SJDGC Forum - Completed ... Finally

So after a nice length of time (20+hours) I have finally finished the migration of the SJDGC vanilla forum to SilverStripe forum. It took a lot of hours for something so small.

The beauty of these types of projects for me is I get to use what ever method I would like to get things done. I get to use my old DB classes I have used for years and some straight no framework PHP coding.

things i missed when first planning
  • html -> bbcode
  • db collation issues
things overlooked
  • posts last edited field when not a topic starter
  • Members in the Community Member Status

After doing some test imports of the topics for the forum I realized a bunch of things I had missed when planning the migration. I forgot the fact that one database was using latin_swedish_ci for collation and one was using utf8-general-ci which led to some funky characters. This was fixed by the following.

  1. if text field change to blob in db table
  2. change back to your previous text field type
  3. set collation to utf8 ... general_ci

The end result of all of this is the complete migration of the old forum into the new system. The users are linked to their respective posts. All the topics and comments are in place and the text is all correct.
A nice bundle of scripts for a Vanilla->SS Forum migration. Also some nice utility scripts for fixing text strings I had to make after some DB corruption/errors/mistakes. And the cherry on top is some nice snippets for my PHP editor for silverstripe and my libraries... gedit :-)

// a super simple to strip non-ascii characters from a string
preg_replace('/[^(x20-x7F)]*/','', $text_to_clean);

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Comments (0) October 17, 2009 5:28 am

the smell of websites in the morning

After a long night of coding/hacking/browsing/?designing? I have some changes to the network:

  1. ultrastuff dot net
    • New Site Design
    • Very happy with this one
    • Will continue to add content to it and get it more professional looking
    • This new layout will be getting serious JS added to it for some nice interaction
  2. SJDGC
    • Fixed some things in the CMS
    • New Site Design Idea. Picture at bottom.

New Layout

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Comments (0) September 24, 2009 7:22 am

adding to silverstripe

definitely will be using silverstripe/sapphire a lot more now. best cms and framework i have seen yet.

i am going to modify the calendar module as well as write a custom calendar widget for the sjdgc. after the forum import is finished, that is. this new code will make the event calendar function better and look much nicer. also the site needs a calendar widget in the sidebar, blogs and forum aren't cutting it by themselves.

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Comments (0) September 18, 2009 6:14 am

Me

Developer, designer and cook .. what a combination. Seriously though, I have been developing websites for 9 years and doing what I can to stay on the edge from time to time. Been using Linux for 10 years and love it and my favorite scripting language is PHP.
I am trying to get back to school for law so I will have to start dedicating time to that.

I am working on and maintaining a few websites right now.

I am working with different website software to come up with some newer breads of sites. Once I have the sites in the Lagbox network up I will be working on the interfaces for them to be as Web2.0 / AJAX as possible. Heavy Javascript will be used.

Other sites in the works

Please feel free to contact me view the contact form. I am always looking for new clients and sites to develop. If you need a site built or some help, please don't hesitate to contact me.

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September 18, 2009 2:56 am

Work Work Work

working on sjdgc.com .. have to move old forum into the new forum software on the site, which should be fun. these are the things i love about the web, challenges. all members from the old forum have to be made into general site members as well and preserving rights and ownerships.

i will be tied up with that till the forums are moved over. next on the list

  • SilkScreenE - working on bringing in content and features into the site shell.
  • HyzerFlip - new site needs a layout and a page. will be getting ecommerce when up.
  • UltraStuff - my company site. looks worse than this blog so i think it needs an update and some content.

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Comments (2) September 17, 2009 4:09 am