I’ve become concerned that the Weather-Watch forum software (SMF) will reach a crunch point soon. The version I’m running doesn’t work with PHP8.2 and PHP8.1 goes out of support in November 2023. The upgrade path from SMF2.0 to SMF2.1 isn’t straightforward with limited themes and plugins available. The themes have changed significantly and would require me to do a lot of work to continue the current look and feel by modifying an existing SMF 2.1 theme. Most of the plugins that are used on Weather-Watch.com, including those used for forum security, aren’t available for SMF2.1 which makes the upgrade more worrying/difficult.
So, I’ve been looking at alternatives and there aren’t too many options. Firstly, very few pieces of forum software have migration tools to move the existing content to the new software. There are commercial companies who will do migrations, but the cost of doing that is in the thousands of dollars range so not something I can really contemplate. I tried a couple of pieces of software that (allegedly) had migration tools, but one didn’t work at all and another worked until it broke part way through in an endless loop.
Then I discovered Discourse. It is forum software but in some ways it’s a little different than we’ve been used to. It had a migration tool which nearly worked. I liked the look of Discourse so I’ve spent some time over the last few weeks gaining some new skills (docker, Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL and Discourse itself) and have tweaked the migration tool to do a better job with Weather-Watch forum content. It still needs some more work, but it’s working fairly reliably now and is able to create a reasonable version of the SMF forum content in Discourse.
I’m now ready to let a few explorers loose into Discourse. This is to do a number of things:
To help gauge whether Discourse would be a reasonable replacement for SMF.
To look at the migration that I’ve done so far and see if there are any oddities or areas for improvement
To explore the new software to find exciting new options and also identify any bit of ‘essential’ SMF functionality that doesn’t exist in Discourse
Any explorers will be given access to a private SMF board to discuss findings with me and other explorers. The test Discourse is limited (it’s only got a sub-set of the normal boards and users in it at the moment). It’s also undergoing changes as I explore options/themes/etc, so if you don’t like change then perhaps leave the exploring to others! There is also a high likelihood that the test version will be wiped and rebuilt from time to time as I improve on the migration software, so any exploring you do will probably get reset back to blank at some point.
If you’re interested in exploring, send me a PM and I’ll send you some details of how to access the test forum.
Chris Discourse is now used for openSUSE and I’m getting used to it!
I just tried to view the openSUSE forums on my Android tablet using the latest Firefox available of V109 and it says the browser is not supported 8O I have asked on there why this is happening.
The latest stable Firefox for Android is now 110 and I updated to it but the openSUSE forums still refuse to work for me :roll: tried everything clearing cache and disabling the only add-on but still wont work. The tablet is running Android 12. I will get it sorted somehow
I’m running the latest beta version of Discourse. It’s interesting that there is a stable version but it’s quite old and the recommendation is to run the beta version unless you have a real need to stick with the stable version. The are many fixes and be features in the beta so it looks like your other site might still be running on the stable version
Chris I tried on my phone last night with Firefox V110 and it worked initially but now it fails again. Same thing happened with my tablet first time here it worked but now it fails and still fails on openSUSE!
Weird. I’m using v110 too and it logs in/works every time which suggests it might be something other than the Firefox version that’s causing your problem.
There are no adverts on my system so it’s not an ad-blocker getting upset at something (or if it is then it’s a dodgy ad-blocker!). I believe Discourse needs Javascript enabled and it possibly uses some library code, e.g. jQuery, etc so maye you’re blocking some of those?
UBlock is my only add-on and that was disabled. I could try removing it completely but only as a test. I did add openSUSE as trusted but that made no difference.
Are you able to do a quick test using Chrome/Edge/Opera/something else to see if they’re also affected? I use Edge on desktop and a mixture of Edge/Firefox on mobile and not had any problems at all. The official line on Discourse supported browsers is - discourse/README.md at main · discourse/discourse · GitHub
Unsupported seems to mean older so I think it’s unlikely that a current beta version of Firefox would break it (and doesn’t in my case). They also don’t seem to trust the version numbers provided by browsers to check for ‘supported’. One example I’ve seen is that they test whether ‘aspect ratio’ is supported by the browser and if not that’s one way to denote an unsupported browser.
