Good day everyone!  I have a question regarding data migration and Elgg v1.8.x.  Instead of focusing on "why" anyone would want to do this let's just try to concentrate on "can it be done" and get a general idea of how you would do it.

I was asked a couple of questions regarding migrations.

1. If I have a site that's related to a specific topic and another interesting topic crops up then is it possible to migrate specific user accounts and their data to a second site while leaving all data in the original site?
2. If I have two sites that I would like to merge into one then is it possible to migrate the users and their contributions from one into the other?

If it's possible to do then how would you do it?  Just a high level overview - no specifics needed.  We would probably contract this out anyway.  If it just required a custom application to be built to accomplish it then we would contract that out.

For breaking a larger site into multiple sites I know that one method we could use is to restore the backup of the larger site to the second site.  From there you could programatically (sp?) remove the users and content that aren't relevant - or just leave them!  Just an idea!

Again, this is just a discussion on "can you" and "how".  Leave the "why" alone.  For "why", let's just say that the boss asked me the question and expects an answer.  I'll give him an answer regardless of if we would actually want to do it or not.

Thanks!

Lee