Question About Forum Data

Jake

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.

Michael

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

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. — Jake

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

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

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. — jamalrob

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

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

Jamal

↪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

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. — jamalrob

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

↪Jake

Yep, that's how I understand it.

Jake

Appreciate it! That should do it for me, thanks again.

Jake

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

↪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

Ok, no problem, thanks again for sharing, and for this forum.

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