Heh
KiM :wink:
Actually it was my fault for relaxing; I normally prefer to host my own content. However I became complacent and used attachments for about 70% of the posts. Surprizingly there were only two that I had to re-create/re-find. I hate production/repetitive tasks though:
It puts me to sleep. It’s why I became a developer and I like doing prototypes because each one is a unique challenge.
I do not have good counsel for the graybeards of the Forum. In my mind – there should have been plenty of opportunities to make physical backups – and I cannot fathom how binary data – even if stored in the database (whatever flavor it is) could have been corrupted; it doesn’t add up. My ISP does a standing backup nightly, and I can schedule my own backup more frequent than that.
The next step though is to correct the typos; again I am at a loss why this isn’t fixed yet. However – it is a no-brainer as near as I can tell. Let’s presume the worst and that the backup or copy is corrupted or that the translation from one source to another was bungled – hence the corruption. We know that only certain characters were affected. It should be a simple task to note those characters (and I have my list) and craft a translation table for each one.
My Plan would go like this:
Make a copy of the present database; let’s call it
Copy-A. Then make a copy of that, and we’ll call that
Copy-B. Make a
faux-Forum that is linked to Copy-B for an internally hosted site that the developers can see. Create the correction scripts to replace only one corrupted character at a time and run them on Copy-B, and view the results on the faux-Forum.
- Did the correction go well?
- Where there any issues with the correction?
If it looks good, then move on to the next character… and proceed on down the path until all the characters are fixed.
If Copy-B gets corrupted, make another copy from Copy-A. The state of the database never changes during the correction process; the
Live Forum data is not affected while the fix is being researched and tested. Once all the scripts prove out – and this process should only take hours, not days – then take the ES Forum offline, run the scripts, and bring it back up. Done.
I can’t spell it out any easier. I do this all the time for large and small clients. I’d write the scripts myself if I knew which flavor of database was used. SQL and MySQL are essentially the same, though it looks like phpBB can use other databases. The scripts are brain-dead simple.
I am more than happy to help. I don’t need access to the database; I can create my own phpBB with SQL and plug in screwed up data from the existing content for testing. I just need to know what database they’re using.
Let’s get on with the fix.
KF