Zugg Software :: View topic - What happened to all the posts in this forum??

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2002 8:11 pm

Well folks, I'm sorry to report some really bad news. When we moved the zMUD Scripts forum from it's own forum category into the zMUD Support Forums category, all of the old posts were deleted.

It stems from a really bad design in the SNITZ_FORUM database structure. Turns out that each topic and reply has the CATEGORY ID (of the forum) stored in it. This is dumb. Messages should only point to the forum they are in, not the category the forum is in. So, when we removed the old category that the old forum was in, the SNITZ FORUM scripts apparently deleted any topic or reply that referenced the old category.

I can't believe it was coded like this, but that's what we get for using somebody elses code I guess.

We are looking into ways to restore posts from the most recent backup, but this will take several days. Hopefully it will be possible.

So, I really apologize to all of the people who posted their finished scripts here. I know that you put a lot of work into them.

GURU Joined: 24 Sep 2000 Posts: 1237 Location: USA

Woot! Got them all back.

Enjoy

zMUD 6 Online Help: All the power you'll ever need.

GURU Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 873 Location: USA

(sorry for the spam edits, anyone who's getting email updates on this thread)

Almost there...

Take a look at some of the posts that have replies- RainChild's Tell Window for example. The original post is there but none of the followups, though I see a followup count in the topics menu.

Or were the followups lost? The topics menu seems to have legitimate most-recent-post poster and date/time.

IE5, btw.

-Tarn

GURU Joined: 24 Sep 2000 Posts: 1237 Location: USA

Uh oh. I checked the replies table but didn't see any. I'll check again, if the backup db is still available. When I thought I was done I told the ISP they could remove it.

zMUD 6 Online Help: All the power you'll ever need.

GURU Joined: 24 Sep 2000 Posts: 1237 Location: USA

Looks like I got them back now.

zMUD 6 Online Help: All the power you'll ever need.

Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2002 6:38 pm

Woohoo! Thanks to Darker for taking care of this when I was out of town over the weekend. And kudos to Superb for handling this quickly and professionally. It's nice to be with a web hosting company that sticks to their backup schedule and can actually handle emergencies like this.

Novice Joined: 15 Nov 2001 Posts: 39

quote:

It stems from a really bad design in the SNITZ_FORUM database structure. Turns out that each topic and reply has the CATEGORY ID (of the forum) stored in it. This is dumb. Messages should only point to the forum they are in, not the category the forum is in. So, when we removed the old category that the old forum was in, the SNITZ FORUM scripts apparently deleted any topic or reply that referenced the old category.

I can't believe it was coded like this, but that's what we get for using somebody elses code I guess.

Have you considered using a different forum? I have a site that uses phpBB 2 and must say I have never had any truble with it. Great interface, feature rich... and FREE!... anyway, I guess it would be a pain to swith forums even if you wanted to....

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In life, not all questions are answered; but all answers are questioned.

GURU Joined: 24 Sep 2000 Posts: 1237 Location: USA

We didn't consider non ASP solutions for the forum, given the MS database the information was already available in, and the fact that I code(d) VBScript/ASP every day anyway and could easily make changes to the forums.

Now I do code PHP as well, and would entertain the PHP option, but well, the die is cast already. Why go through that hassle again when the current forums do what we want. :)

zMUD 6 Online Help: All the power you'll ever need.