Suggestion: Get Up Off Your...

[chaos_engined]

Hi,

I'm a wanna-be new user to VBB, but guess what, I'm running an excellent YaBB forum and nobody will build a converter.

It's a truly crazy situation, you'd have my money in the morning...BUT.. there is NO converter.. not as a hack, zilch, zip, zero..

What's going on? It's not as if I'm alone.. type 'YaBB' into the search feature and see how many similar peeps you find. Unfortunately, it seems the staff at YaBB are more adventurous, more dedicated, and I'd never be bloody changing it but for the language it's programmed in.

So come on, are you lot too talentless to do it? Or are we going to get a converter so I can hand you over a fistful of $$$'s?

(Alternatively, if you wish to import from YaBB, then post here ASAP, we're obviously not going to get anywhere by staying quiet and polite with these guys.. anytime I question the availablity of a YaBB converter, they politely tell me to f off into the 'Hacks' section so someone can do their work for them..)

[tubedogg]

"You suck - btw, I need this importer"

Right...

[thewitt]

Originally posted by tubedogg
"You suck - btw, I need this importer"

Right...
I always find these kind of posts an interesting exposure to human behavior. I'll never understand how knocking someone while ostensibly asking for a product feature or a favor gets results. It must, as it appears to be a learned behavior, but my initial reaction is frell you. The economics of developing a loader for every possible conversion is simply not viable. I understand that and am working on my own.

I'm working on a converter for my WebBBS HTML/flat file board to vB. I have about 7000 messages to load. It's not a trivial task by any means. My new users have different usernames on vB than they had on my old board. They use different email addresses - and in many cases I simply cannot tell who posted, so they will be loaded as unregistered user posts.

The approach I'm taking is to reformat all the posts into separate files that match the vB database structure, while filtering, modifying and verifying the data. I'm changing usernames of my known active users on their old posts to match their new usernames. This is a totally manual mapping process, and in many cases the email addresses that go with the accounts have also changed, so the old username gets mapped to a new username, and the old email address gets mapped to a new email address (whew!).

I'll then load those data files, creating any new usernames as I go along. These users will be in an unconfirmed state, but I'll load their posts anyway. When I'm finished, I'll send email to all unconfirmed users who I added, asking them to confirm if they want to stay as members of the forum. Those who don't will be deleted after 45 days or so.

Not a trivial task. No easy way to automate it without creating a whole bunch of junk accounts, posting all the poorly matched messages as unregistered or otherwise making a total mess out of the deal.

-t

[tubedogg]

chaos_engined:

Currently there are no plans for a YaBB importer, as we would likely tell people if there was. Since there isn't, we ask people to check-in at the hacking forums to see if somebody *is* working on one, or has released one, in order to help that individual as opposed to just saying "Nope, out of luck".

It is not our job to make importers for every possible message board; if it was, there would be importers for every possible message board. Rather it is our job to make importers that are most often requested and will get used the most. It is not worth the time it would take to write an importer for use by one person. If you would prefer we spent time on thousands of importers instead of new versions/new features in the actual product itself, then we will consider doing that. However seeing as no one else seems to think that wise, I think we'll stick with our current game plan.

We're sorry you don't agree with our position, but as I said it is pretty unlikely to change.

[orca]

I agree with tubedogg. They can't create converter for ANY webboard in the world. To do so, they would need to have any. So even with the converters they did, they had to ask users having that board so they could check the db format.
There are many importers done from hackers for other boards (like UB2k or ikonboard). That no importer exists for YABB is because no one had the time or the need to do it. In most cases the importer were created by people needing it themselves and then they released it to the public. Maybe, sooner or later, this will also be done for YABB.

[chaos_engined]

I'll never understand how knocking someone while ostensibly asking for a product feature or a favor gets results

4 posts, that's what I got. And I'm now fully aware that an importer for YaBB does not, and is unlikely to ever, exist. It may have risen the hairs on the neck of some VB staff, but at least I now know exactly what I wanted to know. It sure as hell beats floating around the 'Hacks' section clocking up views and no replies on the subject.I posted similar content in more genial terms on two other sections, and it's obvious a nice, kind, measured post would have (again) dissappeared beneath the VBB priority radar rapidly. This way gets results. The intelligent among you should've spotted that, the insults are invalid because I've decided to buy your product over to 10,000 other boards out there.

But it's unlikely to result in a YaBB filter, so I must now explore other routes. Even if it was possible to import YaBB into UBB, and then across to VBB I'd be a happy customer. It's even possible my tech heads will build a YaBB filter and come back here with it. Because we're good like that.

In the meantime, I guess the unwanted YaBB users of this world will have to exit stage left, apologies if we didn't fit in to corporate VBB.

[Jake Bunce]

Originally posted by tubedogg
"You suck - btw, I need this importer"

Right...

lol tube. this reminds me of that other thread a couple weeks back. :D