Migrating from talkyard

AI-generated summary

The discussion is about migrating from Talkyard to Discourse. Sectros inquires about the possibility of migration. Falco responds that there is no existing importer code, but suggests writing one or signing up for their hosting service for data import. However, KajMagnus corrects Falco, stating that Talkyard is not a Discourse clone and predates it. KajMagnus also notes that writing a migration script would be a lot of work due to differences in database structures between Talkyard and Discourse, although advances in AI coding may make it easier in the future.

Is it possible to migrate from talkyard to discourse?

There is no existing importer code, but writing one yourself shouldn’t be hard because Talkyard started as a Discourse clone and also uses PostgreSQL.

You can also sign up for our hosting, where we can get your data imported in some plans.

Yet another way is putting your budget and details at a new topic on our Marketplace.

Talkyard started as a Discourse clone

Not easy to know, but it predates Discourse (and is not a clone) — I got the idea to build new & better forum software, the winter 2009–2010, and started writing the first lines source code in the spring 2010, see https://github.com/debiki/debiki-server-old, and the first commit, April 5, 2010. Here’s an Hacker News announcement, 2012 (I called it “Debiki” back at the time). Discourse was announced in 2013.

writing one yourself shouldn’t be hard

Actually I’d say it’s lot of work. Although both use Postgres, the database structures are different: Talkyard uses much fewer & hand crafted tables, with tons of constraints, while Discourse uses Rails auto generated tables, constraint checking in app server code. There’s no 1 to 1 database table mapping, and converting from one to another, loses some information.

However today with AIs getter better and better at coding, maybe you’ll soon be right :slight_smile:

@Sectros

Sorry it didn’t work out the way you had hoped