Phases 5-7: Summary Documentation

Combined Duration: 4-6 weeks

Phase 5: UI Updates for Read-Only Archive (1-2 weeks)

Objective

Update frontend to clearly indicate read-only archive status and remove all write functionality.

Key Tasks

1. Add Archive Banners

  • Site-wide banner: “This is a read-only archive of content from [DATE]”
  • Channel-specific notices
  • Post/comment page notices

2. Remove Write UI Elements

  • Remove “Create Post” buttons
  • Remove “Reply” buttons on comments
  • Remove “Edit” and “Delete” buttons
  • Remove upvote/downvote buttons
  • Remove “Report” buttons
  • Remove “Subscribe” buttons
  • Remove moderation action buttons

3. Update Score Display

  • Change from interactive voting to static display
  • Show score with “(archived)” label
  • Remove vote arrows
  • Display as read-only metric

4. Update Help/Documentation

  • Update FAQ to explain archive status
  • Add “About this Archive” page
  • Update user guides
  • Remove references to posting/commenting

5. Update Forms

  • Disable all write forms
  • Add tooltips explaining read-only status
  • Remove form submission handlers

Deliverables

  • Archive banner component
  • Updated post/comment display components
  • Disabled form components
  • Updated help documentation
  • UI/UX testing results

Phase 6: Deploy Read-Only Version (1 week)

Objective

Deploy the database-backed read-only application to production.

Key Tasks

1. Pre-Deployment

  • Final verification of data integrity
  • Performance testing on staging
  • Create deployment checklist
  • Prepare rollback plan
  • Communicate to users

2. Deployment Steps 

# 1. Deploy database changes
python manage.py migrate

# 2. Deploy code changes
git pull origin main
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 3. Restart application
systemctl restart open-discussions

# 4. Verify deployment
curl -I https://discussions.example.com/
python manage.py verify_export_comprehensive

3. Post-Deployment Monitoring

  • Monitor error logs for 48 hours
  • Track response times
  • Verify no Reddit API calls
  • Check user feedback
  • Monitor database performance

4. Validation

  • Smoke test all major features
  • Verify comment trees render
  • Check search functionality
  • Test pagination
  • Verify images load

Deliverables

  • Deployment runbook
  • Staging environment tested
  • Production deployed
  • Monitoring dashboard
  • Rollback plan documented
  • User communication sent

Success Criteria

  • Application runs without Reddit
  • No errors in logs
  • Response times acceptable
  • All features functional
  • Search index updated

Phase 7: Cleanup (1-2 weeks)

Objective

Remove all Reddit-related code and dependencies from the codebase.

Key Tasks

1. Remove PRAW Dependency

File: pyproject.toml

poetry remove praw

Remove from imports:

# DELETE these imports from all files
import praw
from praw.exceptions import *
from praw.models import *
from prawcore.exceptions import *

2. Remove Authentication Code

Files to modify:

  • channels/api.py - Remove auth functions
  • channels/models.py - Drop RedditRefreshToken, RedditAccessToken

Delete functions:

  • _get_refresh_token()
  • get_or_create_auth_tokens()
  • _configure_access_token()
  • _get_client()
  • _get_client_base_kwargs()
  • _get_session()
  • _get_requester_kwargs()
  • _get_user_agent()
  • evict_expired_access_tokens()

3. Remove Proxy Classes

Delete: channels/proxies.py

Update all references:

# OLD
from channels.proxies import PostProxy, ChannelProxy
post = proxy_post(submission)

# NEW  
post = Post.objects.get(reddit_id=submission_id)

4. Remove Base36IntegerField

File: channels/models.py

Delete:

class Base36IntegerField(models.BigIntegerField):
    # DELETE entire class

Create migration to convert remaining Base36 fields.

5. Remove Environment Variables

Files:

  • open_discussions/settings.py
  • docker-compose.yml
  • app.json
  • .env.example (if exists)

Remove:

OPEN_DISCUSSIONS_REDDIT_CLIENT_ID
OPEN_DISCUSSIONS_REDDIT_SECRET
OPEN_DISCUSSIONS_REDDIT_URL
OPEN_DISCUSSIONS_REDDIT_VALIDATE_SSL
OPEN_DISCUSSIONS_REDDIT_ACCESS_TOKEN
OPEN_DISCUSSIONS_REDDIT_COMMENTS_LIMIT

6. Remove Test Infrastructure

Delete files:

