It took some time but I finally settled on using bbPress as the replacement for SMF but there was one big problem that I had to beat before that could happen.

How to keep the existing years worth of data from the SMF powered forums and convert it to a format bbPress could use. At first I was really disheartened as there is not one-to-one conversion available. It was only after doing a lot of searching on Bing that a solution presented itself – it wasn’t pretty nor was it easy but there was a solution.

It involved converting SMF 2.0 RC 1 to phpBB 3 and then converting that over to bbPress. There was still a lot of fancy footwork to do as nothing is ever simple or easy but I managed to do it.

I will be pulling all my notes and screen shots together over the next few days and posting about the whole process. In the meantime here are some before and after shots.

Before: SMF version of the WinExtra Community Forums

After: The new bbPress powered WinExtra Community Forums

[SMF to bbPress] The conversion is done now for the real hard work is a post from: winextra
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2. PJ’s Forum Round-up 7.10.08
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Currently the forums are being powered by a forums package developed by Simple Machine Forums (SMF) and have for the most part served the purpose. However I have lately become very dissatisfied with SMF and started looking for alternatives.

This is one of the things that has been keeping me exceedingly busy and not posting as much here. That will be changing as soon as I finish up with this conversion project.

After being so immersed in WordPress for the blogging software I use I have come to really appreciate the ease of use, extensibility and many other benefits that come with it. In contrast SMF, and to a large percentage, has become old feeling and incredibly hard to work with. Not to mention the fact that SMF itself has been in v2.0 development for going on 2 years with no final release in sight.

With all this I figured it was time to look around to see what I could replace it with and possibly bring a more Web 2.0 look and feel to the forums; but without alienating our current members (who honestly aren’t the biggest fans of all this Web 2.0 crap for which I love ‘em – it helps keep me real).

However there is a really big problem when it comes to switching forum software – your data. People talk about things like Facebook and other social media networks being a walled garden of user data – well forums have exactly the same problem, you will grow gray hair trying to convert data between forum packages.

It is further compounded by two additional problems. The first being that the v2.0 of SMF I am running is still in beta (or release candidate as they call the most recent release) which makes finding any converters almost impossible. The second problem is that the forum package I settled on, bbPress 1.0, has no direct conversion path from SMF.

There is good news though. I have managed – in testing – to make that conversion and so far everything is testing out great. I plan on pulling all the pieces together in a series of posts about the experience along with a full in depth how-to for those people looking to go down the same road.

All said and done though the gray hairs gained through all this will be worth it and I’m really excited on what the future will bring to the WinExtra Community Forums once the change is completed – here’s hoping you will be as well.

The agony of web forums and the road to conversion is a post from: winextra
Follow us on Twitter: @WinExtra | Don't forget we're on Facebook as well: WinExtra Fans

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Hey, I’m don’t know if you’ve ever tried but can you spot a trannie?  If that’s got you going bonkers, try this link out.  (Make sure you’ve got your headphones handy.)  Once you’ve finished with that, light up those matches!  It’s time for a good old fashion hunt!  We’s gonna shoot us some musical folk.

And just because I haven’t mentioned him yet, we hope you heal quickly Joe.  He had a minor operation to remove an unused part of his body.  (Did I mention that he’s single?)  All seems to have went well but he isn’t gonna be singing or dancing too much for a little while.

Over in the Cool Links section we find …. frozen sausage!  Ok, not really.  But its the next best thing:  commonly misspleed words.  Give it a go and see how well you do, smarty pants!  Infinidean posted a link to a great site that tests your visualization and duplication skills.  Tougher than it looks.  (Hint, do a search for “Time Waster” in the forums, you’ll find tons more of these great sites.)  In the mean time, are you ready for the world to end in 2012?  Yeah, me neither.  I mean, if those guys were so smart, why’d they disappear?

The Joke Corner has some awesome posts in it, this one has to be my favorite.  Go, read, now.  I’ll wait for you to come back….

Taking a hop, skip and a jump, we land over in the Hardware Help section.  Where we find Pierre looking for Vista drivers for a printer.  Sorry Pierre, I think you’re out of luck.  Vista is compatible with exactly nothing.  Especially in terms of legacy hardware.  Spend the 100 Euros and get a new laser printer.

EricH, on the other hand, was very busy putting new RAM into his computer.  Seems he put it all in backwards.  Couldn’t figure out why the computer kept forgetting things….  That brings us up to dontor’s post about MB-based Raid 1 or add-in card.  Pierre had the answer.  Not so surprisingly, I agree with him.  (Great minds think alike and all that stuff.)  Oh, and Joe, that modular stuff, it’s all just a gimmick.  The PC P&C PSU is worth it’s weight in gold.  GO FOR IT!

Thank you for your attention, now please return to your daily routine.  There’s nothing more to see here.

Have a great day!

PJ’s Forum Round-Up 22.12.08 is a post from: winextra
Follow us on Twitter: @WinExtra | Don't forget we're on Facebook as well: WinExtra Fans

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Within the WinExtra family we have our own gift giving place called the forums.  We pass words of love and wisdom back and forth like little periods of acid or sentences of cocaine.  Wow, what a mind-blowing family!  With that in mind, we all would like to shout out to Kim, Steven’s better half, and wish her a very happy and merry birthday.  Keeping within the Coffee Shop we have a doozy of a post from Dontor.  Be prepared to reminisce about the times of old.  There’s also news of a first in commercial shipping.  What a shame but facinating all the same.

