, no build in competitions on sciencemadness are needed anymore to motivate people to
work on the sciencemadness wiki.
2) We can catch the spambots or Spammers by redirecting to external sites
3) user list is up-to-date
4) If the location is known (like UK) a huge amount of money have to be paid (intellectual property damage, time to develop new scripts,...) and the
external website can be one that applies to the UK to bring it to the court. With this money we can invest in scientific references for the community,
money for those that did really work to expand our knowledge,...
5) The external website can get the newest IT features, things evolve really fast.
Please wait a bit to react on this proposal: I send a U2U to the IT-minded admin or moderators and they decide.
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bwn
Harmless
Posts: 5
Registered: 23-9-2015
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Mood: No Mood
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I am going to attach this here for now (md5: 7d001f64e8bc018fa687f1c24a0fd17f). I dug up this version of the XMB->SMF converter, it ran the
conversion all the way through without errors, but choked on the recounting totals and statistics step. The posts and users all made it over, but I'm
seeing a couple issues with the conversion right off the bat:
- XMF quoting isn't converted to SMF quoting
- Single and double quotes have escape characters in posts (ex: it\'s)
- It didn't convert post attachments
- Thread subjects get changed to the subject of the most recent post that has one set
(for example, after conversion, this post is named 'converter still fails')
- Poll choices didn't make it over
- Some character set issues
- SMF has stricter limits on allowed html (links and images show source code)
Attachment: xmb_smf_converter-10.30.2015.tgz (28kB)
This file has been downloaded 1145 times
[Edited on 1-11-2015 by bwn]
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metalresearcher
National Hazard
Posts: 758
Registered: 7-9-2010
Member Is Offline
Mood: Reactive
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Why not using vBulletin ?
I use other forums like alloyavenue.com (metalcasting) and iceinspace.com.au (astronomy) which do use this software and is very good.
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gdflp
Super Moderator
Posts: 1320
Registered: 14-2-2014
Location: NY, USA
Member Is Offline
Mood: Staring at code
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As per the topic by Polverone
| Quote: Originally posted by Polverone |
Important forum features:
-Free (I could pay for vBulletin, but then I couldn't prepare working forum backups in virtual machine images) |
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akok
Harmless
Posts: 14
Registered: 25-7-2016
Location: Greece
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Mood: No Mood
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Polverone could you send me the forums backup to try it on newer XMB?
In parallel I could make an attempt a transition to alternative software if possible.
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akok
Harmless
Posts: 14
Registered: 25-7-2016
Location: Greece
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Guys I have grade news!!
I've made it!!!! I've successfully transfered the old xmf to new smf SM forum!!
I'm asking from the administrators to grant my access to make the transfer online!!!
Additionally, there' re THOUSANDS of members with duplicate account or only logged once!! the maintenance to smf (or mybb that are correctly trying to
convert) can be piece of cake!!
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Marvin
National Hazard
Posts: 995
Registered: 13-10-2002
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Looks like good progress, but that forum looks nothing like this forum yet. I'm sure when Polverone has some time he'll speak for himself, for now
what might help most is if you wrote down every step you took. When the forum is fully functional and all extra plugins work Polverone can read
through and decide if it's feasible to apply all the other tweaks and patches and that the effort is worth the reward.
There is also the risk that moving to a board with new features opens up new security holes.
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akok
Harmless
Posts: 14
Registered: 25-7-2016
Location: Greece
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Marvin,
No... SMF is obviously (and undoubtedly) far better than XMB even in this state... And think I found a better one, myBB, which i've tried it and is
incredible!! The double user can be merge... For instance there were 4 accounts of Chemplayer which I made them one... There are other Marvins as well
which can be possibly your locked out account of yours.. And may other features (Chat, Avatars, custom smilies etc)!!!
And seriously... security issues? You know that XMB has stopped development since 2012 and only sometime made a fix in 2015?? all our data is at risk
by staying in this platform... Moreover the issue of open .ova backups exposed all e-mails provided...
I'm not saying that the conversion went perfect.. There are some issues with syntax of quotes but it can be edited individually by the creator of the
thread or post... But the users, groups, threads, posts passwords migrations went perfectly!!
MyBB is far more secured and there is no change of discontinued in the next 5 years at least...
Just a preview of MyBB...
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Velzee
Hazard to Others
Posts: 381
Registered: 19-8-2015
Location: New York
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Mood: Taking it easy
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Hmm. Looks like akok is onto something.
Check out the ScienceMadness Wiki: http://www.sciencemadness.org/smwiki/index.php/Main_Page
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
—Arthur Schopenhauer
"¡Vivá Cristo Rey!"
—Saint José Sánchez del Río |
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Melgar
Anti-Spam Agent
Posts: 2004
Registered: 23-2-2010
Location: Connecticut
Member Is Offline
Mood: Estrified
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I'm nearly 100% certain that vBulletin's license allows for the distribution of virtual machine images. After all, with cloud computing being where
it is, how could it not? Software like that is typically very generous about giving its customers plenty of rights and such, and since it's all
written in php, they essentially give you the source code when you buy it. Usually, the license is per public-facing domain, so like, if you bought a
site license, it could only be public-facing on sciencemadness.org. I've used vBulletin, and moderated a forum that I installed it on, and it was
really very straightforward. They only make you authenticate when you're downloading updates and such, it's not like it'll shut down if it goes five
minutes without being able to connect to vBulletin's servers.
vBulletin also can do "retro" styles, which at this point would almost be necessary for this site, since it's been out of style so long that its
deliberate flaunting of Web 2.0 guidelines is clearly a style choice.
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WangleSpong5000
Hazard to Others
Posts: 129
Registered: 3-11-2017
Location: Oz
Member Is Offline
Mood: Curious
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All I'm really familiar with is using React redux for the front and, Express for the backend, Mongo as the middleware to query the database and using
Node to kick the whole thing off. All written in JavaScript. Modular components for everything...
Isomorphic JavaScript... it's pretty awesome. I might try and write one as a project for myself... I know bugger all about pretty much everything
else.
Sorry I know this probably isn't very helpful... I'm just surprised when I learn that people still use PHP. Every dev I know tells me not to bother
learning it although I thought it couldn't hurt... Shit I'm still surprised when I hear ppl still use Jquery!
I have no proffesional experience though so what the fuck do I know...
I do know JavaScript however... I'm going to pore over this thread and research all this old school stuff... I'm interested...
Hyperbole be thy name
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j_sum1
Administrator
Posts: 6320
Registered: 4-10-2014
Location: At home
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Mood: Most of the ducks are in a row
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You know, every time this topic comes up I reflect on how content I am with the old-school look and interface. There are actually very few modern
features that I think we actually need.
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JJay
International Hazard
Posts: 3440
Registered: 15-10-2015
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Is there a current SM backup? I was thinking a while back that it would be nice to have all the PDFs indexed, and it would be a lot easier to download
a tgz than to spider the site.
Oh and PHP is still very widely used... something like 80% of web sites use PHP. I haven't used React, but jQuery is pretty much the best thing out
there for DOM manipulation... the stock UI elements are so-so, but there are a lot of good third party tools that interface with it. Most websites
really don't use a lot of Ajax or fancy UI elements, though....
I think Node is a great concept, but I haven't really used it, and it works quite differently from how most programmers think about web applications.
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