Planning to combine forums

[zylstra]

I am creating a second forum with a separate database for a second language now. In the future I plan to build a plugin for internationalization that will allow a single vB installation to provide for many languages. When I have completed that plugin I will need to import this second language forum into the original forum. I assume that the best way to do this would be with a modified version of ImpEx. Is this correct?

What actions can I take now that will keep the complexity of the future import to a minimum?

Do you think it is a good idea to begin the second forum with a copy of the existing database so that future overlap of usernames is minimized? If I do this then I need to delete all threads, which will be extremely server intensive. Deleting just 2000 threads took 15 minutes. With a thread count a thousand times larger than that it's going to take more than 10 days to delete them all. Any ideas on how to accelerate this?

Is this the best way to go about this? Are there any other things I should consider?

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Why start a 2nd forum (which will also need a 2nd license) instead of just creating a new section on the current board?

[zylstra]

Because I am attempting to build the forum in several languages. Simply creating another section of the forum does not provide for translation of the language pack, among several other things.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

You can have multiple languages installed on the same forum. The user can choose what language to use for the interface.

[tansu]

Sorry for interrupting, looks like the same subject to me.
I am working on separating my forums to other languages.
There will be a homepage, which lists the languages.
forum.com/en
forum.com/fr
like that...

How can I make different sub pages for each languages? I dont want to create new databases and new boards to licence..

[Marco van Herwaarden]

It is a different issue, please start a new thread. (In the correct forum: Gen. vB Disc.)

[zylstra]

Marco, to my knowledge vBulletin is not truly internationalizable off the shelf. For example, users will still see all the forums that are not in their chosen language, a search will show results in all languages, etc. If I am wrong please point me to an exemplary internationalized vBulletin forum so we can discuss the matter more exactly, and so that I can point out exactly what it is missing that I am looking for.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

vBulletin itself is fully capable of handling multiple languages. Content (ie. posts) is ofcourse not translated, nor does vB have knowledge of the language the post is made in.

By using a category for postings in each language you can with a modification ensure that searches like new posts will not list all the forums/categories. Be carefull however that it doesn't appear as multiple boards, as you would need multiple licenses then.

[zylstra]

Do you have an example of a forum where this is done?

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Sorry. I know it has been done before but i don't have any example at hand.

[zylstra]

Thank you very much for all the ideas.

[COBRAws]

You could use a htaccess to get the browser language and then forward the visitor to the destination URL adding a string for the forum language.