bbPress Support Forums » Tag: migration - Recent Posts

tate83 on "Introducing bbConverter - Convert your current forums for use with bbPress 2x"

tate83 — Fri, 04 May 2012 15:27:41 +0000

Hi
Love the plugin. But are the phpBB image/URL trouble's going to be resolved somewhen? There isn't much acitivity any more..

Cheers
Tate

raubin on "Introducing bbConverter - Convert your current forums for use with bbPress 2x"

raubin — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:59:19 +0000

Any news if the plugin is going to be able to export / import from mybb forums? Need to get away from mybb and love the look of this WP plugin. Thanks in advance.

zeaks on "Introducing bbConverter - Convert your current forums for use with bbPress 2x"

zeaks — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 06:00:59 +0000

I'm currently using Xenforo, great forum, but I want to have my forums integrated with my site. Glad to hear Xenforo is in added to future options.

labsecrets on "From BuddyPress to BBpress"

labsecrets — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:16:04 +0000

@andychan

My pleasure. There is, unfortunately, no easy way to move data from the group forums to the sitewide bbPress forums, other than copy/paste or some involved database manipulation.

My suggestion, based on years of working with customers, is that you simply obfuscate the old forums from plain view in your navigation menus and pages, but then refer to them in a link or button at the top of your new forums pages for anyone who may with to refer back to them. This "human engineering" trick will likely satisfy those who seek to find the old content (like a dusty old book), but will force all new content to be added to the new sitewide forums.

This usually works like a charm, as the old content is always available (directly or in wayback machine or google cache), but people don't add to it anymore.

Cheers!
Spence
http://labsecrets.com

andychan on "From BuddyPress to BBpress"

andychan — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 09:20:33 +0000

Thanks, Spence for the wonderful tutorial. I do know how to set up the sitewide bbPres forum alongside a Buddypress Group Forum. But I think having both can be confusing for the buddypress users of my site.

So I would like to move everything from the Buddypress Group Forum to sitewide bbPress. Is there a manual way to do this?

labsecrets on "From BuddyPress to BBpress"

labsecrets — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 05:56:31 +0000

We've done a little tutorial video to show how you can setup either a BuddyPress Group Forum, a SiteWide bbPress 2.0 Forum, or a custom hybrid forum page using shortcodes. You can have all three at one time. Hope this helps ;-)

You can keep the previous forums, but the data from BuddyPress group forums does not migrate automatically into bbPress site wide forums.

http://labsecrets.com/2012/01/23/buddypress-and-bbpress-forums-made-easy/

Cheers!
Spence
http://labsecrets.com

andychan on "From BuddyPress to BBpress"

andychan — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 03:01:39 +0000

I'm trying to migrate from Buddypress to sitewide bbpress too. Any ideas how to make this happen?

Basically I have already been using Buddypress with its built in groups+forums, but I find a sitewide bbpress forum is better. I would like to keep all the previous discussions in Buddypress forums. Any help is much appreciated...

OC2PS on "Topic author names prefixed with "imported_""

OC2PS — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 17:01:01 +0000

I have found that this plugin imports users AND imports topics, but doesn't make the connection. So basically it imports users twice - once from user table and another time as authors of something (or nothing).

The usernames shown as post authors have imported_ prefixed to them.

So we have
username, and
imported_username

So I tried deleting imported_username using bbpress function of assigning all its topics/replies to username. The operation was successful and now I see username as author of those topics/replies, but one problem lingers: I still don't see any topics/replies by username if I go to its profile page.

I can't go the opposite way and delete username and then change imported_username to username as WordPress doesn't allow changing usernames.

P.S. I imported from phpBB 3.0.9

OC2PS on "Introducing bbConverter - Convert your current forums for use with bbPress 2x"

OC2PS — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 15:06:30 +0000

Umm...except that the usernames (in frontend only) appear as imported_username instead of username. Anyone know the fix?

OC2PS on "Introducing bbConverter - Convert your current forums for use with bbPress 2x"

OC2PS — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 13:44:58 +0000

Actually, I take that back.

If you click on "Activate Plugin" immediately upon installation from the Add New Plugin area, the plugin does throw up the error

The plugin does not have a valid header.

However, if I later to to installed plugins, and then click "Activate", then I am able to activate and use the plugin.

I am also happy to report that I was able to successfully convert a phpBB 3.0.9 forum. It's not perfect...I need to fix a few things here or there, but it is good enough...as good as can be expected from a general-purpose automated converter.

