This was an undertaking. As you guys are aware, the board was hacked A LOT back in the day. Like a comical amount. It was always a game of cat and mouse trying to keep the old board afloat. As a result of that constant abuse, the database was corrupted and malformed. It also looked like someone began migrating it to another forum software to try to fix it, but it didn't complete properly and caused additional damage to the database. After experimenting with the data that did survive, i was able to determine that moving to this software would retain the most important data from the old boards.
Based on the info I could save, here's what I came up with. I restored every post I could find in the database. I wiped all of our passwords and moved every user to a group called "In the Grave", which deactivates the account, puts a tombstone in front of the username, and the text under the username says "Dead and Buried". When you reset your password, your account rises from the grave to join the rest of the undead. If you, or someone else is trying to revive an old account, but you don't have access to or remember the email address associated with the account, let us know and someone can change it for you.
I put everything from the old board in a new category called The Crypt. All the posts here are read only. It's just a nice way to look back in time.
Other than that, I'm just tweaking this theme so it feels more like home.
Stuff that got lost in translation from the old forum to here:
I also realized my website has probably been down just as long. If you recall, I used to host an image uploader and a lot of people were using it for signatures and photo uploads. I restored that data as well, so my signature came back.
TLDR:
If you used to have an account on these forums, and want to keep using it, be sure to enter your email address in the following link: Rise from your grave!
You will get an email from noreply@nightowlpro.com. For me, it went to spam, so check there. This email will be a link to reset your password. Here are the steps:
Smell ya later,
Jeff
Edit:
There may be a bug where your account doesn't automatically change from Dead and Buried, even though your account is active and will work fine. You can ignore it, I'll find a fix.
Based on the info I could save, here's what I came up with. I restored every post I could find in the database. I wiped all of our passwords and moved every user to a group called "In the Grave", which deactivates the account, puts a tombstone in front of the username, and the text under the username says "Dead and Buried". When you reset your password, your account rises from the grave to join the rest of the undead. If you, or someone else is trying to revive an old account, but you don't have access to or remember the email address associated with the account, let us know and someone can change it for you.
I put everything from the old board in a new category called The Crypt. All the posts here are read only. It's just a nice way to look back in time.
Other than that, I'm just tweaking this theme so it feels more like home.
Stuff that got lost in translation from the old forum to here:
- Private Messages: These are a real pain. The data for them exists in the database, but without a lot of doing, I wont be able to attach them back to the proper accounts. Probably not worth it.
- Post Counts: This is a bit of a blessing, because I was probably gonna wipe the counts anyway like a clean start. New posts will increment your counter as usual.
- Attachments and Avatars: it's unfortunate, but there's no way I can correlate the filenames of the attachments to their posts.
- Passwords: Not entirely true. I was able to convert the old password encryption to work on this system, but when I realized how weak of a password I was using back then, I decided it would be best to wipe them all so we don't get any unwanted intrusions
- Anything else? If you find anything missing or broken, let me know so I can investigate.
I also realized my website has probably been down just as long. If you recall, I used to host an image uploader and a lot of people were using it for signatures and photo uploads. I restored that data as well, so my signature came back.
TLDR:
If you used to have an account on these forums, and want to keep using it, be sure to enter your email address in the following link: Rise from your grave!
You will get an email from noreply@nightowlpro.com. For me, it went to spam, so check there. This email will be a link to reset your password. Here are the steps:
- Go to the link above and enter your email address
- Receive an email from noreply@nightowlpro.com (it might be in spam)
- Click the link in that email.
- The system will email you a link, and an activation code.
- Enter the code at the link
- The system will generate a password for you and email it to you (again, this went to spam for me)
- Log in with that password
- You will now be prompted to change that password to one of your own
- That's it!
Smell ya later,
Jeff
Edit:
There may be a bug where your account doesn't automatically change from Dead and Buried, even though your account is active and will work fine. You can ignore it, I'll find a fix.
