making the transition

[Jezebel]

I'm sure that eventually you guys will want to only have one INTP forum. Personally, I don't want to have to log into two sites for a long period of time.

It could take a while to get this forum going since we already have one that is active. Here are some potential problems that I've thought of so far:

People are likely to get more responses to their threads on the other site, and could be reluctant to start posts over here.
When newbies sign up, they'll probably choose to go to the more active site. Plus, they may not even know about this one until after they have signed up.
There are a lot of old threads on the other forum that people still check and respond to.
Members get used to this forum not having much going on and don't bother checking it much.
The old site is easier to find than this one.
If we lock the other forum and make everyone register at one where hardly anything is going on, members could lose interest.

It might not be a good idea to just lock up the old forum which has a lot of active threads and established members, and force everyone to register at an empty one right away. And I know that this forum is still being modified. But we should breathe some life into this forum or people might keep signing up to the old one and posting there. Even if the old forum is going to be locked up soon, it should be done in a way so that everyone knows what is going on.

So I offer this thread as a place to post your ideas and opinions on making the transition and weaning members from the other board.

[MacGuffin]

I'd lock up (read-only) the old site by the end of the month. That should be enough time.

[sme_bro]

Maybe, but there are so many very active topics over there, i think people might get a little peeved at that.
Is there anyway we could move the topics to here? maybe with the last post from the old site included-or would that be too much work for the mods?
But we should definatly make some kind of ban on creating new topics over there, if people create all the new topics here hopefully it willl lull people over here.

[file cabinet]

Maybe, but there are so many very active topics over there, i think people might get a little peeved at that.
Is there anyway we could move the topics to here? maybe with the last post from the old site included-or would that be too much work for the mods?
But we should definatly make some kind of ban on creating new topics over there, if people create all the new topics here hopefully it willl lull people over here.

It's possible but the amount of time that is required is far too much... it would require trying to import data from a flat file source.. basically, it would be someone taking all the old threads and parsing them to fit into the phpBB structure. I will be making an archive of the old forum as soon as it becomes 'locked' .. I do agree that yes it would be cool if we could import all the posts from the previous forum but the feasibility is very low.

[sme_bro]

okay how about not the posts but a simple copy/paste? just re-create the topic, copy/paste-quote the last post and lock the origonal?
I think people would be able to do this themselves, cant rely to much on the mods to do the work.
Maybe an announcment over there warning people of the coming lock, once the topics are locked i think people will continue to refur to old posts and interesting topics are likely to be restarted anyway?

[file cabinet]

okay how about not the posts but a simple copy/paste? just re-create the topic, copy/paste-quote the last post and lock the origonal?
I think people would be able to do this themselves, cant rely to much on the mods to do the work.
Maybe an announcment over there warning people of the coming lock, once the topics are locked i think people will continue to refur to old posts and interesting topics are likely to be restarted anyway?


okay... I like this idea.. but rather then just copying and pasting the old threads, I have an idea that may work.
I am creating the archive that will be db driven(partially). After I am done parsing the archive and it's live, I could potentially create a new thread that has the original thread title and original poster, it will link to the archived thread. I am not sure how this will work since I don't know how phpBB handles time in the db(to have it match the time the original thread was posted). What do you think?

[Jezebel]

Maybe we could put a sticky at the top of every subforum on the other site telling about when we expect to officially move over here? Maybe we could encourage them to post new threads on this board and only respond to active threads on the other one. If we place it at the top of every subforum, there shouldn't be any worries about someone not knowing.

Oh, and these should probably be locked threads. It would get confusing if everyone responded the same message in different places.

[Jezebel]

Someone should also put "Forum" somewhere on this site's title so this forum will come up with better results for "intp forum" in google. That's how I found the old site and it's made in a way that it gets better search engine results than this one.

The forumer site is linked on several intp pages. Someone should e-mail them so that newbies sign up with this site instead of the old one. It could take a while for them to update so it wouldn't hurt to do this one before the old site's locked, I think.

[file cabinet]

Someone should also put "Forum" somewhere on this site's title so this forum will come up with better results for "intp forum" in google. That's how I found the old site and it's made in a way that it gets better search engine results than this one.

The forumer site is linked on several intp pages. Someone should e-mail them so that newbies sign up with this site instead of the old one. It could take a while for them to update so it wouldn't hurt to do this one before the old site's locked, I think.

technically, on Google, what matters is how many ppl link to a site... also:
http://www.intpcentral.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16

I am also figuring out how http://www.intpcentral.com/ will look.

[Jezebel]

technically, on Google, what matters is how many ppl link to a site...

