[djoep]

I meant AWJunkies. I had offered to try to make the smf converter if only I could get a little help figuring out how to use their database query system. It is still a bit baffling to me why they chose to add a layer on top of SQL but there is where I ran into my roadblock.

I’m afraid I cannot help with the smf conversion until I can get some answers regarding use of the converter’s internal query mechanisms.

and… you just pointed out an error in my profile… should be bigtreestech.com.

joe

[djoep]

What ever happened to SMF? I tried using the contact info given but have never received a response.

joe

[djoep]

Just curious… since bbpress 2.0 uses wordpress custom posts rather than it’s own dB tables, what would you be expecting of such a skeleton plugin? As far as I have seen, normal WP plugins appear to apply to bbpress 2.0, though one could take advantage of the new post types like forum, topic, etc.

joe

[djoep]

Any news here? Is the SMF table translation issue I outlined above impossible with this plugin?

Thanks,

joe

[djoep]

I’m looking forward to hearing back from Adam regarding my SMF Table question. I’m hoping that based on his answer I may be able to contribute back a prototype smf table conversion file.

joe

[djoep]

A new host! That seems like a rediculous constraint.

BTW, with bbPress 2.0 plugin (site wide bbPress), it does not use a separate DB or separate tables. It uses custom WP Posts inside the WP dB.

As far as I can tell, BuddyPress does not use bbPress 2.0 plugin for group forums, instead, it uses an internal version of bbPress 1.x. It also uses separate dB tables.

If you are using bp 1.5 with group forums, you should have a set of db tables with the prefix that includes bb_. You should also have a file called bb-config.php

The file bb-config.php has settings for the bbPress (1.x) database name, user, and password, and table prefix. I’ve not tested this but conceivably you could create a separate db for your bbpress tables and modify the config file accordingly.

It does not appear that the buddypress tables themselves are so easily separable.

I would strongly recommend that you not try separating the databases until you have successfully done it in a test environment. Also, as always, do a site and dB backup before you do anything just in case.

joe

[djoep]

Hey Andrew,

I took a look at bbPress Post Toolbar but it seemed to add bbcodes either by hand or by clicking a button. With “normal” wordpress, and inside the buddypress group forums, if you just enter the url as text, with no added adornment, it just shows up as embedded video. I believe the same is true for image urls but haven’t tested recently.

Also, I’m confused. On both the WPplugin directory as well as the master501 website, it shows the latest version as being back in August, not today???

Thanks,

joe

[djoep]

I’ll have a look. One of the first things i started looking at was how I might use the internal editor but stumbled across cleditor and stopped.

[djoep]

BTW, had a similar experience adding a wysiwyg editor to bbPress. In that case, it worked in bbPress 2.0 site-wide but not in the individual group forums.

It would be nice if bbPress behaved basically the same inside and outside groups for a buddyPress / bbPress install on the same site.

Don’t get me wrong… both are awesome and exceedingly complex under the hood.

Thank you!

[djoep]

OK, after a bit of testing this seems to work in my site-wide bbPress 2.0 forum but it does not seem to work in the bbPress froums embedded in budddyPress 1.5 groups.

to get the groups to show the editor I tried several different element identifiers including #topic_text which is the ID for the text entry area for new posts… no joy!

Any ideas as to what could be causing the difference in behavior would be greatly appreciated!!!

joe

[djoep]

I looked at all the files for other forum converters but the joins seemed simpler than what smf might require or more likely I just did not understand the table conversion code.

So, here are the specifics (smf_ is the prefix).

for the topics area.

for the topic title conversion.

SMF has two tables required to get whatever it is you need:

Table = smf_topics includes:

field = ID_TOPIC – the table index for topics.

field = ID_FIRST_MESSAGE – the index of the first message written for the topic.

Table = smf_messages includes:

field = ID_MSG – table index & source of ID_FIRST_MESSAGE above.

field = subject – the actual text for the “topic title”

If you can give me the corresponding syntax to replace the following, I think I can probably muddle through the rest of the converter. I am very hesitant to send the entire database. BTW, this is coming from an smf 1.x install, not the newer 2.x version.

Current converter code for topic title

// Topic title.