  • fixtures/betamax.py
  • fixtures/reddit.py
  • channels/factories/reddit.py
  • All files in cassettes/ directory

Remove dependencies:

poetry remove betamax betamax_serializers

7. Update Tests

Update all test files:

# REMOVE betamax decorators
@pytest.mark.betamax(...)  # DELETE

# REMOVE Reddit fixtures  
@pytest.fixture
def reddit_api():  # DELETE
    
# UPDATE to use database
def test_list_posts():
    posts = PostFactory.create_batch(5)
    # Test against database

8. Remove Management Commands

Delete Reddit-specific commands:

  • export_reddit_channels.py (keep for reference in git history)
  • export_reddit_posts.py
  • export_reddit_comments.py
  • build_comment_trees.py

Mark Phase 2 commands as “historical” in documentation.

9. Remove Old Model Fields

Create migration to drop old Reddit fields:

# Migration to clean up old fields
operations = [
    migrations.RemoveField('post', 'post_id'),
    migrations.RemoveField('comment', 'comment_id'),
    migrations.RemoveField('channel', 'allowed_post_types'),
]

10. Update Documentation

README.md:

  • Remove Reddit setup instructions
  • Remove link to reddit-config repo
  • Add “Read-Only Archive” section
  • Update architecture documentation

Add new docs:

  • docs/archive-info.md - About the archive
  • docs/migration-history.md - What was done and when

Update:

  • docs/architecture/ - Remove Reddit from diagrams
  • docs/operations.md - Remove Reddit maintenance
  • docs/configuration.md - Remove Reddit config

11. Remove View Files

Delete:

channels/views/moderators.py  # Write operations only
channels/views/contributors.py  # Write operations only
channels/views/subscribers.py  # All subscription functionality
channels/views/reports.py  # All reporting functionality

Update remaining views to remove write endpoints.

12. Clean Search Integration

File: search/search_index_helpers.py

Remove:

def reddit_object_persist(*persistence_funcs):
    # DELETE decorator

def is_reddit_object_removed(reddit_obj):
    # DELETE function

Update index functions to use Django models directly:

# OLD
def index_new_post(post_obj):
    post = post_obj._self_post  # From proxy
    
# NEW
def index_new_post(post):
    # post is already a Post model instance

Deliverables

Code Cleanup

  • PRAW dependency removed
  • Authentication code removed
  • Proxy classes removed
  • Base36IntegerField removed
  • Environment variables removed
  • Test infrastructure removed
  • Old model fields removed
  • Write-only views removed

Documentation

  • README updated
  • Architecture docs updated
  • Archive documentation added
  • Migration history documented

Testing

  • All tests updated
  • All tests passing
  • No Reddit references in code
  • Code review completed

Success Criteria

  • No import praw in codebase
  • No Reddit environment variables
  • No cassettes or betamax references
  • All tests pass
  • Documentation complete
  • Code review approved
  • Clean git history (old files in history only)

Final Verification 

# Verify no Reddit references
grep -r "praw" --include="*.py" .
grep -r "reddit" --include="*.py" . | grep -v "reddit_id" | grep -v "# historical"

# Verify dependencies
poetry show | grep -i praw  # Should return nothing
poetry show | grep -i betamax  # Should return nothing

# Run all tests
pytest

# Check for environment variables
grep -r "REDDIT" .env.example docker-compose.yml app.json

Post-Cleanup

Archive for Reference

  1. Tag current state: git tag pre-reddit-removal
  2. Keep migration commands in git history
  3. Document what was removed and why
  4. Save final Reddit data snapshot

Monitor

  1. Watch logs for any Reddit-related errors
  2. Monitor performance
  3. Track user feedback
  4. Verify search index stays synchronized

Future Considerations

  1. Consider adding full-text search
  2. Consider bulk data export feature
  3. Plan for eventual CDN deployment
  4. Consider static site generation for popular pages

Total Timeline Summary

  • Phase 1 (Schema): 1 week
  • Phase 2 (Data Migration): 2-3 weeks
  • Phase 3 (Verification): 1 week
  • Phase 4 (Read-Only API): 2-3 weeks
  • Phase 5 (UI Updates): 1-2 weeks
  • Phase 6 (Deploy): 1 week
  • Phase 7 (Cleanup): 1-2 weeks

Total: 9-13 weeks (2-3 months)

Significantly faster than original dual-write plan (16-22 weeks) due to read-only simplification.