[mimbelli]

As I said I’m a WP newbie trying to understand how everything works. These are my considerations so far. I do not want to hurt anybody.

After a couple of days of testing I’m really going insane trying to get a minimum acceptable installation.
While I understand that acceptable is a moot concept, I mean “similar classic feature of all free forum scripts out there” I’m not speaking about cutting edge features but really standard forum features since phpBB 2 hence:

• extended user profile
• private messaging
• user signature
• post count and join date below username
• post preview
• attachments with inline images
• quote replies
• report
• sticky, new, hot for topics
• view unread content

Now I understand that all of them can be obtained through 10 different plugins but I’m really scared to do so for these reasons:

• 10 different plugins and authors are very difficult to maintain. Chances something screw up are high, no matter how godd is the code.
• some of plugins implementing above features seems already nearly abandoned
• In one of my past life I was so naive to dope my Joomla installation with several third party mambot/plugins. When I had to upgrade I discovered that several of them where abandoned giving me a hege PITA to upgrade
• In a recent life I avoided to dope my IP Board installation with plugins but during a main upgrade I had the same problem with some mods I made by myself

Now I’m trying to bring everything to wordpress + bbpress but I see that it is a steep climb just to get what in 2016 is considered a forum with basic features. I’m not a developer otherwise I was already coding the missing pieces.

Please: less plugins – more core features

[mimbelli]

Thank you for your reply,

I’m just trying to understand if I can get a forum like phpBB or similar out of the box. i see there is a plugin for everything but I’m becoming crazy to understand what I need. I don’t find a list of basic features.
In my previous experiences having a lot of third party plugins installed proved to be a nightmare when upgrading and after some year some of them are not maintaned anymore.

I’m reading as much as possible through the forum but I cannot find a lot of info.

Where I find a list of features of the upcoming version 2.6?
Just to understand if some plugins/features has been implemented into bbp core.

Thank you in advance

[evildrome]

OK, my original premise was wrong but the results are much the same.

I will post this here to hopefully prevent anyone else going through the same pain.

My import didn’t fail because of an inability to deal with non-alpha chars. It failed because I have all the user emails set to anon@anon.com

This is because my import to bbPress started as a Yahoo group and I’m going via phpBB.

I wanted a way to easily identify the newly added users.

Anyway, if the email already exists, the converter will carry on.

Silently.

Leaving you to guess what the hell went wrong.

Rather than just output a single line at the end of user import:

Users Read [x] Duplicates found [x] Users added [x]

[evildrome]

Hi,

I’m using the phpBB importer and it fails when it reaches the 50th username which is

“=i”

Now, I can accept that. I’m not expecting miracles but the logging carries on as if its adding users:

Converting users (1600 – 1699)

Converting users (1500 – 1599)

Converting users (1400 – 1499)

Converting users (1300 – 1399)

Converting users (1200 – 1299)

Converting users (1100 – 1199)

Converting users (1000 – 1099)

Converting users (900 – 999)

Converting users (800 – 899)

Converting users (700 – 799)

Converting users (600 – 699)

Converting users (500 – 599)

Converting users (400 – 499)

Converting users (300 – 399)

Converting users (200 – 299)

Converting users (100 – 199)

Converting users (0 – 99)

If it has bailed out at user 50 then for Gods sake, PLEASE TELL ME !

Don’t just spew out lies instead.

[Stephen Edgar]

@ sziban Cool, 1st up, you should use the development version bbPress 2.6-alpha, it has some improvements for anonymous users, you can get it from https://bbpress.org/download/

Take a look at the phpBB and SMF importers for good examples:
https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/src/includes/admin/converters/phpBB.php
https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/src/includes/admin/converters/SMF.php

In particular, the following was added to add support to import topics and replies from “anonymous” users.

So rather than trying to import each of your legacy anonymous users as WordPress users the changes above will assign each of them to the built in bbPress anonymous user, and assign the “legacy” “nickname” to the imported topic or reply, its kind of cool and I’m pretty sure it will do what you are after.

