PunBB Resource

Smartys wrote:

Why not create a new category, Archive, and add forums corresponding to each forum you want to archive. You can use a couple update statements to move all topics currently in a forum to their corresponding archive forum. Then, set the permissions for those forums to not allow posts for members.

Hmmm... we have many "categories" with many "forums" and "sub-forums". 
   Since you cannot create Sub-Categories in punbb you cannot re-create the same structure (for consistency of the users' experience) in a Category named Archive.  Neither can you create sub-forums of sub-forums (far as I know) so I don't think the 'tree' can be effectively reproduced that way either. 
    Also, seems it would become an an unweildy mess for... without transfering the existing Categories you could no longer collapse sections [which goes a long way to making it usable!].
    FYI, consistent user-experience is extremely important since almost all of them have close to zero computer skills [it is unbelievable the problems we run into that are not actually anything to do with any sort of 'problem'].  Also important is administrative-user-experience... the admins of these forums are not so tech savvy either, so they make a lot of demands for clearing up clutter so they can work 'not-so-encombered' by long lists.

Seems to me some sort of enhancement to the pre-fixed system may really, after all, be the good way to go.
Question: Could you provide an example of a simple "update statement" that might move all topics in a specified forum to a corresponding archive forum in another punbb installation?  Say, using my example above, from "OURtopics Table to the ARCtopics Table? 
  Would this general 'method' be the route to creating some automated tools for Archiving/DeArchiving, including Categories, I wonder?

Smartys wrote:

Edit:

Note: Over the last several months I have searched ...<snip>... and almost no useful tips or suggestions.

I don't recall reading any such topics off the top of my head. Could you point me to them?

Okay, first an apology... to you and everyone... although I would stand by that I have read more on this than what I can provide proof of, I fail at the moment to be able to reproduce adequate proof.  So please accept my apology for inapropriately siting indifference and such of the senior members, and I will edit my original post accordingly.

Per your request..., I did not save links, and subsequent searching (only this evening) after reading your post yields 'not as much as I thought I'd read before', but this is what I have for now:
http://www.punres.org/viewtopic.php?pid=3449
http://forums.punbb.org/viewtopic.php?id=12125
http://forums.punbb.org/viewtopic.php?pid=71512
http://forums.punbb.org/viewtopic.php?id=2664
http://forums.punbb.org/viewtopic.php?pid=53007
http://forums.punbb.org/viewtopic.php?pid=73669

The problem is that not all of the relevant posts can be found by searching only the word archive or similar.  I swear there are some other posted questions in this regard.  But no matter... maybe there actually hasn't been enough interest or need to warrant greater interest in this sort of thing, however, maybe this thing can find better merit on its own here(?).

I apreciate your attention and responses. Thanks.
Cheers,

Last edited by twohawks (2007-02-06 20:21:24)

twohawks wrote:

DE-ARCHIVING METHOD PLAN: 

Essential Plan
- ????!!!#$%@!!!???:  Not even there yet  `|^[
    Can you imagine the nightmare trying to reintegrate the Forums and Topics back into the Main OurForum Tables?!  That's what it appears one would have to do if using the archive "method" described above. Maybe this would be simple, but I do not know the way.

If you setup the archieve forum to have the same ids for categories, forums, users, etc., and you ensure that post ids on the new forum start after the last post id from the archieve, then, I think, those (post) rows could easily be inserted into the new forum's database at a later time.

@Guardian
1) Sub-Forum mod
2) thank you for suggestion 'Group Permissions'.  Due to the way Groups are being used to manage complex access permissions there's an aweful lot of groups (but certainly less than there are topics!)...

I wonder what else might be used for globally rendering the topics unpostable?

@Smartys
Hmmm... I can think of several reasons why this wouldn't be an acceptable method...
1) There are really a lot of categories to begin with, and punbb does not support sub-categories, so one category named Archive couldn't maintain the categoric + forums structure all by itself (obviously). 
2) And if we were to take and render each category, say named 'CategoryX' as named 'CategoryX Archive, although this technically will work, it will present an administrative nightmare to the admins who will end up seeing all these Categories and Forums in their admin panels along with the 'running ones' creating even more (and unnecessary) management chaos... this is totally unacceptable.

It seems to me that an archive has to be a place where stuff is kept separate and out of the way, and yet mirrors the structure users are familiar with when they go "there" for researching old places (especially keeping in mind that those old places will come back again later and continue once again).

did I understand you correctly, and does this make sense?

Thanks... keep 'em coming...
Cheers,

Last edited by twohawks (2007-02-07 09:42:46)

Thanks Smartys....

Smartys wrote:

Why would that be unacceptable? It seems to be a perfectly acceptable solution: the topics are moved to an archive, they're not writable, they can be easily moved back without hurting anything.

Yes, that sounds simple, efficient, and attractive, but...

Smartys wrote:

The categories are clearly marked as archives and thus can be easily ignored.

Ignored != hidden, i.e., they will take up space in the 'working cats/forums index listing', which the admins explicitly state they do not want.
   And even if we hide them, say, using a Category hide mod technique, they will only be (temporarily) hidden in the actual Forum (Index) zone(s) not in the Admin Forums and Cats CPanel, ...thus the admins still would have deal with this huge list of stuff in the backend... which is explicitly what they told me they want out of there because it is way too combersome for them! 
  Also, they do not want the archived categories and forums appearing in the main forums index at all, which is what will happen when a category is unhidden for viewing (no?).  They want stuff archived 'somewhere else' and do not want to see the archived stuff mixed in with the active stuff at all because its too chaotic and confusing for their students.  The students are on information overload, so the admins want stuff separated out so they don't even see it in there with the active stuff. 
  They also want the archive independently searchable, but I have to admit I don't know how important that really is.

