# Migrate to Discourse (help requested)

**URL:** <https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/migrate-to-discourse-help-requested/1457>\
**Category:** CSL Development\
**Created:** [November 24, 2017, 1:19am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/migrate-to-discourse-help-requested/1457 "2017-11-24T01:19:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rintze\_Zelle](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/rintze_zelle/32/175_2.png) [@Rintze\_Zelle](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Rintze_Zelle)\
**Post date:** [November 24, 2017, 1:19am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/migrate-to-discourse-help-requested/1457/1 "2017-11-24T01:19:15Z")

</div>

Hi all,

I recently came across an offer by Discourse for free hosting for  
popular open source projects  
([https://blog.discourse.org/2016/03/free-discourse-forum-hosting-for-community-friendly-github-projects/](https://blog.discourse.org/2016/03/free-discourse-forum-hosting-for-community-friendly-github-projects/)),  
and I’m happy to report that we got approved. I think this would be a  
very nice replacement for the SourceForge mailing list (and maybe we  
can also use it for user support and reduce our reliance on the Zotero  
forums). I guess we could also move to GitHub-only communication, but  
I think a separate platform like Discourse is still useful for  
high-importance/low-volume discussions with a wider audience.

We should be able to migrate the xbiblio-devel mailing list archive,  
but the Discourse folks told me that we can’t do the migration on  
their hosted copy. However, we could migrate our mailing list content  
into a development instance of Discourse, export a Discourse data  
backup, and have the Discourse folks apply that to their hosted  
instance.

I was hoping somebody would be willing to assist me with this  
migration. I can supply an mbox file for the xbiblio-devel SourceForge  
mailing list archive  
([https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/documentation/Mailing%20List%20Archives/](https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/documentation/Mailing%20List%20Archives/)).  
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md)  
has instructions for installing Discourse locally or on a cloud  
instance. [https://meta.discourse.org/t/problem-importing-using-mbox-script/37567](https://meta.discourse.org/t/problem-importing-using-mbox-script/37567)  
has a discussion of a successful SourceForge mailing list migration.  
[https://meta.discourse.org/t/howto-import-mbox-mailing-list-files/51233](https://meta.discourse.org/t/howto-import-mbox-mailing-list-files/51233)  
has general instructions on using the standard mbox import script at  
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/script/import\_scripts/mbox.rb](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/script/import_scripts/mbox.rb).

Best,

Rintze

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![michelkraemer](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/discourse.citationstyles.org/michelkraemer/32/226_2.png) [@michelkraemer](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/michelkraemer)\
**Post date:** [November 24, 2017, 6:00am UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/migrate-to-discourse-help-requested/1457/2 "2017-11-24T06:00:35Z")

</div>

Hi Rintze,

I agree with you that we should avoid GitHub-only communication. GitHub is for issues for not for general discussion/support/help.

I had a look at the install instructions and the import script. Looks pretty doable. If you like, I can try to do the migration.

Cheers,  
Michel

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Bruce\_D\_Arcus1](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/u/Bruce_D_Arcus1)\
**Post date:** [January 20, 2018, 1:55pm UTC](https://discourse.citationstyles.org/t/migrate-to-discourse-help-requested/1457/3 "2018-01-20T13:55:10Z")

</div>

Thanks to everyone who made this happen!