I can run it OK on Chrome but I dislike Chrome and prefer Chromium (Chrome without the google stuff ) and just tried Firefox Beta which works. Just checked the Discourse site for supported mobile browsers and the only two listed are Mobile Safari for IOS and Mobile Chrome for Android and that’s all. This to me says Discourse is not yet fit for purpose. OK Firefox Beta works but according to this is not supported.
Sorry, I just realised that I misread that table. Seems odd that Chrome is supported but not Edge when they both use the same underlying engine.
And yes, I’m using Firefox beta. I can’t remember why now. Once upon a time there was a feature that was only in beta so I started using it then but I guess that feature was long ago rolled into the full release version.
There are now a group of intrepid explorers looking at the test system. I’m not limiting access so if you’d like to take a look just drop me an email and I’ll set your account up. I know that some people may have more time to spend exploring, but I’m interested in any feedback, even if it’s just something like “I managed to log in and look around. It looks OK”
To give you my latest thoughts…the more I see of Discourse the more impressed I am. It’s got some features that could be useful to us and even more useful stuff with some plugins installed. It’s actively being developed with problem fixes being made available regularly (every day in some cases). It’s been pretty rock solid when I’ve been testing it and I’ve not noticed any problems so far which is good. So at this point I’m seeing that as meaning it’s more likely that we’ll migrate, but that also depends to some extent on the feedback I get. It does look different and works differently in some ways, but to me it’s not a completely alien experience. There are still the equivalent of boards, topics and posts. It’s got a slightly different PM system (very different under the covers), but also has some things that we don’t have, e.g. group/personal chat and ways to restrict the amount of forum information you see, e.g. if you’re only interested in WxSim you can mute most other categories so you only get told about posts in WxSim.
On the subject of PMs - As a result of differences in the way that ‘PMs’ are handled in Discourse I wouldn’t intend migrating PMs from this forum to Discourse. Now I know I’ve not decided we’re definitely moving, but having looked at the numbers of PMs in this forum (approx 32,000 some going back to 2003) if you’ve got any PMs that contain information that you would like to keep, I’d suggest grabbing a copy of them now. If there’s important information in them then there’s always a chance that a database corruption or other problem with this forum might lose them.
OK - The early intrepid explorers have helped me to do some testing and now it’s time to let others have a look. Please bear in mind that this is still only a test system so anything you enter or configure will be thrown away at some point. The user interface (theme) on the test system still needs some work, e.g. colours changing and graphics adding and possible selecting a different theme, but those are cosmetics that I can work on.
Log in with with your username/password from this forum. Email is disabled, so password changes can’t be applied and there are no notifications. Feel free to do anything you’re able to in the test system. Reply to stuff, delete stuff, modify stuff, etc. It’s only with people testing it out that we’ll find out what works and what (if anything) doesn’t work.
Make a post on the test system to say what you found or make other comments. I’m watching what’s going on there so I’ll see any comments.
The best I can find is a tool to export PMs in XML format. All the data is there, just not in an easily readable format. A typical message looks like this…
All your messages are downloaded together in a single file, so it could be quite large for some people. XML is searchable, so if you’re looking for a specific user or word then you should be able to find it. You can also open XML files in MS Word (current versions) and possibly MS Excel to get a better formatted version. I suspect that other Office packages will also be able to make sense of XML files too.
The option to do the export is on the ‘My Messages’ menu.
Word (from Microsoft 365) formats it fairly well. I allowed editing and saved it as a Word docx (500 KB), ignoring the message “This file has custom xml elements that are no longer supported by Word. Saving the file will remove these elements permanently.”
But only the inbox is downloaded: can I get Sent items too?