We’ve seen this one before but it never fails to generate a great deal of fun.  In Cool Links we get to have a go at creating creative (as opposed to evolutionary) church signs.  It’s a contest.  Have at it.  Absurdity is highly prized.  While you’re at it, check out this post.  It shows how easily your brain can be fooled.  Thanks to Nate for that one.  That was followed up by these two posts (Thing 1 and Thing 2) that have kept the folks in stitches.  *nods to ChadMan*

Once again, the Joke Corner has not failed to keep us giggling.  Of all the gut splitters, the best has got to be this one.  In one fell swoop, this gal has insulted the entire human race.  She’s insulted the Americans by being American and the rest of the world for being an American.  Heaven help us all.  On the adult side of things, this joke brightened my day.

For those of you with a penchant for flame-fests, the Cage is currently wallowing in posts filled with wails of doom, desperation and economic devastation, rather like Dante‘s fourth circle of Hell.  I think Billy rather nicely sums it up in this post.

Hardware News & Information.  Solid State Drives.  Come on!  Ya guys are killing me, already!  I wants one.

Security News & Information.  BotHunter.  The US Army has gone cyber.

On a personal note, I’ve been having problems with my computer.  Its a daily use computer but I do tend to use it for Battlefield 2 almost every day.  Lately I’ve been having lag problems.  You can find the specifics here, in the Hardware Help section.  Please, take a moment, read and help me with this problem.  Billy, on the other hand, is looking for solutions with a hard drive problem.  He needs all the help he can get.

And that, my kind readers, brings us to the end of another broadcast day.  I hope you have a great one!

PJ’s Forum Round-Up 1.12.08 is a post from: winextra
Follow us on Twitter: @WinExtra | Don't forget we're on Facebook as well: WinExtra Fans

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So, without further ado, let us recap last weeks doings.

Dancer‘s became a grandmother.  Again.  She did this just a few years ago.  We’re wondering if she’s learned anything about abstinence by now.  Many congrats Dancer.  Don’t know how you keep pumping them out but if they’re like you, this world is a better place for it.

ChadMan’s been lighting up a firestorm about politics in The Cage.  I’m beginning to wonder if he’s a pyromaniac in disguise….  Check out The Cage for the last five topics and you’ll get a taste for the evilness he’s brewing up.  His comments have been like Molotov cocktails on the smoldering embers of election politics.  (Note, you can’t get there if you haven’t registered and asked for access.  So, sign up, put your flame suit on and jump in!)

There’s been a few things happening down over the Software News & Information way.  ~David~ brought up a post on the ReactOS. couple of folks chimed in and what do you know, ~David~ got it to work in a virtual machine.  Even Pierre couldn’t pull that one off.  Go David!  On the other hand (*cringe*  bad choice of words there….), our Resident Gimpette HelloKit is out to save the world money!  She tossed us a link to a freeware data recovery for flash memory.  She’s my new heroine.

Down south in the Hardware Help area we find Dontor talking about a Wireless range extender.  While I’m pretty sure he’s referring to one of those spam e-mails that he loves reading, he’s actually gotten quite a few responses from folks that have real-world experience in this arena.

For the ‘muricans among us, do you remember the great depression?  It was before my time but stories around these parts has it that there were color fotography back then.  Billy gives us a cool link in 1930′s color phto’s (sic) that shows where we’ll be again in a few more months.  We love you Billy but don’t give up your day job to become a typesetter.  Your spelling sux worse than mine.

PJ’s Forum Round-up 7.10.08 is a post from: winextra
Follow us on Twitter: @WinExtra | Don't forget we're on Facebook as well: WinExtra Fans

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Yep, it was a bit of a slow week this time around.  Let’s take a look-see and find what hit the forums….

Chadman continued his one-man crusade on politics.  Bless his little soul.  (And I do mean little.)  ”The road to the bridge to nowhere…” opens the door to some seriously off the wall punditry and now everybody’s trying to crowd into that room.

Over in the coffee shop Nate treats us to the results of some new studies about Ideology overcoming Facts.  I thought it was an already accepted fact but some of our forum regulars just gotta try and prove it.

Our long-lost Melody returns to the flock just long enough to post an update.  We missed ya’ Melody.  Put the joystick down and come back to visit us.

Let’s face it, age isn’t kind to us.  As we get older, the various odds and bits start to fail at an alarming rate.  For those folks that cruise the web, this can be a real bother when the eyes start to go.  EricH brought us this Cool Trick that allows you to change the background color of a web page to improve the contrast.  It also help on those websites where the idiot designer put white text on white background.

At first I thought I was hallucinating when I saw this post.  Pierre’s display is suffering from epileptic seizures and he’s looking for advice on how to fix it.  What’s this world coming to?

Our pal Parry, from across the pond, posted a link to one of the best reads I’ve had in a long time.  I suggest you follow the link and brush up on your obscure history, especially if you’re American because, yes, there are other countries out there.

With that parting shot, I duck and bid you adieu.

Have a great day!

PJ’s Forum Round-up 28.9.08 is a post from: winextra
Follow us on Twitter: @WinExtra | Don't forget we're on Facebook as well: WinExtra Fans

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