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

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.

OK, first time I've done something like 'migration'!

Step 1:
Open in phpMyAdmin table jos_fb_discussbot

Step 2:
Go to "Structure" tab and remove two columns:

- section_id
- catid

If system found any duplicate entry, I was remove as a duplicate this one who have higher number of thread_id and try one more time remove whole column.

Step 3:
Rename jos_kunenadiscuss to jos_kunenadiscussBACKUP

Step 4:
Rename jos_fb_discussbot to jos_kunenadiscuss

Step 5:
I configure Default Forum Category as I have it in old bot and apply.

And it works for me!

I want to hear what developers have to say about my method? I hope there is nothing wrong, but I'm NOT code designer!

Yes, Randal, that's the basic migration part. It will give you all the articles mapped to kunena topics.

What is missing, tough, is how to make Custom Topics to work..