Advice please SMF to Flarum (via Elkarte)

paulcham13

I have a modest, but long established SMF forum. My SMF is pretty broken, wont patch, and I'm done with it.

In an ideal world I would transition to Flarum - but it's not ready. I need pm's, polls, and want to retain a reasonably substantial database of posts (happy for them to be converted to tags, I don't really need sub-forums, and the structure of Flarum suits me). The members use pm's (particularly) a lot. I don't (to my knowledge) have any add-ons installed.

So to overcome my problems with being unable to patch my SMF (a disaster that could happen at any time) I'm thinking to go to Elkarte in the short term. It uses the SMF database structure, and seems the best transition available to me now.

Is this wise? I'm worried that I might then be stuck at Elkarte (which may not be a problem if it works well, and continues to be supported). Will there likely be an upgrade path from Elkarte to Flarum?

I'm not in any way a developer, but am an admin and can mess about with the vps to make it compliant and get all the access I might need (domain control, ftp, ssh). My vps is a centos 6.8 with plesk, but a modest specification (dual core, 512MB?).

Advice would be appreciated.

luceos

paulcham13 you've already decided to go with Elkarte. I'd say once you're ready to move to Flarum ask your question about migration then ?

I'm not seeing any question whether you want to know the viability to move to Flarum right away though.

paulcham13

luceos That is correct.

I assume I am correct in that a Flarum transition from SMF is not currently viable to retain posts and pm's?

I have to leave SMF because I have a flaky unpatched installation. I am looking at Elkarte as a transition because it solves problems in the short term, but I want to end up at Flarum. Given that Elkarte has the same database structure as SMF (the only reason I'm planning on using it in the interim), my hope is that a transition to Flarum will be possible (relatively trivially, without coding skills) when it's ready. Is this a bad assumption? Is there a better choice in my circumstances?

Bearing in mind the intention is to end up at Flarum.

Thanks.

clarkwinkelmann

paulcham13 I assume I am correct in that a Flarum transition from SMF is not currently viable to retain posts and pm's?

Migration is always possible (for stuff that is supported on both source and destination of course). It depends on your knowledge and how much you are ready to get your hands dirty ? You can also get somebody to do it for you. Feel free to contact me on Gitter if you need help ?

We currently have the Byobu extension for private discussions, so it should also be possible to migrate PMs to this format.

paulcham13

clarkwinkelmann It's tantalising. It's so close to being able to do a job for me. I've looked at the github, and it would need me to understand the db scheme (from SMF, to Flarum) and be able to code to make it happen with a bunch of messages, correctly attributing their source and destination, and hoping what I end up with is right, and maintainable.

Short answer: I don't think I'm going to be be able to do that.

0E800

paulcham13
Not sure if you aware, there is a smf to flarum script that could at the least, give you a head start. On cell phone at the moment, use the search feature of this forum and look it up.

Good luck.

Edit: here's the link.

https://discuss.flarum.org/d/3585-smf2-to-flarum-migration-script-alpha-3/

Flarum is still in beta testing, therefore only some of the typical web forum features are available, and what is now working can break anytime (including this script, tailored for flarum ver. 0.1.0-beta.5).
At this moment smf2_to_flarum only supports migration of:
- Users and their avatars (no passwords are exported. Migrated users will have to ask for a new one).
- Boards and sub boards (Categories are intentionally ignored, and boards deeper than 2nd level are added in Flarum as extra Tags)
- Topics and messages (with some bbcode to flarum-markdown translation)
- Attachments (partial, only images)

Known issues / Future features

Only SMF/SMF2 image attachments are exported. While SMF supports all kind of attachments, Flarum only allows image attachments and provided that flagrow-image-upload extension has been installed (see https://discuss.flarum.org/d/1836-flagrow-image-uploader-for-flarum-forum-messages)
Private Messages are not exported yet, since this feature is not yet supported by Flarum.
Smilies are not migrated.

Prosperous

I see where you're coming from @paulcham13. You would basically migrate to Flarum if it was in a stable state.

For such an established community in this case I would probably say that your chosen path is the right one. Elkarte seems to be stable right now and is getting way more done in the way of development when compared to SMF. I would personally steer clear in the short-term until Flarum does become stable as it is advised that you shouldn't use Flarum in production unless you know exactly what you are doing and/or you know how to fix something if it were to completely screw up. With new projects it is inevitable that errors will occur.

In my experience for example, I am using Flarum in production but it is for a new community and not one that has been up and running for years. Whilst I am also after a couple of features you require for your forum, I am happy to go about things with the out-of-the-box software for now. Not only will it minimalise any issues between updates and the final stable version upon release but I can get by without them. Once my community grows then it will definitely be essential so I am hoping that at least the very useful and expected extensions will be included as core in Flarum.

paulcham13

Prosperous Thanks, this is what my current thinking is. I'd very much like to move to flarum, but I think until a release version is available that's fraught with difficulty. The functionality isn't there, and I have concern over maintainability and upgrade-ability to a stable release version with historical posts and messages intact. Flarum is my future though, I'm pretty sure of that. The look and feel is where a modern forum software needs to be, to my mind, and the resource footprint in which it achieves that puts it in a class of it's own.

I'm a bit concerned about the potential transition from elkarte to flarum, down the line. But I'll have to cross that bridge when it comes to it. My SMF is borked and needs something that will at least take security patches, and it's currently the closed season for our community (we are a sports based forum) so the jump has to happen before august.

Prosperous

paulcham13 That would be my only concern; whether a solution will be readily available when you are ready to migrate from Elkarte to Flarum. It is much more likely that an SMF to Flarum migration tool will be available but now that you mention you have until August, you could potentially wait it out and see whether Flarum is stable by then.

Seems like you've got a lot of thinking on your plate already so whichever option you choose you can't really go wrong I guess. The more popular Flarum becomes the more likely migrations will be made readily available and as a worst-case scenario you've got the backing of everyone in the community to help out should you encounter any errors or issues.

ahrasis

Dear @paulcham13,

Transition from SMF to ElkArte should be easy and ElkArte do have tool for it though the tool won't work the other way around yet i.e. from ElkArte to SMF. The tool known as OpenImporter is in github as well as in ElkArte forum and can surely be developed further to accommodate tansition from one forum to another, including to flarum.

ElkArte also have an addon that can make part of your forum i.e. the forum frontpage (BoardIndex) to look like flarum, developed by one of its member, inter. This addon project is in github, has MIT license and you can definitely can fork and modify it according to your need and likings.

If you have any questions with regards to ElkArte, just visit the forum and post them in. I am sure members in there will be happy to help you.