Let me know how it goes or any other questions you may have 🙂

[oyegigi]

I was wondering if there has been any progress on this? I am having a similar problem (although nothing to do with phpbb import but rather a bbpress import) with the forum repair “recalculate the position of each reply” giving me a blank page.

[eoppegaard]

Hey Experts!

I am trying to import legacy forums from phpbb over to bbpress. I uploaded our SQL file, as well as the old file directory for the legacy forums to the root of the site.

When I run the importer, it seems that it doesn’t find anything, and never converts.

Repair any missing information: ContinueConversion Complete
No reply_to parents to convert
No replies to convert
No tags to convert
No super stickies to stickNo stickies to stick
No topics to convertNo forum parents to convert
No forums to convert
No data to clean
Starting Conversion

[siparker]

Ok, so if i can find someone to do the work and get the urls fixed then submit the code into trac it might get integrated into the core by someone in the future?

I understand about the money thing also. I am just trying to think of a way to kickstart the development on the platform again as its on its way to being a really good forum software. it has almost all of the basics covered and some great plugins too. its just those few bits that mean it cant be used by some people. I would love to see bbpress be the defacto choice over phpbb or vbulletin and thought if i could sponsor the development then perhaps it might encourage a valuable dev to get more involved?

[abiliocaetano]

I used cms2cms to migrate one of my forums.

in addition to what everyone wrote, I would like to add something very important: keep the SEO juice.

if you want to keep all your SERP positions in google you must 301 redirect every topic from your old phpbb forum to the new bbpress topics.

to do this you just have to:

Open/edit:

/styles/prosilver/template/overall_header.html
(or the template you are using)

search for:

// Send vars to template
$template->assign_vars(array(
‘FORUM_ID’ => $forum_id,

and just above this lines add this piece of code:

##################################
$titleac = trim($topic_data[‘topic_title’]);
$relativeurl = str_replace(‘ ‘,’-‘,$titleac);
$relativeurl = strtolower($relativeurl);
header(“HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(“Location: http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/forums/topic/”.$relativeurl.”/”);
#####################################

I have little more detail of the bbpress permalink, etc configurations in this article: http://abiliocaetano.com/seo-migrate-phpbb-to-bbpress/

regards,

[abiliocaetano]

Hi all,

in addition to what everyone wrote, I would like to add something very important: keep the SEO juice.

if you want to keep all your SERP positions in google you must 301 redirect every topic from your old phpbb forum to the new bbpress topics.

to do this you just have to:

Open/edit:
/styles/prosilver/template/overall_header.html
(or the template you are using)

search for:

// Send vars to template
$template->assign_vars(array(
‘FORUM_ID’ => $forum_id,

and just above this lines add this piece of code:

##################################
$titleac = trim($topic_data[‘topic_title’]);
$relativeurl = str_replace(‘ ‘,’-‘,$titulo);
$relativeurl = strtolower($relativeurl);
header(“HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(“Location: http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/forums/topic/”.$relativeurl.”/”);
#####################################

I have little more detail of the bbpress permalink, etc configurations in this article: http://abiliocaetano.com/seo-migrate-phpbb-to-bbpress/

regards,

[D L]

Thanks! I appreciate your help, I’m desperate to update these sites on old versions of Zikula. I can’t even update the PHP on the server past 5.3 because because Zikula 1.2x won’t work on anything later.

The issues you noted.

Categories
aren’t used much, so yes, they can be ignored, it doesn’t seem like it’s difficult to assign forums to categories in bbPress if needed.

Subscriptions
The table prefix is causing me confusion as I switch between databases. Some of my forums have databases using nuke_ for prefix and some have zk_ , this is an artifact from many years of using Postnuke/Zikula and based on when the original database was created.

in the dizkus schema the (prefix)_dizkus_subscription table contains which forums a user is subscribed to.

