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The current state of the forum


Post Posted Fri Sep 18, 2020 10:40 pm
shadow


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Let us know where we can test it out and I'm in! :D

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27-11-10: Ahoy Rotterdam
22-11-16: Heineken Music Hall Amsterdam
Post Posted Sat Sep 19, 2020 11:51 am
Dr_Jones


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Location: Leiden, Netherlands
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We have some problems with users not able to log in to the new system at the moment. We're working on it, so I'll keep you updated.
Post Posted Sat Sep 19, 2020 8:44 pm
Dr_Jones


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Location: Leiden, Netherlands
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A part of the problem is that the browser cache/cookies have to be cleared if the site is over to a new environment. If you get the error message whilst logging: "The submitted form was invalid. Try submitting again.", you need to clear cache & cookies. Adam did some great work for configuring the system as it should be.

There is also a chance that your password is not correctly converted to the new system. This is a known bug with migrating the system. The only solution is to request a new password, there's a link on the form that will send an email to you to create a new password. If that fails, I can set a password for you, but you need to contact me. I'll provide an email address for it if you have a problem.
Post Posted Mon Sep 21, 2020 2:37 pm
Dr_Jones


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Location: Leiden, Netherlands
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Okay, we've been busy with preparing the server and setting up the forum. As of now, we plan to move to the new server tonight, so don't be startled if everything looks different.

On the restoration of the topics: I've managed to save 64638 posts and 3752 topics. That's almost 32% of all the posts that are restored. I'll keep adding posts in the meantime, so the percentage will go up. I will keep you updated in this topic about the progression of this process.

And many thanks to Adam for helping me configure the PHPBB board!
Post Posted Mon Sep 21, 2020 6:27 pm
Adam


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Posts: 296
Location: Cornwall,U.K.
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You're welcome, I have used phpBB since version 3.0 was released and it has always been a pain to configure correctly, if you get the slightest thing wrong the board does not function properly.
As Dr Jones said, whatever browser you are using if you have login issues, you need to clear it's cache and cookies, restart your browser and try again.
On the new forum is a new contact form (scroll to bottom and click "Contact") so users can contact an admin if they have any issues or need a password reset.
I have finished work on a style template, pending approval from admin, but the priority will be to make sure the new forum functions as it should & restoration of the missing posts.
Post Posted Tue Sep 22, 2020 10:05 pm
Velodynamic


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Location: Sweden, far north
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Will it be the same url or something else when it's ready for launch?
"The worst thing in any form of art is to be betrayed by your own habits."
- JEAN MICHEL JARRE
Post Posted Tue Sep 22, 2020 10:22 pm
Dr_Jones


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Location: Leiden, Netherlands
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Velodynamic wrote: Tue Sep 22, 2020 10:05 pm Will it be the same url or something else when it's ready for launch?
It'll be the same URL. I see the DNSs are updating to the new IP address.
Post Posted Wed Sep 23, 2020 7:44 am
Dr_Jones


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Location: Leiden, Netherlands
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If everything is okay, we've moved to the new server. Welcome everybody.
Post Posted Wed Sep 23, 2020 12:13 pm
Dr_Jones


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Location: Leiden, Netherlands
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Next up: the new GUI and the restauration of the old posts.
Image
Post Posted Wed Sep 23, 2020 2:38 pm
Adam


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The new GUI is nearly ready, just a few little things I need to look at.
Post Posted Wed Sep 23, 2020 10:23 pm
Dr_Jones


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Location: Leiden, Netherlands
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When digging through the Google cache, I found printview pages, which can contain hundreds or thousands of posts. These are generated for people to print, just like this one:
http://www.zoolook.nl/forum/viewtopic.p ... view=print

The old site has the whole topic as print page, the phpbb3 site has 15 posts per page, just like the forum boards.

As you can see, there's no reference to a post ID or anything. But since the HTML code is readable, I could process them to values in a table. I could identify every user and date for every post. The hardest part is the message itself. I can process the message, but matching with the existing post in the old forum's database is hard. Partly because of the html code in the printview.php page and the phpbb code in the database records. So what I've done is: I've put every post in a SOLR search index and let SOLR compare the message from the printview page, which will give me the post-id.

The past week I've written some software to match posts with what's in the SOLR search index and that gave me some promising results. Of course, if a message is "Thanks" or ":-)", then a match will be hard. Also, messages which quote other messages might give me false positives too. So I have to check the list of matches by hand. But for most of the times, matching was done pretty good. I had a topic of 1500 posts and the first 700 posts were matched correctly. Pretty cool.

Anyway, long story short: thanks to this action, I have dug through 40 printview topics, added 12215 lost posts. Amongst these are mega-threads with sometimes 2500+ posts like the Teo&Tea thread, Oxygene 3D, In-Doors 2009 tour (not complete), How hot/cold is it where you are and The last film you saw in the cinema. These are results I really like. I still have to go through 29 other topics I've managed to fish out of the Google/Bing/Yandex cache. These include some other mega-threads like Some JMJ's photos, the official blog/instagram/twitter and facebook topics and some more. There's now 76863 of the 202821 posts , or almost 38%, restored. WAY more than I expeced.
Post Posted Fri Sep 25, 2020 1:05 pm
Oxygene


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Posts: 137
Location: Germany
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Thanks a lot to all the people who put a lot of effort into making the forum work again and to restore as much of the old posts as possible! This is really very much appreciated! Without the Blah-Blah-Café something essential would really be missing!
Merci à tous!

Regards,
Oxygene
www.jarrelook.de
93 Berlin I/95 Paris/97 Stuttg.,Munich,Oberh.,
Frankf./02 Aalborg/08 Franf.,Zurich/09 Koblenz,
Zurich/10 Oberh.,Stuttg.,Bamb.,Munich,Mannh.,
Strasb.,Oslo/11 Monaco,Frankf.,Dortm.,Cologne,
Treves, Munich,Zurich/16/17 Frankf.,Berlin,
Düsseld.,Nuremb.,Münster,Berlin,Bonn
Post Posted Fri Sep 25, 2020 1:13 pm
Dr_Jones


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Posts: 3729
Location: Leiden, Netherlands
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We've had enough forums gone now: Jarre.net, Space of Freedom, in the Netherlands we had the Jarre-NL-forum. So much history would be gone if this one would disappear too. For example: I totally forgot that Mike Oldfield made Return to Ommadawn because of something JMJ said at a Facebook chat. I remembered the item when I dived into the database.
Post Posted Fri Sep 25, 2020 2:20 pm
Jote


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Online Now
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Location: Lodz, Poland
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Thanks for the incredible work so far. Too bad the migration didn't happen before the crash.

P.S. any chance the forum could get a "like" functionality on posts via some addon or sth?
Post Posted Fri Sep 25, 2020 3:37 pm
Adam


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Posts: 296
Location: Cornwall,U.K.
Likes given: 9
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There is an extension called "Thanks for posts", I will have a look at it on my test board & see if I can edit it into a "Like" function.







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