Forum Software Conversion FAQ

[Mike]

I can't log into my account. What's going on?

You will need to reset your password using the password recovery form. Once you have submitted your email address to the form, your new password will be sent to you.

If for any reason you are having trouble with the above method, you have two remaining options: a) Contact us specifying your account name, the email address associated with your account, and your rough geographical location. If we're satisfied it's really you, we'll email you back with your reset password. b) Register a new account and post a new thread in Announcements, Technical Problems and Suggestions explaining your situation and including the following information: original account name, the email address associated with your original account, and your rough geographical location.

Note: if you do not provide ALL of the required information outlined above when you contact us, we cannot assist you. If for any reason you are unable to provide a specific piece of information, please remember to explain why.

And in case you're wondering why your password is gone, here are some words by way of explanation:

Forum software stores passwords as undecryptable MD5-hashed strings, which in English basically means a jumbled-up format that cannot be converted back to what it was originally. "What it was originally" being, in this case, a plaintext, human-readable representation of your password.

Because different brands of forum software use different hashing methods, a hash generated by Invision Power Board will not be readable by vBulletin. It is therefore impossible to carry over old passwords to a new system. Well, not completely impossible, we could have used a brute force algorithm to break everyone's passwords, but that would have taken several million years, and I wanted to get the new software up by September. So anyway...

There's some random/superfluous/misplaced BBCode/HTML in an old post or PM!

This is an unfortunate side-effect of the conversion. I've already made some attempts to clean the worst of it (primarily with the most recent posts), and over the next few days I'll work at getting rid of the rest, but removing absolutely every last bit is probably impossible.

Please ensure that you avoid quoting any excess or messed up HTML/BBCode from old posts, however, as doing this will just create more mess to clean up.

Below is a list of what has been cleaned so far. If you notice a post you suspect has been damaged by one of these replacements, please notify me at once:

[noparse]Removed stray "[/b]" tags that do not appear to be preceded by a "" tag

Removed anything in the format of "

~any characters~

"

Anything in the format of "~line break~~line break~" has been replaced with simply "~line break~~line break~"[/noparse]

There's some random/superfluous/misplaced BBCode/HTML in my signature!

You'll need to fix this yourself as I'm going to be concentrating my own efforts on the posts. If you need to have your signature recovered from the old board, PM me.

The external hyperlink removal script for signatures has also been updated to work with the new software. However, some fairly sweeping changes have had to be made because of the difference between the way IPB and vB handle signatures, so I can't guarantee it will work 100% correctly just at the moment. Again, if you notice anything strange going on, notify me.

I can't access the FFA forum anymore!

You will need to give yourself access again. Click the link on the forum description near the green tick.

Won't all the old links to threads, forums, posts etc. be broken now?

Hopefully not, as I've set up some redirects which should work for almost every old link. I say "almost every" because I can't guarantee 100% of links will be accounted for, not least because with IPB there are often at least 2-3 different possible URLs for linking to a single piece of content, with or without extra oddities that may have crept in there for some unknown reason.

My avatar's disappeared!

Either re-upload it, reset your avatar URL to what it was before, or PM me to have it retrieved from the old board.

X, Y and Z are messed up! How dare you be so careless whilst dealing with my precious forum! Fix it now!

We expect at least few things to be out of place initially, primarily because when converting one database format to another, it's impossible to transfer every single piece of information across and have it represented 100% correctly within the new system. If you notice something amiss, just notify us of it. We'll more than likely be able to put it right.

Some old threads are missing poll questions!

Unfortunately vBulletin does not support multiple poll questions, so during the conversion some will have been lost. This was unavoidable.

Some post icons have changed!

vB uses different post icons to IPB and they don't seem to correspond in any meaningful sense, so the converter is likely to have assigned inappropriate icons to certain posts. I may try to fix this at a later date.

I've lost an/some attachment(s)!

PM me to have it/them retrieved from the old board.