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It’s been a while since my last home desktop/workstation purchase, and I’ve just about maxed-out my upgrades on the old Mac Pro. I’ve been considering picking up a new computer for some time now, but torn over the cost/benefit. Listening to my podcasts it sounded like Apple’s looking to replace the Mac Pros for the most part, with the newer iMacs. I scoffed at the iMacs back when I bought my Mac Pro, but now they’re actually pretty nice. Plus, an iMac wouldn’t generate nearly as much heat, use nearly as much power, and weigh nearly as much as The Beast that is my Mac Pro. So recently, I decided to take the plunge.

I visited the Apple store one weekend for other reasons, and asked them about their iMac stock, you know, since I was already there. They don’t carry the upgraded model that I wanted (no surprise) so I’d have to order it online and wait. And that’s when the fun began… (more…)

I’ve gone through so many forum solutions over the years. I moved to bbPress at some point a while ago because I was tired of trying to integrate Vanilla with WordPress. Unfortunately, bbPress doesn’t seem to be updated often, and is seriously lacking… almost everything.

I think it’s time to move back to Vanilla (again). It integrates so much better, and even though I absolutely loved it the last time I used it, it looks so much slicker now.

I’ve been doing some tinkering, and it’s NOT going to be an easy process. There’s a script that’s supposed to help with the migration – but it fails horribly for me no matter what I do to try to coerce into behaving. I’ve mapped out a lot of the fields (maybe I should actually write all of that down and share it) and that portion isn’t so bad. It’s the differences in the way that bbPress and Vanilla each store the content of the first post of each topic that’s going to be the biggest pain. Thankfully my little forum is pretty low traffic, so I can take my time.

So far I’ve tried a LOT of different approaches, and ruled them all out. I think I have a game plan now, and just need to sit down for a day and get it done. I’m hoping it actually works and I’m not wasting my time. It’s not entirely a waste though – I consider myself a database n00b, and hacking through all of this is teaching me quite a bit.

Awesome! The forum isn’t allowing logins? Sorry about that…

I didn’t make any changes to the forum, though I have been attempting to integrate WordPress with a new install of Vanilla. I didn’t think I had made any changes that would impact bbPress, but apparently… I did?

Check back later this weekend. Might need to continue moving forward with the Vanilla install and manual data migration.

In my latest project, we have installed MOSS 2007 in a client’s environment and are working on upgrading/migrating their old WSS 2003 content over. This is somewhere between a parallel and in-place upgrade. I’ve learned quite a bit along the way – mostly through trial and error. Lots of issues. Lots of quirks. Lots of workarounds.

This is a very long, and involved process – so far (it’s still in process) using nothing more than out of the box commands, and SharePoint Designer. (more…)

If you’ve googled “WordPress Vanilla integration” then I’m sure you’ve come across the instructions on the Lussumo website. Thanks to them for taking some time to write that up! Unfortunately, that is no longer sufficient because it documents integrating WordPress 2.0.4 and Vanilla 1.0.1. At the time of writing this entry, WordPress is at 2.5.1 and Vanilla is at 1.1.4. In addition, every tutorial or bit of info that I’ve found has made the assumption that everything is starting out fresh and new. That makes it almost easy as cake! However, that doesn’t entirely work for me since I already had both WordPress and Vanilla installed, with users and content – functioning independently.
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