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Question About Forum Data

Jake December 13, 2018 at 14:17 2925 views 11 comments
If the forum owners wish to share, I'm wondering how easy it is for you to obtain backups of the forum data. You know, membership lists, admin settings, forum posts etc. For example, can you back up every day? By which I mean, download the data from the host to your own personal computer.

Another question. Could you move this forum to another host if that was for some reason desired? I'm not suggesting this is necessary or desired, I'm just wondering if moving would be possible.

I really like this forum software, even better than my own forum software. But I'm wary of getting too invested in any online situation where I don't have full control over the data. As a member of this forum that doesn't matter. I'm referring to if I started my own forum.

Thanks for anything you can share.

Comments (11)

Michael December 13, 2018 at 14:25 #236686
https://plushforums.com/user-faq

Can I export my forum content?
Not unless you're leaving us, in which case we'll provide a data export in JSON format. We back up your content every hour, so it is perfectly safe.
Jamal December 13, 2018 at 15:32 #236697
Quoting Jake
Another question. Could you move this forum to another host if that was for some reason desired? I'm not suggesting this is necessary or desired, I'm just wondering if moving would be possible.


We could move if necessary, say if it became too expensive, but it would mean starting from scratch unless we had control over the source code and database of the new forum. So if I hosted the new forum and could change the code, access the database directly, and so on, then I could conceivably run a script to import the data from the PlushForums JSON export.
Jake December 13, 2018 at 20:36 #236798
We back up your content every hour, so it is perfectly safe.


If one person, or one company, is in sole charge of backups the data isn't perfectly safe.
Jake December 13, 2018 at 20:39 #236800
Quoting jamalrob
We could move if necessary, say if it became too expensive, but it would mean starting from scratch unless we had control over the source code and database of the new forum. So if I hosted the new forum and could change the code, access the database directly, and so on, then I could conceivably run a script to import the data from the PlushForums JSON export.


Thanks. So this software is available from PlushForums and nowhere else, correct?

Again, I'm just curious, not making any point here.

Jamal December 13, 2018 at 20:46 #236802
Reply to Jake In this form and hosted as it is, yes it's just a service from PlushForums. But I believe it's based on a fork of VanillaForums, which is open source and available to run yourself.
Jake December 13, 2018 at 20:50 #236805
Quoting jamalrob
n this form and hosted as it is, yes it's just a service from PlushForums. But I believe it's a fork of VanillaForums, which is open source and available to run yourself.


Ah ha, right, thanks, I almost remember now. So PlushForums is a souped up version of Vanilla. The souped up version is proprietary, but the underlying code is open source. Do I have it now?
Jamal December 13, 2018 at 20:51 #236806
Reply to Jake Yep, that's how I understand it.
Jake December 13, 2018 at 20:52 #236807
Appreciate it! That should do it for me, thanks again.
Jake December 16, 2018 at 00:56 #237696
Should anyone's time should permit, I have another question. How similar is PlushForums to Vanilla? Did they totally overhaul Vanilla, or is it more a case of tweaks here and there?
Jamal December 17, 2018 at 11:08 #238177
Reply to Jake Sorry Jake, I don't know. I only found out because there's very little documentation for PlushForums, so when I was Googling for information about some admin functionality, it came up on Vanilla. I haven't looked into it any further.
Jake December 17, 2018 at 11:21 #238179
Ok, no problem, thanks again for sharing, and for this forum.