Important K 1.6 Discuss plugin is NOT backwards-compatible with old K1.5/K1.0/FB versions

Hello. I've done migration from K1.5 to 1.6. I see that Kunena Discuss bot tables was imported to new place. Already using latest RC2 versions bot and RC3 for component, BUT nothing works like before. All old discussions are without connection to new bot. Also there's no option to show in first post, only link to article, like before.

Did you planned add backwards compatibility with old discussbot? Or maybe somehow update old one, to keep old style of working?

I can't comment on the first part of your question because I haven't any personal experience with the Discuss plugin for K 1.6

Randal wrote: Did you planned add backwards compatibility with old discussbot? Or maybe somehow update old one, to keep old style of working?

I can address these questions

I've often written about the origins of the old discussbot and the main problems with it. The "KunenaDiscuss plugin for Kunena" - that used to be listed in the Joomla Extensions Directory - was never an official part of the Kunena project; this software was developed by a user who was not associated with the project and who chose not to contribute to the development of software for K 1.6. The "KunenaDiscuss plugin for Kunena" - that people were, once upon a time, able to obtain from the JED - was, itself, modified from earlier software known as ObjectClarity Discussbot which only operated on J! 1.0 platforms. What this means, in effect, is that there hasn't been any discussbot software for K 1.5, maintained by anyone, for a very long time.

Because of the structural differences between K 1.5 and K 1.6, the old K 1.5 add-on will not work for K 1.6 and, vice versa, the plugin developed for K 1.6 will not work for K 1.5 and this goes for all Kunena add-ons. Basically, the Discuss plugin for K 1.6 is new software that was totally rewritten from scratch.

Because K 1.5 development has ceased there will be no retrofitting of K 1.6 features to that version.

I hope this explains the situation.

@sozzled: I agree with you that creating a ´total new plugin was the best way to go. It wouldn´t make much sense to try to convert one of the old bots.

On the other hand: The fireboard/kunena discussbot or the ObjectClarity discussbot had a nice feature that I (and I think lots of other people too) miss so bad. If you write a new article for the frontpage you simply put a {mos_fb_discuss:9} at the end of the article. Then the users just click on the "discuss"-Button and the bot created a new post in the forum with topic taken from the article.

With the new kunena discuss plugin you have to create a forum post first and put a {kunena_discuss:#} into the article with the right ID from the previous created forumpost.

Maybe this can be added to one of the next versions of the plugin?

I understand well that old bots are incompatible with new version ans should never be. But what if I have hundreds of articles with already started topics on forum?
We need some way to assign imported data from old bot tables to new one.

Because articles that have already discussions now have ZERO replies.

I hope you understand me. And feature with link to article instead whole article in first post also wouldn't be hard to add in new version of bot.

Thank you very much to both Ratman and Randal for bringing this matter to the attention of the developers. After discussing this matter with them, I have their response as far as the current situation is concerned:

The K 1.6 Discuss plugin is not backwards-compatible with old K1.5/K1.0/FB versions.

I need to qualify what might appear to be a an unsympathetic response. It's possible to make things "backwards-compatible" or, at least, to migrate existing Joomla articles to make them compatible with the new plugin but this takes time and at the expense of other, higher priority, needs. It should be entirely possible, for example, to migrate existing articles, where users have inserted those old {mos_fb_discuss:#) tags in their Joomla articles, into something else. It should also be possible to implement a way to mimic the behaviour of those old the Fireboard-style tags so that Joomla articles feed Kunena categories instead of, with the new approach, feeding Kunena topics.

If this is an urgent need, to provide the migration and functionality requirements of users, then the urgency can be resolved. The development team's main goal in releasing this new plugin was to meet the needs of the bulk of users who have relatively few Joomla articles on their websites; if users need to, they can change existing tags (where used) by hand relatively easily. Obviously, the more articles users have, the longer it takes to make the changes.

The needs discussed in this topic can be met in time. If users want to shorten the lead-time for this to happen, they can support the team in a financially-tangible way. In other words, if some users are prepared to pay the costs of making the necessary changes then the changes will be done sooner rather than later.

Thank you very much sozzled, to explain the situation and to make things clear. Please take my posts just as a feature request, I don´t have urgent matters that need to be fixed. I don´t need any backward compatibility implemented into the new plugin, I was only thinking about some features that might be nice to have. Maybe you can put them on your ToDo-Lists for one of the next versions.

Randal's problems seem to be a little bit more urgent and complex. I think the best way would be to downgrade to kunena 1.5 until the problems have been solved and maybe someone has made a tool to migrate the old bot links to the new system.

The other way out seems to be a long weekend with editing all the articles and put new plugin links into them

So I need to try: Custom Topics option now.

Randal wrote: I understand well that old bots are incompatible with new version ans should never be. But what if I have hundreds of articles with already started topics on forum?
We need some way to assign imported data from old bot tables to new one.

Because articles that have already discussions now have ZERO replies.

...Oh, my God.

I'm so glad you posted this issue, Randal, because apparently I'm in the exact same boat.

I'm using K1.5 with the old KunenaDiscuss plugin on one of my sites. This site has been up since May, with news posted almost daily and forum topics connected to every single one. These two things are pretty much the backbone of my site.

I knew that K1.6 was using a total plugin rewrite and that I would have to upgrade both this and my forums, but I didn't know that it would break the old data. I would lose hundreds of posts.

I'm glad to know this now, before upgrading and being very upset. It looks like moving to K1.6 will have to wait a while for me.

I would actually be willing to donate money toward a discussbot migration endeavor. Just give me details.

Just a word of clarification:

Our team has never written a discuss bot before.

We have now released a brand new discuss/comment plugin. When I read that people are 'upset' that we have not yet migrated data from others people work, I feel there is a little misunderstanding.

You are asking the community to write an importer from another software. That is how I would frame this up. Totally valid idea and it should be doable. One can do it probably by hand with some SQL.

The discuss plugin is not fully ready and is intended to supplement Kunena 1.6 - as there would not be an equivalent for it out there.

So - good input that we will consider - but you cannot seriously be upset.

Please don't misunderstand. I don't mean upset as in angry. I mean upset as in shocked and scrambling to figure out what the heck went wrong and how to fix it because, again, I didn't expect that the old data would be broken.

I know that the Kunena team didn't write the old discussbot, but I did think they were basing the new one's behavior off of it. I'm not a coder, and I simply did not even think of this issue.

Now that I know ahead of time that is what would happen should I upgrade, I can plan accordingly.

And my plan is that I have to hold off until a solution is in place, is all.