The (prefix)_dizkus_topic_subscription table contains which topics a user is subscribed to.

Topic Author IP
This isn’t necessary to move to bbPress as far as I’m concerned. Only used when I’m investigating a possible spam post. Someone else might need to have it though, so put it on the “nice to have” list.

Topic Content
None of the conversion attempts have been successful enough to see yet. So far have always errored out because of failed sql statements.

I attempted to do a join because the title of a new topic is stored in (prefix)_dizkus_topics along with the topic post time, views, num. replies, last post ID, forum ID, and sticky status (0 or 1). But the content of the first post in a topic is stored in the (prefix)_dizkus_posts table.

There is no “first post in topic” post ID in either table, as it looks like phpBB had so I tried to adapt this.

// Topic content.
		// Note: We join the 'posts' table because 'topics' does not include topic content.
		$this->field_map[] = array(
			'from_tablename'  => 'posts',
			'from_fieldname'  => 'post_text',
			'join_tablename'  => 'topics',
			'join_type'       => 'INNER',
			'join_expression' => 'USING (topic_id) WHERE posts.post_id = topics.topic_first_post_id',
			'to_type'         => 'topic',
			'to_fieldname'    => 'post_content',
			'callback_method' => 'callback_html'
		);

Topic Favorites
Dizkus doesn’t have topic favorites, only forum.

Passwords
Since Dizkus doesn’t store passwords, they would have to taken from (prefix)_users table, but thinking about it I’m not sure that this script needs to deal with passwords at all. I will still need to migrate ALL the users from the Zikula installs, not just the ones that have posted in the forums. I’m planning on using WP All Import Pro for that job and migrating other data like converting news items to news and bringing over static pages.

Worst case, if the passwords get screwed up everyone would have to use the “lost password” system to set a new one.

Just tried the version of dizkusZK in Github after merging your changes and got this error.

Repair any missing information: Continue
WordPress database error: [Unknown column 'zk_users.pn_uname' in 'field list']
SELECT convert(zk_dizkus_users.user_id USING "utf8mb4") AS user_id,convert(zk_users.pn_uname USING "utf8mb4") AS pn_uname,convert(zk_users.pn_email USING "utf8mb4") AS pn_email,convert(zk_users.pn_url USING "utf8mb4") AS pn_url,convert(zk_users.pn_user_regdate USING "utf8mb4") AS pn_user_regdate,convert(zk_users.pn_user_avatar USING "utf8mb4") AS pn_user_avatar FROM zk_dizkus_users AS zk_dizkus_users LIMIT 0, 100
No users to convertNo data to cleanStarting Conversion

[Stephen Edgar]

Firstly, awesome job at what you’ve done so far 🙂

I just sent through a pull request with some basic/minor changes

These are the things I noticed when comparing the DB schema to the importer:

Categories:
• This will be tricky as they are in a different table nuke_dizkus_categories, can you manually create these and add the forums to them later after import etc?

Forum subscriptions:
• Your schema suggests nuke_dizkus_subscription rather than this zk_dizkus_forum_subscription

Topic Author IP:
• With some juggling of the phpBB query this should be possible I think

Topic content:
• This doesn’t quite look right, have you had issues with multiple same topics imported when you run the import at the moment?

Topic favorites:
• It looks like there are no topic favorites, though I do see forum favorites in nuke_dizkus_forum_favorites, unless the value stored in user_favorites stored in the nuke_dizkus_users table is for user favorites maybe

Passwords:
• Passwords are hard 🙁

Password verify class:
• If password importing works this field should match the importer class name dizkusZK

[Stephen Edgar]

I did spend several hours trying to modify the phpBB converter to work with the Dizkus database tables before coming here. Was able to get it partly working but was losing meta data like poster name, post time, and it seemed the posts (replies) weren’t always assigned to the right topic.

If you still have the code for what you did here could you also upload that please, will save me some time and help me out quite a bit if you could 🙂

[D L]

Thanks for the codex links.

