High Load Errors are annoying...

[fbmf]

My favorite part is how they say that Zherog has only contributed a little bit of money. I am curious if they would treat me the same way. My contributions are in the hundreds of dollars. Would they treat me differently because I pony up?

If they do, that's gay.

And I don't mean homosexual.

I also don't mean happy.

It's a third thing you don't know about.

Game On,
fbmf

[Maj]

Just out of curiosity, when Nifty switches servers, are you gonna hop, too?

[Jacob_Orlove]

1199325857[/unixtime]]My favorite part is how they say that Zherog has only contributed a little bit of money.

My favorite part is where they continue that sentence with "(well, under your current username)". It's like they have no way to check if he's paid them money and then changed account names. Shoddy accounting is even worse business than shoddy customer service.

[Zherog]

And if they'd do something as simple as check IP addresses, they'd see that one payment was done under my wife's account. But even with that together, we're not in the "hundreds."

[tzor]

I think when Maj meant "you" she meant "The Gaming Den" not you personally.

[Zherog]

I think fbmf did too.

[tzor]

1199420429[/unixtime]](Z's pretty awesome, so he might pull something out of his ass while I'm gone; I don't know).

That was something I really didn't need to know, or wanted to visualize. But alas I haven't gotten my coffee yet.



(It's the Maj (Rocky) and Z (Bullwinkle) Show!)
Z: Hey Maj, watch me pull a board server out of my ass!
Maj: Not again!
Z: Presto Changeo



Maj: That's not a board server, that's BbBoy's customer service.

[Zherog]

Nah. Lions are useful. Maybe a sloth would be a better image.

[tzor]

On the other hand when you lodged a complaint with customer service their first response was to attempt to bite your head off.

[Zherog]

nah - they're first response was to bury their head in the sand. Does that mean they're an ostrich? I've heard the ostrich's eye is bigger than it's brain... Hmmm...

[fbmf]

**Cross posted from Nifty**

I'd definitely be willing to move with you guys as long as:

[*]The Gaming Den remains a separate entity just as it is now.

[*]The Gaming Den history can be imported.

I will cheerfully kick in for the cost of server space, software, what have you. If I need to buy my own software that is fine also.

Please keep me informed of your progress.

Game On,
fbmf

[Maj]

Just to reassure people here in case they think I have plans for message board domination: Keeping the two boards separate is the goal (Do you know what a nasty mess you get when you mix blue and brown? Ugh.)

[Murtak]

1199491534[/unixtime]][if] The Gaming Den history can be imported.

I can't promise anything before taking some looks at database structures, but if you can get a dump of all the old data I can probably get it imported into the database format. Worst comes to worst I should be able to do it on my machine, then give you a new dump to import to your new server.

Now, how much time it takes is another thing entirely. But if you can get me some sample data and/or a table structure for the BB and the new forum I can look them over and give you an estimate.

[tzor]

1200156887[/unixtime]](Do you know what a nasty mess you get when you mix blue and brown? Ugh.)

Yes I know. I think I was like 7 or 8 when my mom bought me a pair of two tone blue - brown fomal shoes for Easter. There was a really derogotory term for the shoes as well.

It's the second worst fashion event in my life. The worst being the pink suit my mom got for me at age 5.

[Maj]

If fbmf downloads a backup of his boards, Murtak, I'm sure he could get that to you.

I would also be interested in knowing how big the back-up is.

[Murtak]

Well, I just hope it is not in excess of a couple hundred megs

[Surgo]

You can download a backup on their sample board. I tried to look at it myself but couldn't make heads nor tails of it -- it looked like some binary file output from perl's equivalent of fwrite().

[Maj]

Nifty's backup was 148 MB, but I'm going to guess that TGD would run slightly smaller than that.

I have absolutely no way of comprehnding the data. If there's a super genius here who knows how, I'd really appreciate a heads up.

[fbmf]

I just moved in with Ramnza, so currently my internet access is spotty. It should be better after this weekend, and then I can get a sample download going.

Game On,
fbmf

[Murtak]

Databases are really simple, there is no need for any super-geniusness. Unless bbboy has some really weird ideas they will use tables that link to other tables and thats it.

At it's most basic you can build a forum with 2 to 4 tables. You have a user table where you store each user with a unique number, a username, password and whatever other data you can enter in the user profile.

And then you have a post table where you store for each post a title, text, date and who entered it. But since text is yucky you do not store the user as "Maj" but instead store Maj's unique number, say 104.

And thats basically it. And in those dump files you basically have giant tables, with their definitions (for our example something like "table users, integer id, string name, string password") and then the entire contents of the table in some weird format.

All that I would do is figure out the formatting, write a script that reads it in and then spit it out in whatever weird format the new database requires.



Anyways ... you already have a dump for me to check out? Have you already decided on a forum software to move to?

[Maj]

I think it's mostly decided that we'll be switching to vBulletin. It's expensive, but it's the only software that has a conversion for Bbboy.

And if you want to check out Nifty's backup - that would be really cool. I'll work on making that available later today.

[Murtak]

Well, if you use the conversion software there is not much need for me to write another conversion script.

I will be happy to have a look at the backup if you have a platform you like but lack a converter for, but if you go with vBulletin I don't see the point.

[Maj]

We don't yet. That's the thing.

[Murtak]

Ok, then I will take a look

[Zherog]

1200557659[/unixtime]]
But since text is yucky you do not store the user as "Maj" but instead store Maj's unique number, say 104.

You're assuming two things:

First, that the use a database rather than text files. I think that's a safe assumption, but it's still an assumption.

Second, you're assuming they have a normalized database. I think that's a less safe assumption.