Hello, I'm new here.

I run a forum of some size already (7k members, 400k posts) and am interested in reviewing YAF as a possible replacement. The problem I have though is migration. Has anyone tackled the issue of migration from one forum to another? I'm running InstantForum at the moment, but development has stalled on it.

I'm thinking I'm going to have to do the migration myself, i.e. at a minimum convert forum structure and posts. I'll also need to write my own MembershipProvider as we're using a custom one at the mo and this is partly where InstantForum lets us down, with integration.

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I have never heard of a migration from InstantForum to YAF, so you'll be the first! Make sure you post back as to how it goes, problems, issues, etc..

To start you off, have a look at the guys migrating from PHP forums, while the code will be different, the process should be the same. Your in for some serious "manual" DB work, but keep at it. SQL Server 2005 has some great FREE "Integration Service" tools that will help you match your old tables (and fields0 to new YAF tables.

Good Luck!

:)

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Thanks. If I do it, I'll share the experience/scripts for sure.

I haven't looked at Integration Services yet, will do.

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Also, is there a concept of plugins for YAF? I have a few customisations I like and wondered if they can be incorporated easily, and perhaps in a way that means others can benefit from them.

Things like:

An image-resizer (ashx) that resizes large image attachments so they display at a reasonable size inline with the message, and then you can click the links for the high-res version. - I've actually already done this with my existing forum software after modification.

Auto-embed, so the forum detects a youtube url being posted and converts it to an embed code statement.

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