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What's the best way to dump my old forum and start using Get Satisfaction?
I'm curious to hear from anyone who has imported existing forum content into Get Satisfaction (or who is considering it).
We've got a forum that needs some serious updating, and Satisfaction definitely blows any other forum-ish software out of the water in terms of building a strong community around your company or organization. But since Satisfaction is so much more than "just another forum," there doesn't seem to be a ideal upgrade path from the old and busted forum to the new Satisfaction hotness.
Problems:
- The old forum has a wealth of valuable information that you absolutely can't afford to lose.
- Importing the old content will probably mean that you have to pick some less than ideal defaults. (E.g., every topic becomes a "discussion" regardless of the content, there are no "feelings," etc.)
- What do you do about all the existing user accounts on your old forum? Do they have to start over and create a new Get Satisfaction account?
A couple paths to take:
- Just import what you can using some defaults, and take advantage of the awesome new Satisfaction features from this point on.
- Import nothing and keep your old forum online, but disallow new posts, and have a big notice somewhere that says "We now live over at Get Satisfaction! Click here for the new hotness blah blah..."
Of course, in either of those cases, your user base will have to create new accounts here, if they don't have one already.
So, that's my struggle at the moment... Has anyone else worked through these issues? What did you do? I'd love to hear suggestions, solutions, commentary, etc.
Thanks!
-John
We've got a forum that needs some serious updating, and Satisfaction definitely blows any other forum-ish software out of the water in terms of building a strong community around your company or organization. But since Satisfaction is so much more than "just another forum," there doesn't seem to be a ideal upgrade path from the old and busted forum to the new Satisfaction hotness.
Problems:
- The old forum has a wealth of valuable information that you absolutely can't afford to lose.
- Importing the old content will probably mean that you have to pick some less than ideal defaults. (E.g., every topic becomes a "discussion" regardless of the content, there are no "feelings," etc.)
- What do you do about all the existing user accounts on your old forum? Do they have to start over and create a new Get Satisfaction account?
A couple paths to take:
- Just import what you can using some defaults, and take advantage of the awesome new Satisfaction features from this point on.
- Import nothing and keep your old forum online, but disallow new posts, and have a big notice somewhere that says "We now live over at Get Satisfaction! Click here for the new hotness blah blah..."
Of course, in either of those cases, your user base will have to create new accounts here, if they don't have one already.
So, that's my struggle at the moment... Has anyone else worked through these issues? What did you do? I'd love to hear suggestions, solutions, commentary, etc.
Thanks!
-John
I’m excited about Get Satisfaction!
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Inappropriate?Hi John,
Thanks so much for your interest! Really good question and very good assessment of the issues involved.
We've actually tried the forum import in the past and it's not very effective for the companies that have tried it. As you note, there's a whole lot of information required by our system that regular forum posts don't have, and there's about as much work required to fill that in as to just repost the topics in the first place. Companies like PBwiki had a lot more success just informing the community that they were moving over to a new system, for this reason.
As for importing registered users -- that is something we could help you with. You would just export the users table of the forum database and we could write a script that auto-creates accounts for each one. They'd each receive a welcome email from Get Satisfaction. However, you would want to send a note explaining the shift to the new system first so they don't think they're being spammed by us and give them the option to opt out of it before delivering the info to us.
Probably the best course of action is to do your second scenario -- leave the old forums open for reference but not posting with a very clear message about where to go for new posts.
Please let us know if we can help in any way. Feel free to email me at amy [at] getsatisfaction [dot] com.
I’m hoping we can find a happy solution for you
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Inappropriate?Hi,
What would be the best way to "give them the option to opt out before deliver the info" to you?1 Comment
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However you communicate with them. Do you have a mailing list? If not, through a forum post then? You can also do it as an "opt in" to play it safe. This means you would only give us the users who have agreed to opt in to a Get Satisfaction account.
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