Archive content importing in reverse order issues, & navigating that

Strumelia
Strumelia
@strumelia
10 years ago
3,603 posts
Hi all,
I know this was mentioned before by someone, but the fact that SOME categories of my content (uploaded audio clips, members, and videos for examples) have imported to JR in the order of being listed oldest first, it produces various problems, especially in terms of navigating to find items.

First, let me say that for now on my non-live test site, I am seeing on my 'home' page the "Latest Profiles", "Latest Music", Latest Videos"- well, it's actually showing the OLDEST of all those items not the latest, starting from 2009. I do realize that as new items get added, they will be shown at top as 'first' and will eventually bump the old ones down out of easily seen position on the list. I know that.

HOWEVER, the problem then persisits in how to navigate:
For example, I see on my main page the sample module for "Latest Profiles". (in ning I could choose to sort that display of member thumbnails by Newest/Featured/or MostPopular...but whatever, let's just go with Latest for now). So... I click on either "All" or on the "Profiles" link on top navigation strip and it takes me to the general Profiles page which shows a nice grid (thanks for the grid!) of avatars which show the member names upon hovering. That's fine, but then....
at bottom all I get is a pagination choice of moving ONE page at a time back and forth, from page 1 to 189, using arrows. Considering that i;m getting brought first to my oldest 2009 members first, on page 1- this means when I actually migrate, my recently joined (but pre-JR-migration) memebers will have to click through 200 pages one at a time to page 200-something before they see themselves or others who may have joined recently (unless they've joined after migration to JR, in which case they'll be on page 1 or 3 etc).
This system will create a giant sandwich with all members in a strange sequence that doesn't follow and cannot be sorted into the normal logical latest-to-oldest pattern, the awkwardness is then compounded by the hobbled way of having to navigate one page at a time within that sandwich. The same is true in my Videos and when clicking on the "Latest Audio">"All" link. And in Audio.

Strangely, on the Main/Home page under the BLOG samples module, there is a pagination where you can punch in a page number rather than just going one page at a time by arrows...YET if you click on the "ALL" link for blogs from the main page, you then go to the blogs page and again get the one-page-at-a-time navigation through 100 pages of blogs. Oddly enough, my Blogs imported in the correct order- from most recent to oldest.

Group Comments have imported in correct most-recent to oldest sequence. But Group Discussions have the same oldest-first and pagination issue.

I guess this is really talking about two issues- the import order sequence, and the page/content navigation. But they work together hand in hand, thus I'm describing the issue together here.

I do remember the Ning team saying a year ago that when people imported their ning archive from 2.0 to 3.0 they would experience that the activity feed content would show up oldest first, in reverse order- but since activity is intended to be a daily renewing kind of thing that people don;t normally explore more than a couple weeks back in time, the new activity items would quickly bump the old stuff down and the issue would simply resolve itself that way. But content 'meat' is navigated by members in a more methodical search manner, so the sequence and navigation is best if somewhat logical and easy to use.

In ning we have an admin option to sort forum discussion threads oldest or newest first, but stuff like videos and music always naturally show up most recent first. JR does that too (my video added a couple days ago is show on top), but the imported archived content gets placed in reverse chronological order for SOME features.

Hope this is not all too confusing- thanks!


--
...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

updated by @strumelia: 07/09/16 09:21:02AM
brian
@brian
10 years ago
10,148 posts
Strumelia:
I know this was mentioned before by someone, but the fact that SOME categories of my content (uploaded audio clips, members, and videos for examples) have imported to JR in the order of being listed oldest first, it produces various problems, especially in terms of navigating to find items.

I've checked this out, and at this time I believe the createdAt and updatedAt timestamps that Ning is including in the Archive are wrong - I'm not 100% positive, but we use the EXACT same ordering and timestamps for everything, and we only see this on SOME pages. I'm aware of it and looking into it.

Thanks!


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

updated by @brian: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM
Strumelia
Strumelia
@strumelia
10 years ago
3,603 posts
Thank you for looking into this. I'm sure it's a real PITA issue to solve, but you guys seem to be geniuses at solving such things, so I am hopeful.


The other little problem I mention above is also the pagination on most modules where you are forced to navigate between dozens or even hundreds of pages of items -only one page at a time, with only an arrow for . You can't just punch in page 120 if you are page 3...you have to click your way to page 120 one page at a time. This I imagine is something simple that can be implemented on all modules?


