"Nested" Discus board import - subtopics/threads/posts not showing up
 

Hi,

I'm new at forum board installation and all, but the instructions for vBulletin were really good, and I'm looking forward to administrating this new board ever so much more than the old Discus board we've been using. Mark (aka The Boss) had the folks at Discus install and setup the Discus board for us, and we've not been able to get any human support from them for about a year or so now, so anything that might suggest "ask them" is probably moot. Hence, I'm installing vBulletin, and trying to migrate the old Discus board over.

The situation is thus. The old Discus board was set up along the lines of the topical outline of our Users Guide (we sell music notation software). There are top-level Topics, which most of these then have sub-topics, and under these sub-topics (and some of these have sub-sub-topics) are the threads with posts. You can see the existing Discus board at www.notation.com/Forum.htm Yeah, the organization is a tad a.r. ;)

I migrated the board from the Discus files (after figuring out that "message tab file" means the .tar backup file that Discus generates), and followed all the "clean up" directions. The top-level Discus-topics (which get transferred as "categories" which I changed to "forums") are all imported fine, but none of the Discus-sub-topics, and thus their threads/posts, get displayed.

Any top level topics (which are imported as "categories", which I can change to "forums" in vBulletin) that have threads within that top level display the threads and posts fine. Therefore I think the problem with the other forums which are missing the subtopics/threads/posts is that the threads and posts are buried down a couple of levels (ie, are nested) and thus don't fit the vBulletin parser paradigm.

Fwiw, I am not constructing the vBulletin incarnation of our forum in the same nested way. I suggested that we have a "flatter" layout, and so I'm not looking to have the final layout match the old Discus forum. We'll be having fewer top level categories, and then 2-3 forums within each category.

However, we want to (1) have an "archive" of the old board within the vBulletin installation so that folks wouldn't have to go elsewhere to search the old board and (2) to "seed" the new vBulletin forum with some of the ongoing-discussion in the appropriate categories (eg, I'd "clone" some of the threads from the archive area into their appropriate new locations.)

What do I need to do to recover and display these nested threads/posts so that I can accomplish the above objectives? I looked in the Discus forum management, and don't see any options for saving only specific areas of the forum so I could import them separately/sequentially into vBulletin. I'm pretty sure the sub-topics/threads/posts did get imported and are "floating around" in my vBulletin install somewhere, but I can't make them show up.

Thanks for any help here!
Sherry