Hi everyone, the first stage of the migration process to the new BLF forum engine is now in progress! As described in the previous update, here's how it's hopefully going to play out:
The initial migration process has begun, started today (Monday) around 5:00 AM (GMT) 2023-02-06.
The initial migration process will take around 80 hours if nothing goes wrong.
During that whole time, budgetlightforum.com (the current forum engine) will be fully operable. However, any of the following actions on the current forum engine during the initial migration phase will not be carried over to the new Discourse forum:
Existing user profile changes (registered email, avatar, location, etc.) during the initial migration phase
Post deletions of older postscreated before 5:00 AM (GMT) 2023-02-06 (they will re-appear on the migrated Discourse forum)
Post edits of older postscreated before 5:00 AM (GMT) 2023-02-06 (the original post version will re-appear on the migrated Discourse forum)
After the initial migration process has finished, the current forum engine will be taken offline, with a notice that the final migration stage is taking place.
Projected to start this Thursday at about 12:00 noon (GMT) 2023-02-09.
At some point later that day, the budgetlightforum.com domain will start pointing to a login page for the new Discourse engine, still closed to the public.
The final migration stage will take about 8 hours if nothing goes wrong, after which the new Discourse engine will be open to the public.
Thanks to everyone for their patience! Enjoy these last few days on the old forum, and then we'll see you all over on the new one!
Hi everyone, it looks like the timetable for the final stage of the migration process will be slightly delayed. I was randomly browsing some of the imported posts when I discovered a rare bug in a few threads that was causing some posts to appear out of order. This was actually due to a bug in Drupal (the current forum engine), but I had to find a way to work around it in the Discourse importer code. Once that was in place I had to start all over again with the import process after it had been running for about 24 hours. So my best estimate as of now is that the final import stage will start on Friday instead of Thursday.
Meanwhile, I'd really appreciate it if you could all look over a quick testbed I set up only to verify the post order with the fix I applied:
The above test site does not include any of the final theming or configuration changes that the final migrated forum will have. It's only intended to verify proper post threading. Please especially check the classic long-running BLF threads where the original poster left some "reserved" posts after the first post and later filled them in with additional information. Here are a few problematic threads that I believe to have been fixed with the new code:
No worries about the delay. It’s amazing that you noticed and fixed the bug so quickly.
In my limited browsing I did not notice any obviously out of order posts.
I noticed polls are imported as posts with a link to an archive on the wayback machine, but the URL does not work because there is “TEMP” inserted. Is this expected?
Excellent, thanks a lot for confirming. That would have been another affected thread, notice how it was imported into the previous testbed: https://blfdev.com/t/blf-lt1m-mini-project-the-little-lantern-pms-sent-today-june-21-2022/60851/2
The interest list was still there, but it appeared wayyyy down the thread according to the date when it was last edited. Very weird Drupal bug, it shouldn’t change the original created date on the edited post, but under certain conditions it apparently does. Now fixed with a workaround in the Discourse importer code.
It was definitely fortunate that I stumbled across that before we reached the point of no return. And the fix was actually just a one-liner addition to the Discourse importer code, also extremely fortunate that it didn’t require completely refactoring the entire post import function to work around the Drupal bug. This has been a recurring theme during this entire migration exploration and implementation process. I believe BLF is probably the biggest Drupal forum on the internet by a large margin, and it’s extremely unique in quite a few ways with many bespoke components that have been assembled over the years. I’ve been hitting software edge-cases and bugs and limitations with almost every component in the whole software stack that were previously unseen.
Yep, good eye! It’s because that’s a snapshot of the import process that is still running, and to make a long story short, the Wayback Machine links first begin with “TEMP” inserted into the URL and then at the very end they get replaced.
I am still trying to figure it out. If you can toss a recent posts link on the top right that would be great.
I do appreciate your attempts to find the most simple interface even though its not as good as here.
OK, the problem seems to have been resolved. (Not within my control unfortunately.) Attempting to re-enable email sending so you can reset your passwords. Remember to use your registered BLF email address, not your BLF username.
IMPORTANT: Please do NOT create a new account with a new email address.
If you’re still having trouble resetting your password please send an email to this address:
It looks like Yahoo / AOL / Verizon email haven’t updated their records yet and are rejecting email from this new server. I’ll let you know when to try again.