--
...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

updated by @strumelia: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM
Pam Givens
Pam Givens
@pam-givens
10 years ago
45 posts
I've checked this out, and at this time I believe the createdAt and updatedAt timestamps that Ning is including in the Archive are wrong - I'm not 100% positive, but we use the EXACT same ordering and timestamps for everything, and we only see this on SOME pages. I'm aware of it and looking into it.

Thanks!


Thank you Brian for all your help. I'm hopeful too that these things can be solved. You all are fantastic.
updated by @pam-givens: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM
brian
@brian
10 years ago
10,148 posts
Pam Givens:
Thank you Brian for all your help. I'm hopeful too that these things can be solved. You all are fantastic.

Just to be sure everyone knows, some of these may NOT be solvable by us - they are issues with Ning's export. For example - Ning does NOT provide us with the Group ID that a page belongs to, so we have no way of linking a group page up with the group - that's why we've had to create a tool in the Discussion Pages module that let's the site owner manually link the pages to the right group. It's a pain, and if Ning just included this then it would not even be needed, but I can say that the "quality" of the data included in the Ning export is pretty bad in may places, and we can only work with what we are given.

Thanks!


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

updated by @brian: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM
brian
@brian
10 years ago
10,148 posts
Just an update that Paul and I believe we've got to the bottom of this, and it has to do with how items are ordered in the Ning Archive (they are not always order sequentially). So we will get a fix in for this to the importer however in order to fix it on a site you will need to re-run the import.

We're working on that today and hopefully will have a fix out ASAP.

Thanks everyone!


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

updated by @brian: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM
Strumelia
Strumelia
@strumelia
10 years ago
3,603 posts
I KNEW you guys were gonna get to the bottom of it!

This will make a HUGE improvement in logical layout and things looking 'normal' for a new site when members first come to see and explore.

Yes of COURSE happy to do a re-import if a fix is created- I'm still on a non-live test site anyway.
Do you know all the places where this reverse order happens?- because SOME content has imported in the correct order, and we wouldn't want to flip that around naturally.

Big hugs to you for your efforts!


--
...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

updated by @strumelia: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM
brian
@brian
10 years ago
10,148 posts
Strumelia:
Do you know all the places where this reverse order happens?- because SOME content has imported in the correct order, and we wouldn't want to flip that around naturally.

We really don't - it appears to be random. MOST of the time they are actually in the correct order, but in our initial development when were building the parser the examples we used were all in the right order, so we assumed that was how it was "set up" to be, but that was wrong. We now have to rebuild part of the importer so it first ensures things are properly ordered THEN proceeds with the import, so it's a little bit tricky but not too hard.

Thanks!


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

updated by @brian: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM
Pam Givens
Pam Givens
@pam-givens
10 years ago
45 posts
Strumelia:
I KNEW you guys were gonna get to the bottom of it!

Yes of COURSE happy to do a re-import if a fix is created- I'm still on a non-live test site anyway.

Big hugs to you for your efforts!

Yes, thank you for your efforts to figure this out. I will also figure out how to re-import.
updated by @pam-givens: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM
Pam Givens
Pam Givens
@pam-givens
10 years ago
45 posts
Pam Givens:
Strumelia:
I KNEW you guys were gonna get to the bottom of it!

Yes of COURSE happy to do a re-import if a fix is created- I'm still on a non-live test site anyway.

Big hugs to you for your efforts!

Yes, thank you for your efforts to figure this out. I will also figure out how to re-import.

As far as I can tell all my content upside down ;-(
updated by @pam-givens: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM
brian
@brian
10 years ago
10,148 posts
Pam Givens:
As far as I can tell all my content upside down ;-(

Yep it probably is, or certainly could be :)


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

updated by @brian: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM
paul
@paul
10 years ago
4,326 posts
I know why this is happening and working on a fix. Might have to do a re-import though. Will let you know.


--
Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

updated by @paul: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM
Strumelia
Strumelia
@strumelia
10 years ago
3,603 posts
We 'could' simply stand on our heads. lol


--
...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

updated by @strumelia: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM
brian
@brian
10 years ago
10,148 posts
Looking at this more - at this time - I don't think a re-import is needed, as we can fix this up by proper ordering on the listing calls, but we'll know for sure once we've been able to check all areas out.


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

updated by @brian: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM
Pam Givens
Pam Givens
@pam-givens
10 years ago
45 posts
Strumelia:
We 'could' simply stand on our heads. lol

I'm currently doing that a lot but it's not helping ;-)
updated by @pam-givens: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM
paul
@paul
10 years ago
4,326 posts
This is fixed in the next Core release. You'll all be able to stand normally then ;-)


--
Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

updated by @paul: 12/29/14 09:23:54AM