I did spend several hours trying to modify the phpBB converter to work with the Dizkus database tables before coming here. Was able to get it partly working but was losing meta data like poster name, post time, and it seemed the posts (replies) weren’t always assigned to the right topic. Also, what to do about avatars and signatures.

I’ll try doing it from scratch based on the codex example.phpj. Was just hoping someone had already done it.

As far as Dizkus, here is a small basic forum that uses it.
http://www.deltasailing.com/Dizkus/viewforum/forum/1

And a larger one
http://www.thebeachcats.com/forums

I’ve put this out on Codeable.com to pay to get it done if anyone here does projects there.

[Stephen Edgar]

I’ve never heard of Dizkus 🙁

You could try making some more changes to the phpBB importer yourself if it already partially works:

Custom Import

Also checkout both of these for SMF and phpBB for the upcoming bbPress 2.6 release.

https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/src/includes/admin/converters/phpBB.php
https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/src/includes/admin/converters/SMF.php

[Stephen Edgar]

If you look at the phpBB importer it has the callback_html and parses a bunch or regular expressions to manipulate the previous BBCode or HTML strings, will that work for you?

https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/src/includes/admin/converters/phpBB.php#L934

[Stephen Edgar]

Awesome 🙂

Just to add that the standard Drupal forums module for Drupal 7 was included in bbPress 2.5, I’m not sure if there is anything in that that you may not have in your Drupal 6.

Also, two of the importers SMF and phpBB have some cool new things for the upcoming bbPress 2.6, importing favourites, subscriptions, anonymous topics/replies/posts, you may want to have a look there to see if they help in importing more data from Drupal
https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/src/includes/admin/converters/phpBB.php
https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/browser/trunk/src/includes/admin/converters/SMF.php

[D L]

Since there is not a converter listed for Dizkus (Postnuke/Zikula forum module) I was wondering if anyone else had built one?

Dizkus was originally based on phpBB and the converter listed for phpBB does partially work when used against a Dizkus database.

If it hasn’t been done before is there anyone here willing to do it for a fee? I would donate the new converter back to the project.

[Trike27]

Is it possible to install bbPress 2.6 to import a phpBB 3.1 and then downgrade bbPress to stable 2.5.8 (if necessary)?

Thanks
Martin

[krbmedia]

I have searched the forum and can’t find anywhere to find the BBPRESS importer. I have an old PHPBB forum that I’d love to move over to my brand new BBPRESS one but eveyr post says the importer is under TOOLS>IMPORT and I don’t see that listed. Am I missing a plugin? Can I get the steps listed?

[Pascal Casier]

Hi,
Have a look if this can help you: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/i-have-created-a-bbpress-starter-theme-with-a-phpbb-look-and-feel
Pascal.

[Trike27]

Good day,

do you know when BBPress 2.6 is released with the improved import for phpBB 3.1-Forums?

Thanks in advance,

Martin

[dtrackerman]

I have a forum with 15,426 threads and 217,103 responses. After much work, I managed to do the import from the phpBB but can not restore the links between topics and answers. When I try to use the tool “Recalculate the position of each reply”, the script runs for a long time, and then complains about lack of memory. I made a mirror server on my machine, I put php configurations with large memory values (4GB) and timeout (30000s), and yet the system can not run the script. Someone would have any suggestions?

[Robin W]

ok, so if you click the image, you get to the forums.

so if the url is

http://fubar-alliance.com/commo/channel/test/
the forums work.

Since you are already using the forums slug for your phpbb software, what is it set to in dashboard>settings>forums, and if you set that correctly it should all work

[Glenn.955]

Hello,

Just started to investigate using bbPress and migrate over from phpBB.

After the migration I noticed that all my posts were from the username “imported_Glenn”. I feel that this was due to the user “Glenn” already existing. No one else inherited the suffix.

Is there a way I can easily replace the author name from “imported_Glenn” with “Glenn”?

I’m reasonable with SQL.

Thanks!

Glenn.