OC2PS on "Introducing bbConverter - Convert your current forums for use with bbPress 2x"

OC2PS — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:42:29 +0000

@JJJ: Which version are you trying?

I am using the latest version of WordPress 3.3.1

I have tried both bbPress 2.0 and 2.0.2

I installed bbConverter through WP's admin panel so the plugin version is 1.3

When I click Activate immediately upon installation, I get
The plugin does not have a valid header.

OAEErra on "Introducing bbConverter - Convert your current forums for use with bbPress 2x"

OAEErra — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 21:59:52 +0000

Hey guys, just a thought - is it possible to convert BBPress 2.0 threads and posts back to v1.X in any way?

John James Jacoby on "Introducing bbConverter - Convert your current forums for use with bbPress 2x"

John James Jacoby — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 16:15:35 +0000

Works for me.

OC2PS on "Introducing bbConverter - Convert your current forums for use with bbPress 2x"

OC2PS — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 15:29:36 +0000

Does not install.

The plugin does not have a valid header.

John James Jacoby on "Forum migration tool"

John James Jacoby — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:40:29 +0000

Jared is correct. There is a migration plugin already. Also, this is a duplicate post of one from several weeks ago that you posted here and then cross posted to WordPress.org. The more time we spend moderating the forums of duplicate content is the less that's spent writing code.

jaredatch on "Forum migration tool"

jaredatch — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:23:43 +0000

The problem with this is that bbPress is maintained by @jjj and a few other contributors. So the time and features have to be prioritized.

Writing an importer is a *lot* of work. Right off the bat a forum importer is going to be at least twice as much work as, say, a MovableType -> WordPress importer.

Now you have to take into account how many, ultimately, separate importers you would have to write. Let's see here... vBulletin, phpBB, Vanilla, punBB, SMF, IPB... and those are just some of the popular ones. So 6 importers *might* cover most off people's needs.

Then you have to keep in mind that the importers are constantly breaking because of software updates to the original forums packages. I'd say ever 2-4 months you can expect breakage due to an update.

Bottom line? You are looking at 6 importers (at least) to cover the popular forum suites, that not only would take a huge time investment to get off the ground, but would have to be constantly maintained and updated so they don't break or get out of date.

Is it do-able? Sure. However, if you want @jjj to tackle this don't expect to ever see another bbPress update or feature again - it's just a matter of time.

This is really where contributors need to step in and help out. This would ideally be written and maintained by different contributors.

OC2PS on "Forum migration tool"

OC2PS — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:44:09 +0000

bbPress needs to face the fact that most people who want a forum, have already had a forum. The *new* market for forums is much smaller than the *installed base* of forums.

Consequently, most of the people who would want to use bbPress probably are already using another forum script and need help migrating. It is collossal mistake to leave this for community plugins.

If I have a forum software in a production environment, then one of the major factors influencing my decision regarding migration is whether or not there is a robust, stable, tried and tested and reliable migration path to the target software. This is extremely important for me. In fact, I would suffer a somewhat inferior software willingly rather than move to a better software if there is no clear migration path or there is a high degree of risk in migration.

It is a mistake on part of bbPress to leave migration to community plugin developers. Even if there were some plugins out there that did the job, it would be much less reassuring to prospective users compared to a migration/import path created by the bbPress team. As it happens there are only 2 import plugins ( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/forumconverter/ and http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbconverter/) out there and both of them are broken and not supported.

WordPress does it right in building an importer directly into the core.

Over the next 18-24 months, I expect to see a mass exodus from phpBB as they rewrite the software from ground up ( http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=41583). If bbPress provide a good migration path, it stands the chance to capture some of fleeing population.

Task

I think it would be greatly beneficial to the project if the bbPress team build a bbPress importer that supports the top 4 forum software: phpBB, Invision, SMF and vBulletin.

Such a migration tool, importer or converter will:

i) import topics and forum hierarchies into bbpress

including the relations between forums, topics and replies
and slugs for forums, topics and replies
ii) generate an .htaccess to place in the old forum directory so that old URLs are 301 redirected to new ones.

iii) import users including profiles, passwords, signatures and roles

@jjj You have mentioned at http://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1740 that this is more appropriate for a plugin and that bundling that code in the core of bbPress seems needless for many users that are starting off fresh.

I believe that this function is too important to be left to the mercy of others. There is a huge trust issue...if I have to entrust my data to someone, I want to make sure that they are reliable, trustworthy, good enough, and understand the software well.

