Hi there, I don’t think there’s any bug. How did you originally determine what was the oldest PM on Discourse? Did you search for it or just repeatedly scroll down the list of PMs? Since it’s an infinitely scrollable list of PMs (no pages) it’s just a matter of lots of scrolling until you reach the oldest PM, and since that’s not really practical, searching PMs before or after a specific date seems like the proper way. Of course you can also now do a full text search of your PM titles and/or message bodies, or you can search for all PMs by a specific user like I showed you.
I'll check if there's a way to add it to the user's popup details when the username is clicked.
1 Thank
I’d actually say that objectively speaking the new forum is much simpler/cleaner in its design than what we have here. Whether that’s a good thing or not is entirely subjective, although I also tend to prefer more traditional designs myself. However the current theme on the new forum is the most traditional one I can find that shows the most information at first glance.
A password reset request link for the test server arrived at my hotmail dot com account that is my email of record here. It came to the junk folder & performed correctly. I was mostly just curious if it would hit hotmail at all. I didn't poke around much, just confirmed I could see my recent posts. I'll dig deeper this evening.
As an ex-network analyst retired from xerox, I can say I appreciate the unseen, monumental effort required to roll this out with deep testing, end user input & minimal bugs.
slmjim
Thanks very much for testing! Yep, Hotmail/Outlook are usually by far the most challenging to deliver a message to, they usually just discard or reject messages from new domains and it doesn’t even reach the spam folder. So hopefully once we switch to this same setup with the budgetlightforum.com domain that’s been around a long time and doesn’t have a history of spamming, we should have pretty good email deliverability.
Same here. The password reset email for the second test site was delivered quickly to my Hotmail account’s junk folder. After that it’s a simple matter of adding the email address to the safe senders list. The first test site email (maybe due to the unusual .site tld?) did not arrive the first time.
:+1: :+1:
I’m surprised at how well and how quickly the test site updates and migration schedule have progressed. Great job, SB!
2023-02-06 update:
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 posts created before 5:00 AM (GMT) 2023-02-06 (they will re-appear on the migrated Discourse forum)
- Post edits of older posts created 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!
Wow, this is moving along so quickly! 
Thanks for all the work you’re putting into this SB!
2023-02-08 update:
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:
https://blftest.ddns.net(link is external)
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:
- https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/6287 / https://blftest.ddns.net/t/overview-all-eneloop-batteries-2005-2022-finally-a-new-eneloop-june-2022/6287(link is external)
- https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/42408 / https://blftest.ddns.net/t/part-1-official-blf-gt-group-buy-thread-group-buy-officially-closed-lights-shipping/42408(link is external)
Thanks for your help and patience!
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?
eg. https://blftest.ddns.net/t/poll-should-we-do-away-with-anonymous-rude-marks/72779
Broken link: Poll: Should We Do Away With Anonymous Rude Marks? | BudgetLightForum.com
Works with TEMP removed: https://web.archive.org/web/20221127010150/https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/72779
I checked the BLF LT1M-Mini Project - The little Lantern! thread where post #2 was updated probably a hundred times and it looks fine to me.
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.
Glad you were able to 1) first find the bug, and 2) find the solution. Bugs on unique or rare scenarios are often a huge pain to resolve 
I clicked on messages and scrolled down to the very end.
Also the issue of Toykeeper’s messages not showing up either.
They all seem to be there but having to run custom searches to find them and not all being on the screen of messages/inbox is the bug.
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.
Could you please confirm if you checked both the message “Inbox” as well as the “Sent” messages folder?
2023-02-11, 01:27 GMT
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:
