The reorganization of the forums is a multi-step process, and will take a while to get done, because I want to see it done right, and I want to get the community involved. (Yes, this means we’re going to have a very quick “find us a good theme” contest, among other things.)

Here’s what’s going on this week…

Week 1

• Determine risk of temporary update to 1.1.4 until reinstallation. - DONE (it's safe because it's just security fixes).
• Post Week 1 schedule.
• Disable and dismantle forum shoutbox (replacement to be found later if necessary).
• Analyze full SQL database to determine what SMF prefixes were used.
• Download mods to local test server (cherryblossom.homelinux.com) for compatibility testing. — Stage one complete (Testing itself will occur in a later week.)
• Install SMF 1.1.4 on local test server (cherryblossom.homelinux.com).
• Clean up old forums prefixes (/forum, /forums).
• Clean old SMF prefixes on SQL database. Back up and drop as necessary.
• Install SMF 1.1.4 into /forum (tentative) using a sane SQL prefix.
• Disable WP-SMF bridge. (was: Because of the WP transition, this should have no adverse effects because we are no longer using a home-grown solution that is tied to the SMF MySQL prefix.) Oops, forgot that Euri had already installed a WP-SMF bridge. The bridge has been disabled so users don’t get error messages.
• Re-enable WP-SMF bridge. (Euri?)
• Redirects from /forums/* to new prefix as necessary.
• Allow users to re-register.
• Reassign staff positions.
• Recreate boards and threads, or delegate this task to others who can do so.

And yes, this does mean that you will need to recreate accounts, because the database is a mess. I’ll try and salvage old posts into a read-only archive, if I have time.

Edit: Okay, the read-only archive will work, but there is the problem that permissions won’t be enforced. >.> So either I can open an archive with just guest-readable posts (incomplete = bad), or I can open all the posts (insecure = bad). Need to consult the team here…