Migration Script From Dolphin to Cheetah

I tried PHP 8 from my Hestia Panel, but got the standard error. As I was busy, I went back to PHP7 and the problem went away. Oddly, I recall finding the panel set for my Cheetah site set to PHP 8 earlier in the month and it seemed to be working ok. It's possible the server wasn't rebooted and the PHP8 notice was a ghost.

Have you done any testing on PHP 8?  I am going to pull the Cheetah Master and see how it does on the current PHP 8.1

7.4.2 . I always upgrade to the latest stable version as soon as I can.

I'm currently using Cheetah 1.3.0 from Github without any issues.

Thank you all… this will help me plan ahead. I doubt very much that I will risk breaking my working 7.3.5 sites by upgrading them to 7.4.2. If it turns out that the migration script will not work with 7.3.5 then a manual transfer would be the next option. What version of Dolphin are others using?

If someone wanted to migrate a Dolphin site to Cheetah, I can help with the migration but I can't do it for free.  I am rather busy at the moment, setting up two dedicated servers, setting up two new Cheetah sites, and transferring some sites from a VPS to the dedi.  However, I can try to schedule some time.

I am currently in the process of prepping and testing the next release of Cheetah. So i will not be working on a migration script until after that is done. I have no ETA.

When i do create a migration script, it will be based on the latest version of Dolphin. It should however handle some older versions depending on the extent of database changes. It is unlikely it will be able to go back as far as 7.3.5 tho. I will not know that for sure until i have actually created the script and determined what dolphin versions it can support.

Sorry Geek_Girl. By that I meant the dates I pasted the new data into the new site weren't the same as the dates when the member originally posted. I literally rebuilt everything by hand because it was just as quick in the long run.

I wonder why?  Post dates should have copied over OK unless Cheetah stored the date in a different format than Dolphin.  I noticed in the old Dolphin code that dates are stored in different ways, sometimes using a text date format and other times using the Unix Epoch timestamp.

You have to understand that as Dolphin went through different versions, there were at times changes in the database structure.  Your best approach is to backup your site files and database, then run through the different Dolphin upgrades, applying each one in sequence.  There is no way to skip over an upgrade.  Once you have your site to the last version of Dolphin, 7.4.2, you could then wait for the migration script to move your Dolphin sites to Cheetah.

The other approach is that if you are interested in moving the sites to Cheetah is to do a manual transfer.  I have already did a manual transfer of a Dolphin 7.4.2 site to Cheetah and it isn't that hard; the only snag I ran into was videos and that was because I didn't copy over one of the Rayz tables that is needed.  To move the database table, you have to look at columns; and make sure that any bx reference is changed to ch in the database.  Not very hard; it is just exporting and importing tables.  You first install the cheetah table; say for photos, so that you have the database structure in place and then import from the old Dolphin table and of course move photos.  

7.3.5 is a very old version of Dolphin designed for PHP versions 5.6 x. The conversion from 7.3.5 to 7.4.2 wasn't easy for me and I ended up closing a site with a thousand members as a result. I gave the members the opportunity to join a  new7.4.2 size and even volunteered to transfer their profile info and photos. Most couldn't be bothered. It wasn't so much the upgrade, I had hundreds of code changes throughout the script that didn't work with 7.4.2.

If you look at the 7.3.5 upgrade path, you will probably see that making an upgrade script for 7.3.5 to 7.4.2, then to Cheetah won't be easy and I'd hate to see Deano doing it. In all fairness, there will only be a handful of people out there wanting to "try" the conversion.

I suggest you do what I did with my last site, which was very complex. I designed an almost identical site in Cheetah. I converted the templates and modules using the tools in the Developer Info Section, then I transferred 300 profiles - by hand. Ditto the photos, blogs, classifieds, the lot.

It actually doesn't take long and the only thing wrong is the post dates.

We touched upon this topic in another thread. I’m currently running several communities on dolphin 7.3.5 and would be interested to learn more about the details and timeline for a migration script from that version Cheetah.  I want to avoid having to upgrade to 7.4.2. before migrating.

What version of Dolphin are others using? 

Is the plan for the migration script work on different versions of Dolphin?

Thank you all.