[Jaina “Jazzy” Jaslyn]

Hello palmdoc. It’s been quite some time since I finalized the project (as mentioned in the original post), so I don’t remember exactly where that config item was located. However, you should check out, in no particular order: Appearances, Settings, Tools, Plugins, Users. In the dashboard.

Reply here if you can’t find it, and I’ll install the plugin to see if I can recall where it’s located.

I wish you the best of luck!

[Jaina “Jazzy” Jaslyn]

Well perhaps I was being silly to begin with – the bbPress import/export tool didn’t seem to list bbPress 2.x on their options. There is a slim chance I did a lot more work than I needed to. However, at the end of the day, the hard work is complete. Over 8,000 threads + replies imported, as well as over 2,200 users. All users properly associated with topics.

The key step was importing users as a separate process — do it BEFORE you import forum threads+replies! When I relied on Pippin’s plugin to do this, it associated the users to admin. It was very messy. Using an existing plugin (make sure you tweak the import plugin to *NOT NOT NOT* send WP notification!) I was able to do this process very fast.

I used the plugin “Export Users 2 CSV” by Yoast ( https://wordpress.org/plugins/users-to-csv/ ) to import users.

Then I used a modified version of Import Users by DagonDesign ( http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/import-users-plugin-for-wordpress/ ) to import the users.

Again, you will need to instruct your users to fill out the Lost Password form, as these plugins do not preserve MD5+salt.

[Jaina “Jazzy” Jaslyn]

Check out how I achieved this here: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/migrating-from-one-bbpress-installation-to-another/

I didn’t update further on the thread (because my replies were piling up as it was), but I was SUCCESSFUL in moving it to another LIVE server. In that thread I also list some plugins I used. The pinnacle plugin was indeed Pippin’s (that link is also on there). I didn’t even have to touch the database once, which was my primary fear moving into this project!

Please let me know if either of you have questions.

[Jaina “Jazzy” Jaslyn]

Exciting news!

The forum was imported successfully to a test development site.

I used the plugin “Export Users 2 CSV” by Yoast ( https://wordpress.org/plugins/users-to-csv/ ) to import users.

Then I used a modified version of Import Users by DagonDesign ( http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/import-users-plugin-for-wordpress/ ) to import the users.

Important Note: When importing users with this plugin it WILL send notification emails to the Admin and the User. I ALMOST pressed “go” on importing 2,200 users — but then I decided to check the plugin code just in case; sure enough there’s this line of code wp_new_user_notification($user_id, $password); you should delete or comment out.

Yes, the users will have to re-create their passwords. We will instruct them how to do that on the new forum. That’s perhaps the only drawback of this method. But since out of the 2,200 users there are perhaps only 100 current active users, it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle.

I did have to write a custom PHP script to help this user export/import process, because the import and export plugins do not match in formatting. You can either do this custom in CSV or make a simple PHP script (took me 10 minutes) to take data from the export CSV and reformat it to meet the delimiters and the stricture of the import CSV. I can help people with this, just ask.

This user import/export had to be a separate process because using bbPress Export and Import by PippinsPlugins ( https://github.com/pippinsplugins/bbPress-Export-and-Import ) did not properly attribute users to posts if it had to create the user. (It attributed the admin to most of the posts.)

After the users were imported, I imported my 20 CSV files (~2,000 rows each file) and after much scrutiny in examination, I find that all users have been properly attributed to posts.

Now all that’s left is performing this process again onto the live site, the fresh bbpress install. (Remember, always back up your site and database before you do this stuff.)

[Jaina “Jazzy” Jaslyn]

Okay just realized that it’s only showing 450 users because it ONLY creates a user IF they posted or replied to a topic. Looks like 80% of the users never posted, so they didn’t get their account created.

This doesn’t explain why it’s showing the WP-Admin as the author for a majority of posts in the forum though (even though they are verified users in the system).

Next step I’ll be taking is finding a WordPress user export/import tool. Importing the users FIRST, and THEN importing the forums. Let’s see if that makes a difference.

[Jaina “Jazzy” Jaslyn]

Was able to successfully import topics and replies using the plugin mentioned above. Had to split up the CSV’s into 20 smaller chunks. (I used MS-Notepad for this, as Excel was inserting some weird formatting and causing errors.)

However, it seems that 80% of the users are missing. Original Forum has 2,200 users. After import, I have only around 450.

Will continue to attempt to work with this plugin as well as posting my progress here for people who may be searching with this same issue (while hoping for someone who has accomplished this tremendous feat to come around 😉 ).

[Jaina “Jazzy” Jaslyn]

Jason, what we’ve found so far, this plugin —

https://github.com/pippinsplugins/bbPress-Export-and-Import

It does the job exceedingly well. HOWEVER, our forum is so big the plugin cannot finish importing data. We use WP Engine for hosting, and they have a “Limit Script Execution” script that cancels any active script after 60 seconds. So we only have 60 seconds for the script to run.

Now 60 seconds gets us about 20% successful import percentage of Forum Topics, Replies and User Accounts. Then we get a 502 Bad Gateway page.

If it weren’t for the script timeout, this project would be done with. So for that, I am splitting up my export .csv file into 10 chunks. The original file is 25,000 lines or so. I’ll split them into 2k-2.5k chunks and import them one after another.

Going to get around to that part either tonight or early next week. Jason, if you try it out please let me know how it goes 🙂

[Jaina “Jazzy” Jaslyn]

I’m in the “Import Forum” section of bbpress plugin – there’s no option to select for bbPress 2 (only bbPress 1). Or am I going about this the wrong way?

I’ll be making various test imports in the using wordpress’ import/export in the meantime to see how far I can get merging these 2 sites.

[Jaina “Jazzy” Jaslyn]

I have a link to the mySQL DB dump as well as the example.php we’re working on. I can send you an email link to the Dropbox. Any help you have would be very appreciated.

We were able to bypass the Converter freezing by manually skipping rows. Not sure what was going on there, because it didn’t seem like any data was missing when it finally completed. The problem now is that the UserID/Username does not correspond to the appropriate topics. We are stumped!

Do you have an email that would be appropriate to send this information to? Thanks!

[Jaina “Jazzy” Jaslyn]

Thanks again Stephen.

We’ve made a lot of progress. Now we’re actively importing data. We were successful importing the topics and the content and users. The problem we currently face: it is posting all of topic replies as a topic starters… So there is no content in the “Replies” tab on wp-admin, and everything was shoved into “Topics”.

We wrote a from_expression to ensure it only imports topic starters into “Topics” but now the import converter freezes. It remains stuck on “Converting topics (0 – 99)” until we cancel the process.

`
// Topic id (Stored in postmeta)
$this->field_map[] = array(
‘from_tablename’ => ‘dbname_ntforums_posts’,
‘from_fieldname’ => ‘PostID’,
‘from_expression’ => ‘WHERE dbname_ntforums_posts.ParentPostID = 0’,
‘to_type’ => ‘topic’,
‘to_fieldname’ => ‘_bbp_topic_id’
);
`

Perchance do you see anything that could cause it to freeze?

Thanks!

[Jaina “Jazzy” Jaslyn]

Thank you so much for your reply! The information indeed helped me.

I have the database converted to a MySql database and can see the table information. Now it’s a matter of configuring the example.php

My next question: Where can I find a diagram of how bbPress 2.0 works with WordPress’ database structure? I know they share a database and tables. I know WP’s structure, but even Google won’t inform me how BBP interacts with WP. Simply put, I think from here it’s just a matter of linking the 2 together so that import will do the rest.

Thanks again!