$this->field_map[] = array(

‘from_tablename’ => ‘thread’,

‘from_fieldname’ => ‘title’,

‘to_type’ => ‘topic’,

‘to_fieldname’ => ‘post_title’

);

Thanks very much!!

joe

[djoep]

I believe I may have found a solution to this problem… Woot!

1) install the wordpress plugin CLEditor

2) on line 25 of cle_wp.php change the line to read:

$(“#new-post textarea”).cleditor();

3) test, test, test, test, test.

this seems to be working on my test server but I’ve only given it a few minutes trial. I’ve tried it using bbpress standalone alongside buddypress, not in one of the group forums (yet).

joe

[djoep]

On a related note… I’ve started to pick away at trying to build an smf converter using this plugin. I’ve run into a bit of an obstacle.

In the Topic Section of Standalonebbpress.php These lines are used to get the Topic Title and make sure it gets place in the bbPress 2.0 post meta data:

// Topic title.

$this->field_map[] = array(

‘from_tablename’ => ‘topics’,

‘from_fieldname’ => ‘topic_title’,

‘to_type’ => ‘topic’,

‘to_fieldname’ => ‘post_title’

);

Seems simple enough… the original bbpress install has a table topics with a field topic_title that has the topic title you’re looking for. I belive that inside bbc-convert-class this array is translated into a querry string but not exactly sure how the indexing is done.

With SMF, it’s more complicated. The topics are defined in a table also called topics, but that table does not include the topic title. Instead, it includes the index to the original message posted in a field called ID_FIRST_MESSAGE. To get the topic title, you have to go to the messages table and look up the ID_MESSAGE that matches, and get the title from the subject field.

All this seems doable using standard SQL but I’m finding it very difficult to figure out how to use the array fields ‘from_tablename’, ‘from_fieldname’, ‘join_tablename’, join_fieldname’, ‘join_type’, and ‘join_expression’ to produce the desired result.

I guess part of the problem is that I don’t really get what the “desired result” is… I have not managed yet to wrap my head around what the heck the convert_table function result in when it works correctly.

Any help or insight would be appreciated! I suspect that this may be representative of one of the most complex aspects of getting smf conversion done.

Thanks,

joe

[djoep]

I did all my work locally so no issues with memory or timeout that I could not easily resolve. BTW, one thing I did along the way was to set the number of rows to 1000 vs the default 100.

My overall strategy is to work off of a local, static version of the smf DB and local version of WP and all plugins and themes.

Once I get the process working smoothly and reliably and I get most of the development done in the WP end of things, I’ll do the following:

1) Lock down smf on the live site to new posts.

2) Make a backup of the smf DB and import it to my local environment.

3) Process the recent SMF DB using my (hopefully) perfected translation process.

4) Use standard WP methods to Move my site to the live server.

I’m a long ways away from this, having a lot of other development work to do (see bigtreestech.com to see where I’m starting from). I will be “practicing the moving of the site to the live server before I have to do it for real to find and fix any residual issues with URLs and paths that I expect will exist.

Finally, I believe that the groups and group forums were created by the smf import plugin, not the sitewide forum selection from bp. I am trying to get to the point where I can go from site-wide smf, with no group association, to the same sort of forum with bbpress. I will also be using the bp internal forums for groups but there will be no “overview” of group forum activity… at least that is my thinking so far.

[djoep]

woot! Got it working… now just need to start from scratch and do it cleanly.

One thing I found quite frustrating was that somewhere or other, a post count is kept after using bbconverter. I did not find it sufficient to clean and start over. I ended up having to muck about with the post_metadata table the posts table, and others. Even after going on multiple search and destroy missions into the database, I still could not get the post count to start where i though it should. Hence the strong recommendation to make db backups along the way.

So, I managed to get SMF users and posts over to WordPress and bbPress 2.0 plugin respectively. Here’s the basics of how I did it:

Words of caution!!! BACK UP YOUR WORDPRESS DATA BASE! Make a backup before you install bbpress. make another before you install bbconverter.

Keep the backups because you may need to revert back to them.

Assumption here is that both WordPress and SMF are on the same server, but not the same database.

WARNING! This is just from memory,and it only worked once, and there was a lot of DB manipulation done to get to the end. You should NOT attempt this unless you are very comfortable with SQL, phpmyadmin, and wordpress! If you are even a little concerned, contact the plugin author and tell him how much you are willing to pay for the SMF conversion capability!

