Merge Boards?

[^Raven^]

I know that Rosy created a request (please see http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=8603.0) in March of 2004 for the feature to be added that will allow admins to merge boards.  Jack R. Abbit provided a technical way to go about this, which not only doesn't appeal to me and didn't appeal to Rosy but is something that most people won't do.

So, I am asking for an easy and quick way to merge boards.  We are able to merge and split threads and I'd like us to be able to do the same with boards and categories.  For now, I'm willing for SMF to take a step in this direction by allowing us to merge boards.  I wish I knew how to do this, technically speaking, and if I did I'd write up something to help out the SMF dev team.  Unfortunately, I don't and that is also why I'm requesting this.  If I did, I'd likely use Jack's technical suggestion although it wouldn't help me since David is remotely hosting my forum and I don't have FTP access to his server.

Anywho, I know this is a lot to ask especially with 1.1 receiving finishing touches but I hope that this will either be available in 1.1, maybe you guys are ahead of me like usual, or that it'll be in a following release very soon.

[Oldiesmann]

Just set quick-mod options to "checkboxes" (profile-> look and layout preferences -> show quick-moderation on the messageindex as).

Then, go to the board you want to merge or split
Check the box next to all the topics (click the one at the very top to select all of them)
Select "Move selected to:" from the first list and the board name from the second list.
Click "Go".

This might take a bit longer with boards that have a lot of topics in them, but it can still be done.

[^Raven^]

That's what I ultimately did in one of the boards but not exactly what I'm looking for.  I'm looking for the merge and split feature that we have for threads but to apply it to boards.

[Oldiesmann]

Unfortunately that's the only way you can do it at the moment.

[^Raven^]

Unfortunately that's the only way you can do it at the moment.

Okay I realize that but I'm asking for this to be a new feature.  I know there's a lot on the plate but do you happen to know if it is in the bundle for SMF 1.1 or planned for a future release?  If not, I'd love for this to make its way into an upcoming release.

[Oldiesmann]

As far as I know we're not planning to add any more features to 1.1, but we will keep this in mind for 1.2...

[^Raven^]

Much obliged.  I'm surprised there haven't been other requests for this either actually.

[hstraf]

I will put my vote in for a "merge boards" feature.

I need to merge some of our boards together, but couldn't figure out how to do it.  (Did not see a "merge boards" function anywhere... so I cam here and did a search for "merge boards" and found this thread.

Looking forward to this feature.  Not used very often, but a *nice* addition/feature for when it's needed.



Thanks!

[Mike_B]

Yeh I would really love that too - so helpful in tidying up a forum...

...as an ex-phpBBer I really miss it for the odd spring-clean.... 

Mike

[Harzem]

If you have phpMyAdmin access, merging two boards is only one line of SQL code.

[Mike_B]

Ah well I do have phpMyAdmin access 

But as a non-SQL-er I am having probs guessing what the line of code might look like... 

Any clues?

Mike

[Harzem]

In the link that was given in the first post, the SQL is given:

UPDATE smf_topics SET ID_BOARD=your_new_board_id WHERE ID_BOARD=your_old_board_id

You should determine "your_new_board_id" and "your_old_board_id" numbers to run this query. Do you know how to determine the numbers? They appear at the end of the URLs of your boards. For example, "feature requests" board has an URL of
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?board=3.0
which means the id is 3 (not 3.0, just 3)
Determine the id of your old board (which you will move the topics FROM), and the id of your new board (you will move the topics TO), then run the query in phpMyAdmin. Don't forget to backup first of course.

[Mike_B]

Thanks dude - I will try it next time