No response from either Adam or Liam yet.
Anyway, in terms of importing the old posts, I've done a bit of looking into exactly how to do it, and I should be able to write SQL files (or more accurately, write an app to generate SQL files) to batch-add old posts. Shortly I'm going to try just adding a small hand-written snippet to make sure it works* (this'll be added to a mod/admin-only board on the new forum so most of you won't see it); once that works, I'll try to parse the LemmingsWelt database, which is ironically the one that's in a more convenient format for me to write the app for. If all goes well, I'll add IsaMedia next, and once both of those are in, I can look at doing something with *this* board, since it doesn't look like we're going to be getting a copy of the database...
One issue geoo raised (and this may be very important to some people) is private messages. Unless we get the database, there's simply no way I can import the private messages from this site, for obvious reasons. So, if we don't get the database then when we do move, make sure you save a backup copy of any important private messages somewhere.
EDIT: * This was 100% successful on the first attempt. There is one minor issue - even if the posts (going by timestamp) is older, the newly-
added post is pushed to the top of the topics list. Therefore, until further notice, I've disabled posting on the new board. I'll re-enable it when either:
a) I find a way around this
b) These forums go down for more than 24 hours, unless it's an intentional action as part of the move
c) All posts have been imported
And just to confirm 100%: Yes, we will have the LemmingsWelt and IsaMedia posts imported too, not just the ones from *this* forum.
However, it looks like we'll only have the attachments from *this* forum; the other two will be posts only.