All Invision 3.1x, 3.2x, 3.3x and 3.4.x versions should import fine… Remember to make sure you select ‘Invision’ from the dropdown (I still make this mistake quite frequently :P)
Maybe open up your Invision config file conf_global.php and confirm your settings:
$INFO['sql_host'] = 'localhost';
$INFO['sql_database'] = 'my_db_name';
$INFO['sql_user'] = 'my_db_user';
$INFO['sql_pass'] = 'my_password';
$INFO['sql_tbl_prefix'] = 'iv34_';
Also to note some web hosts will not use ‘localhost’ and use a FQDN instance eg. ‘sql1234.example.com’
Thank you for your quick answer.
Nevertheless, that’s exactly what I do. I’ve taken all information from my invision config file… with the server url (which is different from ‘localhost’).
Do you think there is a limit with database size? There is almost 100,000 posts and the database is bigger than 350 Mb
Do you think there is a limit with database size?
No, all size constraints are upstream and relate directly to WordPress and the size you are talking about is not an issue.
There is almost 100,000 posts and the database is bigger than 350 Mb
That’s fine…
Now the fine print, this will take a while to import, depending on your setup it might be a couple of hours right through to 8, 16 or 24, “how long is a piece of string” theory.
I am not sure what tools Invision includes but optimizing and cleaning the database first is a very good idea.
As bbPress imports the topics and replies it parses all the BBCodes ([b][i][url] etc) through a custom conversion script, if it comes across data it doesn’t like it will stop and no longer continue. Thus it is advisable to setup a local MAMP/XAMPP install and perform an import on your local machine as it gives you a good idea on how the process works, how much time it will take and the data integrity. Once your happy with all that then give it a go on your webhost.
Thus it is advisable to setup a local MAMP/XAMPP install and perform an import on your local machine
Very good idea. I’m gonna try this solution, because I have already used the optimization tools on the database (with PHPMyadmin).
Thank you again and i’ll keep you updated
I did everything you said but I keep failing… the only thing I read on my screen is:
No stickies to stick
No topics to convert
No forum parents to convert
No forums to convert
No passwords to clear
No users to convert
No data to clean
Even with my local installation (which works fine)
Have you downloaded your Invision MySQL database and imported it into your local MAMP/XAMPP MySQL server? (We do not support connecting to remote databases)
We do not support connecting to remote databases
That’s the point!! I didn’t see this before…
I tried to migrate from my actual IPB forum to my bbPress forum on another server. So, i’m going to export my IPB forum from my actual server to the new one and do the bbPress import once again (it should work). Thanks a lot for your help.
Awesome, let me know how it goes 🙂
Everything went well. Now Ihave to see what happened exactly and what to correct, but the importation worked.
Thank you again for your help.
Cool, if you find something that didn’t work as expected let me know and I can take a look and see if it is something we could add to the importer for a future version.
Unfortunately i got a problem with the import scripts. Everything went well but it got stuck on the 29299th line of replies conversion…
@zefred I hate this issue, I hit the same problem myself last week. 🙁
The root of the issue is a row (in your case the 29299th reply) in the database has some issue. What these issues are I have not been able to work out, the data looks perfect to me and for some reason it causes the import to stop. Every time I come across this issue I analyse the row from the database to try and find what the cause may be and have yet to come up with anything. It is also non forum specific so could be phpBB, vBulletin, Invision etc.
The workaround is to delete that 29299th reply from the source database and try again.
I know this is not an ideal solution but until I can identify the issue I’m unable to make the importer ‘workaround’ that invalid data. 🙁
How can I be sure that the 29299th line in the importation is the ‘good‘ one as long as I import my database 100 lines at a time?
Even if it is the one I have to delete, I see no problem to do so, but how can I find this line ? Do I have to look for the 29299th line in the ‘ipb_posts’ table? If yes, how can I do (I know nothing about SQL…)?
Thank you again
These types of faults are typically due to some encoding issue in that post. Sometimes this is from an encoding conversion to UTF8 that was done at some point. Whatever it is, it’s nearly impossible to detect without setting a time limit on queries and bisecting the difference until we can narrow down the offending entry, and skip it. Because queries could naturally take a long time, and because it results in missed data, I’m not comfortable with this approach.
Thank you John,
You’re right. At somem point I used a script to change the database to UTF8 (c22.php).
I have also some trouble migrating to new versions of ipb and have to ask for support each time I want to update now…
I have to figure out this issue before trying to go further with bbpress.
