Old TLR Database

    Just like i have announced i will try to import the old TLR forum database from before 2008 right into this forum. This is highly complicated but would allow every member back to the year 2000 ( or even older) to use this forum with their original accounts. This would be about 30.000 additional accounts. For sure many of them are not getting active again... but if just a few percent are getting the chance to become active again it would be a fantastic gain for the Freelancer community.


    Even more important are the threads and posts. Hundred thousands.
    A very good chance to include valueable information back into TLR, which as a side effect would improve the content quality of this website.


    However... just like i said it is highly complicated to do that and it will take awhile to include such a big database into the current one.
    Next to that it requires to merge forum accounts and re-assign posts/threads. Much work, but worth doing it.

    As of today the transfer of the lancersreactor domain has been finished and so the work on the old TLR database has begun.
    Maybe you have already noticed (or not) this site meanwhile holds more than 39.000 registered members. Reason for this is that today ive started merging the (very) old TLR site with the new one, starting with the members database.


    ALL transfered TLR accounts are going to be fully functional. I have done a first test using my own account from the old TLR and except that those imported accounts dont have a valid usergroup and profile settings (will work on this tomorrow) everything worked just fine. Before all these accounts can get fully activated I have to do a final scan for double nicknames as this might lead to conflicts. Importing the member databases was just the first step. Importing the members fully functional allows me to import the old forum entirely with all posts and threads aswell as assigning these posts to the members.


    Its just like it never was gone.

    Converting the old TLR database and including it back into TLR has almost been finished.
    Probably you noticed that many new users, forums and threads already appeared. This weekend more than 350.000 posts will be included into this forum.
    The currently imported data still has some placeholders for username and lastposter aswell as some contact info of the users. While parsing the old TLR backups it appeared to me too complicated to include that data as a whole. In fact it is much easier to update these placeholder with the original data when the posts are running again.

    the work on including all posts, threads and forums back to TLR has finished
    everything is fully usable
    double forum accounts have been merged and the users were updated


    the only remaining task is to re-parse the messages as they used a different format
    every post is there but it does not look 100% fine yet due to wrong links, different bbcodes and so on
    it is everything there but it will take some time to make it look 100% nice

    your feeling is wrong, only 2 years are missing ^^
    i have not imported everything yet because i need to write a better parser first


    please be patient with me
    it is much work and right now i try to be admin of one of the biggest FL communities, am admin of a big FL server, try to answer modding questions, have to do some modding work and build up TLR again
    putting aside that i still have a real life i easily could fill my day with work


    most important thing is that i did the first steps and showed that it can be done, it is not 100% perfect yet but it took TLR 7 years to reach the point that i try to restore now

    Thats the point, your last comment showed me that I have to shift the priorities now.
    The work on the database involves much time. Time that I have to spend because i am at the moment the only person that is able to such work. To create a perfect parser that can deal with all the syntax of the old TLR forum and that is able to fix links or better to say to adjust internal TLR links so they fit to the new forum.... all that will take at least several weeks.
    In the meantime I cant work on something else... so actually TLR would make no progress while I try to work on the old databases.


    Thats inacceptable.
    I want to get TLR back on its feet within the next few weeks.
    So the only solution to this problem would be to delay the work on the databases for a while and concentrate the work on the other features. Feature that in the end can be filled with content and be moderated by the community members.
    So when i continue the work on the databases we would be able to make progress by sharing the work.