I take your point about not bundling the function in the core. How about a migration plugin by the bbPress team?

labsecrets on "From BuddyPress to BBpress"

labsecrets — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 06:30:50 +0000

If you have been using BuddyPress with bbPress 2.0 installed, it should work fine if you merely deactivate BuddyPress. The bbPress functionality should continue to operate.

Please advise if you find that this is not the case.

Cheers,
Spence
http://labsecrets.com

Ittavi on "From BuddyPress to BBpress"

Ittavi — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:35:59 +0000

Same here. I found Buddypress to be "too much" for my users. Would love to hear some advice.

John James Jacoby on "bbConverter support dead?"

John James Jacoby — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:48:34 +0000

Not everyone has the luxury of working for free. The best part of OSS is being able to look at the code, learn from it, and contribute fixes upstream. Someone that needs this badly enough will keep it alive.

dosch on "From BuddyPress to BBpress"

dosch — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:45:36 +0000

Hey Shain,

I have the same issue. Would love to hear if it worked out for you

OC2PS on "From BuddyPress to BBpress"

OC2PS — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:58:01 +0000

The only thing I have heard of is forumconverter http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/forumconverter/

Not sure it works, though.

Shain on "From BuddyPress to BBpress"

Shain — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:58:42 +0000

Hi,

I manage a community about electric cars and we have a wordpress with buddypress. Our buddypress installation is only used for the forum (+ profiles and IM).

I'd like to move from buddypress to BBpress. Do you know if there is a easy way for me to transfer all messages from the buddypress forums to the BBpress forums ? Do you have some advices to success my transition ?

Thanks

Arvid on "Why bbPress sucks!"

Arvid — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 01:21:04 +0000

Some pretty neat ideas! Partcular thumbs up for #3 (official migration tool) #7 (forum sidebar) #9 (custom header code) #10 (standalone package)

I just noticed that the "Docs" tab above has a different destination http://codex.bbpress.org/

On the page it says "you are welcome and invited to modify any of the pages you see here."

Question is - how? I don't see any "Edit" links on any of the pages...

OC2PS on "bbConverter support dead?"

OC2PS — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:49:41 +0000

Forget daily, I think we'd settle for weekly, fortnightly, monthly or even quarterly. There's nothing!

OC2PS on "Introducing bbConverter - Convert your current forums for use with bbPress 2x"

OC2PS — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:46:33 +0000

@ebiznet88:

I'm checking out another possible solution to bridge phpBB3 to WP. Its a plugin available at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-phpbb-bridge/

Interesting.

But it sucks that in this plugin user management has been given to phpBB. WordPress has many more interesting options, like FB/Google/Twitter login, etc.

@ebiznet88: Hard Seat Sleeper is on topic and talking about bbConverter

ebiznet88 on "Introducing bbConverter - Convert your current forums for use with bbPress 2x"

ebiznet88 — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:13:15 +0000

Hard Seat Sleeper, are you referring to Anointed and AWJunkies, or the phpBB-WP bridge fellows whose link I shared in my post?

At any rate, I have moved on from this bbconverter. I have wasted quite a few months and effort waiting for answers to my problems from AWJunkies. Too bad he isn't willing to finish what he started.

Hard Seat Sleeper on "Introducing bbConverter - Convert your current forums for use with bbPress 2x"

Hard Seat Sleeper — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 04:15:04 +0000

ebiznet88 - even trying to hire these fellows is not easy. They rarely respond to any emails, even for paid work. And when they do, they seem very disorganized. Maybe they are just busy?

I suggest you move on.

ebiznet88 on "Introducing bbConverter - Convert your current forums for use with bbPress 2x"

ebiznet88 — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:23:49 +0000

Doesn't look like we'll be receiving any responses from the creators. It looks like they have abandoned the project.

I'm sure they receive email notifications of replies to this thread, and there have been so many questions posed but they haven't bothered to come in to reply. Even their website forum has been quiet.

I'm checking out another possible solution to bridge phpBB3 to WP. Its a plugin available at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-phpbb-bridge/.

I will be installing it as soon as I can squeeze a few hours in and hope it works.

Has anyone else tried this bridging plugin and care to give a review?

Ed on "Introducing bbConverter - Convert your current forums for use with bbPress 2x"

Ed — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:47:47 +0000

so, no news then?

anyone have some tips for other forums to try that work well with WP then?