Smartys wrote:

If it really bothers you that much, add an "archive" column to the categories table and alter some queries to ignore categories with archive set to 1. Then just edit admin_categories.php and you're set

Now... this idea sounds like its moving your whole basic idea into a potentially workable (and appealing) direction...
   I wonder...  Considering we want to actually hide the Archived Categories and Forums from the Forums Administration area as well as from Users until they 'click on the Archives link', maybe additionally we could have this flag actually do just that, and then in addition create a new admin_achive.php file for the administrators to be able to separately access and manage (if need be) the Archived Forums ...eh?   
   I need to think on it more, I may have presumed something totally moronic here, but I wonder if your new flag could open this type of workability up...

(I hope I am following you correctly to begin with?...)

My concerns would be:
1) What do I have to be concerned about the Admin accessing through the 'new' admin_archive.php page/cp_zone, (if this is even an intelligent direction to take it), and
2) When the user Clicks on 'the' Archive link, (how) can it be simply sculpted so that they are taken to a very similar place "as the forum was before", separate from the main index page(s), i.e, where they can peruse things without those archived categories and forums being mixed in with the main active categories and forum index zone? 

Make sense?

--------------------------------------------
   Today I worked on setting up a new bbs-zone per my original post and I have edited/updated the procedures and accompanying questions (for that method).  I am posting that next. 

   What works about it is:
   This result is interesting... users can click on a link that takes them to something like "hxxx://ourfourm.oursite.com/ARCHIVE"  ...and its as if they never left the old home.
   It creates a completely 'isolated' Archive that is separately (independently) searchable from the 'Active bbs' (which is what the admins want).
   The amount of work involved seems acceptable, even if it was a huge bbs. 

   What concerns me about this method is the seeming challenge of reintegration later (when the admins tell me to make some Catetgory(ies) and Forum(s) live again); but maybe my concerns are unwarranted?  You commented on using some simple update statements.  And considering topics are 'ruled by time' in a manner of speaking, it seems quite possible that update-reintegration may indeed be as simple a matter as you (and Guardian) have indicated.

   Last comment here: even if my method is (becomes) acceptable, or even more desireable for a certain type of "archiving", your idea(s) for approaching a solution seem to me to merit some serious consideration for an alternate type of archiving.

Smartys wrote:

Out of curiosity, how do other forum softwares do this?

I have no idea.  I am not basing any of my line of inquiry on anything prior.

Thanks for your participation in this Smartys.
I hope others will come and lend their 2cents, including their desires and needs. 

Cheers,

Last edited by twohawks (2007-02-07 22:40:08)

You commented on using some simple update statements.  And considering topics are 'ruled by time' in a manner of speaking, it seems quite possible that update-reintegration may indeed be as simple a matter as you (and Guardian) have indicated.

My comment about simple update statements was regarding my idea, not moving the information to a seperate forum
However, depending on how you moved the topics/posts out, reintegration is entirely possible. It just relies on the following premises:
A. If you delete users, you must do something with their posts/topics in the archive. Same applies if you change a username.
B. The ID numbers for posts/topics are not reused.

If both of those are true, you can simply take a database dump of the contents of the archive posts/topics and reinsert them into the proper tables.

Oh, and keep in mind that you should reindex the search tables for both forums if they want them both properly searchable

Last edited by Smartys (2007-02-08 03:55:58)

Some Questions/Analysing:
1) Per A. For the current method I am working out (mirrored forum as archive, w/shared user base per Tobi's method [which actually I think Smartys also had something to with ;^]) I need to test how deleting a user in the main bbs does or doesn't update the post/topics in the mirror.  It seems it should because the reliance of the post/topics from the archive bbs is founded on the main live bbs (?).

Right, if you delete a user you need to delete their posts or set their poster to the Guest user

2) Per b. Then would I be in the neighborhood with this thinking... When reintegrating the post/topics the existing id's either need to be removed and then re-indexed (in some way) after/during "update", OR what exactly should my thinking be on this (is there a straightforward answer to this)?

I'll give you an example to help you think about this (just with topics)
I create 10 topics on a brand new PunBB. They get IDs 1-10.
I create an archive with a copy of the brand new PunBB. The topics there have IDs of 1-10. I delete IDs 1-10 in the brand new forum.
I create 10 topics on the brand new PunBB. They get IDs 11-20, since 1-10 were created and deleted.
I want to merge the archive into the main forum. So, I get a dump of the full insert statements (which include the IDs). I then reinsert the posts into the main forum with the correct IDs.
We thus avoid the issue of duplicate IDs when restoring topics and have no issues restoring the board

You also have to keep in mind that changing forum IDs for topics, etc can cause issues (ie: if you delete a forum and try to restore the topics in the archive from that forum).

- I see that one can uncheck all the user groups' post permissions (tedious, and doesn't take into account when new ones are added in the main bbs, so it won't really work by itself).
- I see you can edit each forum's list of group permissions, turning off post perms, but this also doesn't take into account additions of new groups, so again it seems this is not an efficient approach

When a new group is created, its permissions are based around those of another group. Therefore, new groups are not an issue.