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Heya,
So I value CG a goodly amount, and would like to see it available again. In my professional life I have also had the experience of working on complex forum migrations on 3 separate occasions. I fully recognize the difficulties that the team has faced, the technical challenges in doing something like this are vast.
At this point I think that the original plan (to migrate all the data), has largely proven non-viable. This was a laudable goal, but one that is by far the most technically challenging. None of the developers I have worked with in the past were willing to even attempt this. Migrating data would preserve user community, and information/seo that both created larger value for members and non members. At this point however the users are largely moved on to other resources beyond occasional attempts to login, the seo is gone as the site has been down too long, and the data is basically inaccessible for someone trying to find something that has been posted here previously.
So what is my suggestion? A clean start retaining none of the previous data (either users or posts). This is super painful, but in a short period of time CG would be at least somewhat usable. Any further efforts with the old data would be focused on archiving old post information, and creating a repository that gave read only access (since it wouldn’t be an actual forum) to the old posts.
There are a number of reasons I think right now is the critical time to make this decision. January 1st approaching will mean a stream of potential traffic that could help the site get back on its feet. I’m happy to discuss my previous experiences with user management and communication if you do decide to take this route. Either way best of luck to you.
So I value CG a goodly amount, and would like to see it available again. In my professional life I have also had the experience of working on complex forum migrations on 3 separate occasions. I fully recognize the difficulties that the team has faced, the technical challenges in doing something like this are vast.
At this point I think that the original plan (to migrate all the data), has largely proven non-viable. This was a laudable goal, but one that is by far the most technically challenging. None of the developers I have worked with in the past were willing to even attempt this. Migrating data would preserve user community, and information/seo that both created larger value for members and non members. At this point however the users are largely moved on to other resources beyond occasional attempts to login, the seo is gone as the site has been down too long, and the data is basically inaccessible for someone trying to find something that has been posted here previously.
So what is my suggestion? A clean start retaining none of the previous data (either users or posts). This is super painful, but in a short period of time CG would be at least somewhat usable. Any further efforts with the old data would be focused on archiving old post information, and creating a repository that gave read only access (since it wouldn’t be an actual forum) to the old posts.
There are a number of reasons I think right now is the critical time to make this decision. January 1st approaching will mean a stream of potential traffic that could help the site get back on its feet. I’m happy to discuss my previous experiences with user management and communication if you do decide to take this route. Either way best of luck to you.
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