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Is it possible (or difficult) to migrate an entire forum from vanilla to a lemmy instance? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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As per the title.

If I was running a Vanilla forum and wanted to migrate over to a new lemmy instance, e.g. forum.com to lemmy.forum.com Could I migrate the entire forum over while keeping the same categories/sub categories as communities I guess, and bringing all of the old threads with them? If it is possible, would it be difficult?

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[–] 10 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Depending on the software used NodeBB might be easier to migrate to than Lemmy. As far as I know it also has ActivityPub support.

Also, Lemmy does not have subcategories. Every community is on the same hierarchy.

You might also want to look at PieFed. It's a bit lighter than Lemmy.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (5 children)

    Thanks. Does PieFed have subcategories?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Don't know. Probably not. It works more or less the same as Lemmy.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Ah ok. Thanks.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I'm sorry cause I don't have a source, but by another Lemmy comment anecdote I remember reading PieFed does have subcategories. I.e. /art/paintings . Worth checking in to!

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    • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Not that I know of. Thats the case most times a community has to move, you more or less start from scratch.

    You can set up a bot to periodically post links to old threads, articles, etc but that's about it afaik

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Seconding the suggestion to start fresh. Make the old forum an archive, still readable but impossible to add or edit. If necessary, migrate it to a more lightweight system, perhaps one designed specifically for preserving old forum content (I don't know if there is one, just spitballing here).

    You really should give some thought to whether Lemmy is a good format for your community. Forums are very different from Lemmy.

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    • [–] 5 points 1 year ago*

    Seconding the piefed recommendation. It's much lighter to host than Lemmy, and has some nice user facing features that Lemmy lacks, which you can read more about here (scroll down to comments):

    https://slrpnk.net/post/24141955/16757434

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    [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    If you don’t care about the migrated content being federated, then you could write a script which copies everything into the database of your Lemmy instance

    If you do care, then you would have to go with the other person’s suggestion of having a bot post the migrated content periodically

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