You're absolutely right, that does matter, but google is more complex than that. Other things count too, such as the domain name, the page title, the h1 headings, how many times keywords appear on a page, where words are located on a page, and so on. Some things are more important than others, but the page title and people linking to the site are probably the most important. It's also important which sites link to you. Otherwise every site that spammed all the forums and guestbooks and link farms would have the top sites.

Anyway, I'm not saying we need full SEO here. I don't think there are any other active INTP forums on the net other than this one, but it would be nice if this site came up before the old one.

[file cabinet]

technically, on Google, what matters is how many ppl link to a site...

You're absolutely right, that does matter, but google is more complex than that. Other things count too, such as the domain name, the page title, the h1 headings, how many times keywords appear on a page, where words are located on a page, and so on. Some things are more important than others, but the page title and people linking to the site are probably the most important. It's also important which sites link to you. Otherwise every site that spammed all the forums and guestbooks and link farms would have the top sites.

Anyway, I'm not saying we need full SEO here. I don't think there are any other active INTP forums on the net other than this one, but it would be nice if this site came up before the old one.

we could SEO the site but right now that is a low priority. mod_rewrite will be our friend : B)

[NGene]

Maybe we could put a sticky at the top of every subforum on the other site telling about when we expect to officially move over here? Maybe we could encourage them to post new threads on this board and only respond to active threads on the other one. If we place it at the top of every subforum, there shouldn't be any worries about someone not knowing.

I can disable starting new threads at the old forum, but allow replying to the existing ones.

[The Architect]

So, I'm actually fairly indifferent as to which forum I post in. The other one is more interesting at the moment because there are more threads and what not, but it sounds like a lot of people want to get this one going and make it better than the old one. So here are my suggestions.

It sounds like everyone is thinking about this transition as something that should go as smoothly as possible, not disrupting threads that are going steadily in the other forum, but getting all new threads started here. I say, the sooner you start burning bridges the better. As long as people are allowed to post over there in old topics they will do just that. You may upset a few people by closing the forum, but if they had something to say about a particular topic, why not start a new thread over here on the same topic? That will get people over here faster and it will also start to make this forum look a little more populated.


Is there anyway we could move the topics to here? maybe with the last post from the old site included-or would that be too much work for the mods?

As to this idea and what followed it, I agree that it would be nice to have the old topics moved over here so at the very least they could be archived and a reference, but I think it's unnecessary. Even if there is an easy way to do this I think it would prohibit growth over here. People may not start a thread on a subject because they know it's already been discussed. The sooner people forget about the old forum and get over their attachment to it the better. In a couple months, there will be so much discussion here and important old topics will have been rebuilt on their own that nobody will even need to go back to the archives of the old forum, and if they do it's not like the old site went anywhere, it's just been locked.

So, I say we get a few of the important pinned threads back up over here, and close the old forum. Make sure that it's plastered all over the old site that the forum has been moved here, and everything will take care of itself. And of course it wouldn't hurt to get this forums appearance up to par with the other one either, but that's actually a pretty minor issue for existing members I'm guessing, just prospective members.

[Claverhouse]

okay how about not the posts but a simple copy/paste? just re-create the topic, copy/paste-quote the last post and lock the origonal?
I think people would be able to do this themselves, cant rely to much on the mods to do the work.
Maybe an announcment over there warning people of the coming lock, once the topics are locked i think people will continue to refur to old posts and interesting topics are likely to be restarted anyway?


okay... I like this idea.. but rather then just copying and pasting the old threads, I have an idea that may work.
I am creating the archive that will be db driven(partially). After I am done parsing the archive and it's live, I could potentially create a new thread that has the original thread title and original poster, it will link to the archived thread. I am not sure how this will work since I don't know how phpBB handles time in the db(to have it match the time the original thread was posted). What do you think?

That seems admirable: I couldn't do it myself, since I know nothing about parsing, but if you are willing to do this I'm sure most of us would be grateful; especially as I liked browsing through the posts prior to my joining the old forum. If though you decide on each cutting and pasting, that's fine also. Thanks for all your work.


Claverhouse :ph34r:

[Jezebel]

Personally, I'm with The Architect on this one. For all I care, the other forum can be completely locked right now with links to this forum and it would be fine with me. I just didn't want to suggest such a thing because I figured many members wouldn't like it.

[Claverhouse]

Personally, I'm with The Architect on this one. For all I care, the other forum can be completely locked right now with links to this forum and it would be fine with me. I just didn't want to suggest such a thing because I figured many members wouldn't like it.

Yeah, it's time to let go... :devil:




Claverhouse :ph34r: