Posts from the old board

Topics that can go away
zompist
Site Admin
Posts: 2949
Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2018 5:46 am
Location: Right here, probably
Contact:

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by zompist »

bradrn wrote: Tue Mar 17, 2020 5:57 pm
zompist wrote:I think it's up to Brad what's easiest to do. If he wants to use phpbb he can just upload what he has to incatena.org, replacing the old board, and making it read-only. (Recall that part of the work was to remove all the login info, so it can't really be used as a live board.)
Wouldn’t this mean that I would have to upgrade the phpBB version in order to get it working?
That's the easy part! A phpbb installation is just a bunch of files.

If I'm right about what you have locally (a phpbb installation that shows everything on the old board), then the procedure would be:

1. I give you ftp access to incatena.org
2. we nuke what's there already (it's all backed up anyway)
3. you upload your installation
4. we make it read-only (this is a board setting)

The tricky bit is copying over the database. I, well, forgot how this works. I thought it was handled as a separate thing on the Dreamhost page, but I can't find it there. I do recall that the parameters are set in config.php.
bradrn
Posts: 6263
Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:25 am

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by bradrn »

zompist wrote: Tue Mar 17, 2020 6:22 pm
bradrn wrote: Tue Mar 17, 2020 5:57 pm
zompist wrote:I think it's up to Brad what's easiest to do. If he wants to use phpbb he can just upload what he has to incatena.org, replacing the old board, and making it read-only. (Recall that part of the work was to remove all the login info, so it can't really be used as a live board.)
Wouldn’t this mean that I would have to upgrade the phpBB version in order to get it working?
That's the easy part! A phpbb installation is just a bunch of files.
But I thought this wasn’t easy! In fact, I thought that the whole reason we had to mess around with the database was because upgrading phpBB was prohibitively difficult for you to do.
If I'm right about what you have locally (a phpbb installation that shows everything on the old board) …
Correct.
… then the procedure would be:

1. I give you ftp access to incatena.org
2. we nuke what's there already (it's all backed up anyway)
3. you upload your installation
4. we make it read-only (this is a board setting)
This part sounds simple enough. Admittedly I’ve never needed to use FTP before, but I assume it can’t be too tricky.
The tricky bit is copying over the database. I, well, forgot how this works. I thought it was handled as a separate thing on the Dreamhost page, but I can't find it there. I do recall that the parameters are set in config.php.
I would assume that we just dump the database, and then load it back onto Dreamhost. It may be helpful to install phpMyAdmin on Dreamhost to help with this.
Conlangs: Scratchpad | Texts | antilanguage
Software: See http://bradrn.com/projects.html
Other: Ergativity for Novices

(Why does phpBB not let me add >5 links here?)
bradrn
Posts: 6263
Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:25 am

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by bradrn »

bradrn wrote: Tue Mar 17, 2020 7:57 am EDIT: Oops, just realised that the script I gave only works for the unstripped database, which needs to be loaded into phpBB in order for the $db calls to work. It’s getting very late here now, so I’ll have another look at getting it working with the publicly available stripped version tomorrow. But it doesn’t look too difficult to get it working: simply replace the query using $db with the equivalent query using MySQLi. (Although admittedly, every time so far that I’ve said something ‘doesn’t look too difficult’, that’s exactly what it’s turned out to be… Hopefully this time will go better!)
I made another version of the script which works with a stripped database. Assuming you’ve loaded the stripped version (I posted a link earlier) into MySQL as database old_zbb_stripped, the following script should work:

Code: Select all

<?php

define('IN_PHPBB', true);
$phpbb_root_path = './';
$phpEx = 'php';

include('./common.php');
include('./includes/bbcode.php');

$user->session_begin();
$auth->acl($user->data);
$user->setup();

$post_id = $_GET['pid'];

$sql = 'SELECT enable_bbcode, enable_smilies, enable_magic_url, post_text, bbcode_uid, bbcode_bitfield FROM bradser_posts WHERE post_id = ' . $post_id;
$mysqli = mysqli_connect('localhost:3306', 'root', 'passwd', 'old_zbb_stripped');
$res = mysqli_query($mysqli, $sql);
$row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($res);

$row['bbcode_options'] = (($row['enable_bbcode']) ? OPTION_FLAG_BBCODE : 0) +
    (($row['enable_smilies']) ? OPTION_FLAG_SMILIES : 0) + 
    (($row['enable_magic_url']) ? OPTION_FLAG_LINKS : 0);
$text = generate_text_for_display($row['post_text'], $row['bbcode_uid'], $row['bbcode_bitfield'], $row['bbcode_options']);

echo $text;
This version also has another slight improvement: the post to parse is now given as a GET parameter rather than being hard-coded into the script. So if you place this script into your phpBB directory, run php -S localhost:8000, and then navigate to http://localhost:8000/parse-bbcode.php?pid=<my_post_id>, you should get the post corresponding to <my_post_id>.

EDIT: A small change to the script gives you a webpage with all the posts in a topic:

Code: Select all

<?php

define('IN_PHPBB', true);
$phpbb_root_path = './';
$phpEx = 'php';

include('./common.php');
include('./includes/bbcode.php');

$user->session_begin();
$auth->acl($user->data);
$user->setup();

$topic_id = $_GET['tid'];

$sql = 'SELECT enable_bbcode, enable_smilies, enable_magic_url, post_text, bbcode_uid, bbcode_bitfield FROM bradser_posts
        WHERE topic_id = ' . $topic_id . '
        ORDER BY post_time ASC';
    
$mysqli = mysqli_connect('localhost:3306', 'root', 'passwd', 'old_zbb_stripped');
$res = mysqli_query($mysqli, $sql);

$res->data_seek(0);

while($row = $res->fetch_assoc()) {
    $row['bbcode_options'] = (($row['enable_bbcode']) ? OPTION_FLAG_BBCODE : 0) +
        (($row['enable_smilies']) ? OPTION_FLAG_SMILIES : 0) + 
        (($row['enable_magic_url']) ? OPTION_FLAG_LINKS : 0);
    $text = generate_text_for_display($row['post_text'], $row['bbcode_uid'], $row['bbcode_bitfield'], $row['bbcode_options']);
    
    echo $text;
    echo '<hr>';
}
So now you can save this as e.g. parse-bbcode-topics.php, and then go to http://localhost:8000/parse-bbcode-topi ... <topic_id> to get all the posts for a particular topic.
Conlangs: Scratchpad | Texts | antilanguage
Software: See http://bradrn.com/projects.html
Other: Ergativity for Novices

(Why does phpBB not let me add >5 links here?)
zompist
Site Admin
Posts: 2949
Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2018 5:46 am
Location: Right here, probably
Contact:

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by zompist »

bradrn wrote: Tue Mar 17, 2020 6:47 pmBut I thought this wasn’t easy! In fact, I thought that the whole reason we had to mess around with the database was because upgrading phpBB was prohibitively difficult for you to do.
As I said, I tried re-using the old database on this board, and everything stopped working. With phpbb, either things work or... they don't.

Plus, upgrading in place isn't the same as nuking everything and starting over.

Oh... which version of phpbb are you running locally?
bradrn
Posts: 6263
Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:25 am

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by bradrn »

zompist wrote: Tue Mar 17, 2020 8:08 pm
bradrn wrote: Tue Mar 17, 2020 6:47 pmBut I thought this wasn’t easy! In fact, I thought that the whole reason we had to mess around with the database was because upgrading phpBB was prohibitively difficult for you to do.
As I said, I tried re-using the old database on this board, and everything stopped working. With phpbb, either things work or... they don't.

Plus, upgrading in place isn't the same as nuking everything and starting over.

Oh... which version of phpbb are you running locally?
I’m running the same old version as the old board — 3.0.12. I did this to make sure that everything would work properly. But I suppose I could try upgrading… I don’t have much to do right now, so maybe I’ll try it and see if I succeed or not.
Conlangs: Scratchpad | Texts | antilanguage
Software: See http://bradrn.com/projects.html
Other: Ergativity for Novices

(Why does phpBB not let me add >5 links here?)
bradrn
Posts: 6263
Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:25 am

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by bradrn »

I managed to migrate the old board data to phpBB 3.3.0! It should be fine now to upload the files and now-migrated database to Dreamhost, as they should now work with the latest version of PHP. The only things that aren’t working are user avatars and attachments. Zompist, if you PM me I’ll send you the database and files.
Conlangs: Scratchpad | Texts | antilanguage
Software: See http://bradrn.com/projects.html
Other: Ergativity for Novices

(Why does phpBB not let me add >5 links here?)
User avatar
Nerulent
Posts: 93
Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2018 10:44 pm

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by Nerulent »

bradrn wrote: Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:29 am I managed to migrate the old board data to phpBB 3.3.0! It should be fine now to upload the files and now-migrated database to Dreamhost, as they should now work with the latest version of PHP. The only things that aren’t working are user avatars and attachments. Zompist, if you PM me I’ll send you the database and files.
Nice work!
bradrn
Posts: 6263
Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:25 am

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by bradrn »

Nerulent wrote: Wed Mar 18, 2020 3:58 am
bradrn wrote: Wed Mar 18, 2020 12:29 am I managed to migrate the old board data to phpBB 3.3.0! It should be fine now to upload the files and now-migrated database to Dreamhost, as they should now work with the latest version of PHP. The only things that aren’t working are user avatars and attachments. Zompist, if you PM me I’ll send you the database and files.
Nice work!
Thank you! It took a while to do, and was very frustrating, but it ended up working somehow… Anyway, I sent zompist the database dump earlier, so hopefully the old board should be up and working soon.
Conlangs: Scratchpad | Texts | antilanguage
Software: See http://bradrn.com/projects.html
Other: Ergativity for Novices

(Why does phpBB not let me add >5 links here?)
User avatar
Pabappa
Posts: 1359
Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2018 11:36 am
Location: the Impossible Forest
Contact:

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by Pabappa »

Im just curious if this is still in the works, or if you guys hit a roadblock. I never really contributed any help at all and I dont think I will ever be able to, and I appreciate the hard work that you all have put into it .... but I am still curious to find out about what's going on.
bradrn
Posts: 6263
Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:25 am

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by bradrn »

Pabappa wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 1:06 pm Im just curious if this is still in the works, or if you guys hit a roadblock. I never really contributed any help at all and I dont think I will ever be able to, and I appreciate the hard work that you all have put into it .... but I am still curious to find out about what's going on.
I PM-ed zompist a month or two go, and it sounds like he’s still intending to do it. Certainly the old board works well enough for me on my own computer; I sent that to zompist, and the only thing left is for him to upload it to incatena.org.

On the other hand, if you’re willing to fiddle around a bit (need to install MySQL, PHP, phpBB), it should be perfectly possible to access all the posts using those PHP scripts I posted earlier. But you do need to have some technical knowledge to do this, which based on your post it sounds like you may not have. (I can’t remember if you’ve ever said anything before about if you know programming.)
Conlangs: Scratchpad | Texts | antilanguage
Software: See http://bradrn.com/projects.html
Other: Ergativity for Novices

(Why does phpBB not let me add >5 links here?)
User avatar
Pabappa
Posts: 1359
Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2018 11:36 am
Location: the Impossible Forest
Contact:

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by Pabappa »

Okay thanks.

The only help I offered was to work with CSS to give the restored board a simpler graphic design by removing the buttons and sidebars that would be nonfunctional on a read-only site. My idea was to make it something like my own website, but another example of what I had in mind is http://maximumble.thebookofbiff.com/201 ... /#comments . Im not a programmer .... my website uses PHP but I basically just grab snippets of code from elsewhere and put them where I need them. I think I've only used three actual PHP commands. Even if I did know more code, though, Im on my webhost's cheapest plan, which does not offer MySQL.

If there's some way I can easily edit the CSS of the restored board and people are interested, my offer still stands, but I suspect it isnt possible to do that if we are actually going to be reinstalling phpBB to get it up and running .... my initial impression was that we were going to be using "raw" PHP to access the posts individually. That would be exciting, of course, but probably a lot more work for you and zomp and whoever else would be helping.
Travis B.
Posts: 6862
Joined: Sun Jul 15, 2018 8:52 pm

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by Travis B. »

Pabappa wrote:Everett, (2013) suggested that in high elevation regions such as in the Andes, languages regularly employ the use of plosives like /k/.
Off-topic, but that clearly cements the guy's status as a crackpot if here were not already that.
Yaaludinuya siima d'at yiseka wohadetafa gaare.
Ennadinut'a gaare d'ate eetatadi siiman.
T'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa t'awraa.
bradrn
Posts: 6263
Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:25 am

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by bradrn »

Well, if you have your own website using PHP, then you certainly have enough knowledge to access the board locally. (I had assumed you had no experience at all with this stuff.) What you need to do is:
  1. Download the board dump from https://www.dropbox.com/s/jyvi030td7dje ... p.sql?dl=0
  2. Download MySQL from its website
  3. In the command line, navigate to the directory where you installed the dump, and run:

    Code: Select all

    $ mysql -u <username> -p
    Enter password: <password>
    
    Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
    Your MySQL connection id is 9
    Server version: 8.0.19 MySQL Community Server - GPL
    
    Copyright (c) 2000, 2020, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
    (… etc etc…)
    
    mysql> create database old_zbb_stripped;
    mysql> use old_zbb_stripped;
    mysql> source bradser-dump.sql
    
  4. Download PHP, if you don’t already have it
  5. Download phpBB (https://www.phpbb.com/) and unzip it
  6. Take my second script from https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php? ... =80#p26198, and save it within the phpBB directory as parse-bbcode-topics.php.
  7. Run ../../path/to/php -S localhost:8000
Now, if everything is set up correctly, you should be able to view any thread from the old board if you go to http://localhost:8000/parse-bbcode-topics.php?tid=<your-topic-id>. (You can get <your-topic-id> from the URL of any incatena.org post, just after the t= bit.) If everything is not set up correctly, you will need to pore through PHP configuration for hours on end to find which setting you need to change. (Well, more probably minutes on end, but it felt like hours.)
Last edited by bradrn on Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Conlangs: Scratchpad | Texts | antilanguage
Software: See http://bradrn.com/projects.html
Other: Ergativity for Novices

(Why does phpBB not let me add >5 links here?)
bradrn
Posts: 6263
Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:25 am

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by bradrn »

Travis B. wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 6:50 pm
Pabappa wrote:Everett, (2013) suggested that in high elevation regions such as in the Andes, languages regularly employ the use of plosives like /k/.
Off-topic, but that clearly cements the guy's status as a crackpot if here were not already that.
What, Everett? I thought that he was fairly well-respected (although admittedly I’m not too knowledgeable about such things). Anyway, I’m sure he included several claims like that, and Pabappa just chose the one which sounds weirdest.

(If you want to continue this conversation, maybe we should do that in a different thread — the Linguistic Miscellany thread maybe?)
Conlangs: Scratchpad | Texts | antilanguage
Software: See http://bradrn.com/projects.html
Other: Ergativity for Novices

(Why does phpBB not let me add >5 links here?)
User avatar
Pabappa
Posts: 1359
Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2018 11:36 am
Location: the Impossible Forest
Contact:

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by Pabappa »

bradrn wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 6:51 pm Well, if you have your own website using PHP, then you certainly have enough knowledge to access the board locally. (I had assumed you had no experience at all with this stuff.)
I run Windows on my home PC ... my website is hosted remotely and completely unrelated. I dont think I can do what you did. It seems that I could upgrade to a plan that offers 15 MySQL databases and pay exactly the same price Im paying now .... but I use my website for such basic purposes that Ive just never bothered to migrate away from the basic plan I picked many years ago. So I appreciate you offering help, but I cant follow those steps. I dont think it would be a great deal of help if I did, anyhow .... my only contribution would be a graphic makeover of the site, and if nobody is asking me to do that, it's probably not something people really want. Again, though, thanks for the work you've put into this project, ... I will definitely appreciate this a lot when it goes live, in whatever form it finally appears.
bradrn wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 6:54 pm
Travis B. wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 6:50 pm
Pabappa wrote:Everett, (2013) suggested that in high elevation regions such as in the Andes, languages regularly employ the use of plosives like /k/.
Off-topic, but that clearly cements the guy's status as a crackpot if here were not already that.
What, Everett? I thought that he was fairly well-respected (although admittedly I’m not too knowledgeable about such things). Anyway, I’m sure he included several claims like that, and Pabappa just chose the one which sounds weirdest.
Yes, its a silly sentence from Wikipedia's summary of a serious paper. More importantly perhaps, this isnt the same Everett that you all are probably thinking of ... source is here. Although I didnt notice that either until I looked it up just now.
bradrn
Posts: 6263
Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:25 am

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by bradrn »

Pabappa wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:39 pm
bradrn wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 6:51 pm Well, if you have your own website using PHP, then you certainly have enough knowledge to access the board locally. (I had assumed you had no experience at all with this stuff.)
I run Windows on my home PC ... my website is hosted remotely and completely unrelated. I dont think I can do what you did. It seems that I could upgrade to a plan that offers 15 MySQL databases and pay exactly the same price Im paying now .... but I use my website for such basic purposes that Ive just never bothered to migrate away from the basic plan I picked many years ago. So I appreciate you offering help, but I cant follow those steps. I dont think it would be a great deal of help if I did, anyhow .... my only contribution would be a graphic makeover of the site, and if nobody is asking me to do that, it's probably not something people really want. Again, though, thanks for the work you've put into this project, ... I will definitely appreciate this a lot when it goes live, in whatever form it finally appears.
No, you don’t need to do this at all! You can just install MySQL etc on your own home PC — that’s what I did, and it works absolutely fine. You don’t need a server for MySQL, that’s just for if you want to host a website using it.
bradrn wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 6:54 pm
Travis B. wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 6:50 pm

Off-topic, but that clearly cements the guy's status as a crackpot if here were not already that.
What, Everett? I thought that he was fairly well-respected (although admittedly I’m not too knowledgeable about such things). Anyway, I’m sure he included several claims like that, and Pabappa just chose the one which sounds weirdest.
Yes, its a silly sentence from Wikipedia's summary of a serious paper. More importantly perhaps, this isnt the same Everett that you all are probably thinking of ... source is here. Although I didnt notice that either until I looked it up just now.
Oh, yes, that one. That was immediately the first paper I thought of when I saw your signature. But I think you have a typo in that case: isn’t it /kʼ/ rather than /k/ which is correlated with higher altitude?
Conlangs: Scratchpad | Texts | antilanguage
Software: See http://bradrn.com/projects.html
Other: Ergativity for Novices

(Why does phpBB not let me add >5 links here?)
User avatar
Pabappa
Posts: 1359
Joined: Sun Jul 08, 2018 11:36 am
Location: the Impossible Forest
Contact:

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by Pabappa »

I admit that I had no idea MySQL could run on WIndows ... i simply assumed that it was a Unix project since most web servers run on Unix, Linux, or BSD. I still think I'll pass, though .... again, I appreciate your wanting to help, but it sounds like this phase of the project is basically done.

Regarding the Everett quote, it does look like the Wikipedia editor misread the paper, as the paper is clearly talking about ejectives, not voiceless stops in general.
bradrn
Posts: 6263
Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:25 am

Re: Posts from the old board

Post by bradrn »

Pabappa wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2020 7:15 pm I admit that I had no idea MySQL could run on WIndows ... i simply assumed that it was a Unix project since most web servers run on Unix, Linux, or BSD.
Yep, most databases can run on most operating systems. (I currently have both MySQL and PostgreSQL running on my computer, and I’ve managed to run sqlite before.)
I still think I'll pass, though .... again, I appreciate your wanting to help, but it sounds like this phase of the project is basically done.
Yes, it is basically done. I wasn’t actually looking for any help though; you just sounded like you wanted to be able to access the old board yourself, so I only meant to give some directions in case you wanted to set that up.
Regarding the Everett quote, it does look like the Wikipedia editor misread the paper, as the paper is clearly talking about ejectives, not voiceless stops in general.
Really? The Wikipedia page through which I learnt of it is this one, which correctly says that it is ejectives which are more common in higher altitudes.

(If you’re interested in other correlations like this, this page cites another paper — looks like it’s by the same author, actually — which claims that tonal languages are more common in hot and humid areas.)
Conlangs: Scratchpad | Texts | antilanguage
Software: See http://bradrn.com/projects.html
Other: Ergativity for Novices

(Why does phpBB not let me add >5 links here?)
Post Reply