1) Install wordpress

2) Install buddypress

3) Install BuddyPress SMF Import plugin

4) Follow the BuddyPress SMF Import directions. You should end up with a number of tables in your WB database that look like wpv_bb_blahblah. Make sure you go through the Upgrade Database step but Do not go beyond that. with this plugin. Please note that this plugin creates new groups for each original forum and all the topics for that forum are associated with the new group. If this is what you want, you can stop here. If like me, you wanted a site-wide forum with the old SMF content, keep going.

5) Deactivate the SMF Import plugin (but keep the SMF Compatibility plugin… you’ll use that for user login later)

6) Using phpmyadmin (or similar) go into the wpv_bb_forums table and make sure that the forum_parent field is set to 0 for all top level forums and set to the appropriate forum_id for any subordinate forums.

7) Through Buddypress, install “site wide forum” which will install bbPress 2.0 plugin.

Make another database backup NOW! Don’t overwrite the ones you made before because you may have to go back further than this if things don’t work!

9) Install bbPress Converter plugin.

10) Go to tools and recount everything.

11) follow the directions for the “Standalonebbress” conversion using the WP database user and password and wpv_bb_ as the db prefix (or whatever the SMF Importer left you with). Do NOT select the transfer user option… the other plugin already did that.

12) If you have a large forum, the conversion takes a while!

That’s about it. If you have set wordpress up to be able to display the plugin forum (not group forums), with any luck, you’ll see your forums populated.

I have not yet tackled the issue of getting rid of all the groups and group forums that the other plugin created.

The resulting forums and posts seem to have wrong dates & times and I have not looked into this.

If I had it to do over again, I probably would have spent the same amount of time figuring out how the converter works and building an SMF converter directly, avoiding the SMF Import plugin altogether.

I beg you to not use this thread to ask questions about this process or any of the plugins or applications other than bbConverter.

joe

[djoep]

Did not work… the forums now appear on the bbpress page, but no topics or replies. looking at the data base and a couple sample entries, it appears that the post_parent IDs for all the topic are wrong which would be consistent with no topics being listed.

will try recounting, cleaning, and re doing the conversion.

joe

[djoep]

big progress!

I found that in the original bbpress 1.x tables that had been created by the smf converter plugin, depnding on an option selected, each forum’s forum_parent was either set to 0 or all set to 1. Using phpmyadmin, I left all top level forums with forum_parent = 0 and changed the forum_parent for sub-forums to the correct ID,

The bbconvert plugin is now proceeding “according to plan” and has gotten through conversion of forums, topics, and is making its way through posts. It has several thousand to get through so it’s taking a while.

Will report back on results.

joe

[djoep]

fyi, looking at the database it appears that new posts were created for all the forums and a single topic type post had been created. The forum is actually fairly mature and there is a lot more content than that.

Also of note, when it gets into this spin, spin, spin mode clicking the “stop” button does nothing.

joe

[djoep]

should have said 1.x bbpress tables…sorry for the confusion.

[djoep]

I am trying to convert 1.x bbforum tables from a buddypress forum install.

The buddypress bbpress tables in the database were actually created, polulated, and upgradded using the buddypress smf conversion plugin just fyi.

so, bbconverter seems to have started OK but once it gets to “Convert forum parents (0-99)’, it just seems to spin and spin and spin and I cannot tell if anything is happening. I suspect something is just hung up since to process 100 rows I would think would happen pretty quickly.

Again, while I am using the Standalone bbPress setting, I am actually trying to apply it to a version of BuddyPress bbPress tables.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

joe

[djoep]

I am also interested in the ability to migrate group forums to bbpress 2.0 plugin (and out of the groups).

I have managed to set up bp groups so they each have their own forum without having their forum contents displayed at the top level menu by deleting the bp forums page (and removing it from trash).

I then created a site-forums page for the bbpress site-wide forum by creating a “Site-Forums” page in WP and using the bbpress shortcode bbp-forum-index to list the available forums. I may add other shortcodes later.

Unfortunately, I am still left with a lot of content under “groups” that were only created to form quasi forums under buddypress internal groups version of bbpress.

Personally, I really like the idea of having both types of forums available!

joe