[Abdessamad Idrissi]

ABOUT

A script to help you convert you phpbb3 (version 3.0.7) forum to bbpress (version:1.0.2) forum. This code is an update to the code made by wmnasef (http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/phpbb3-gt-bbpress-converter-beta-release).

GET IT @

http://code.google.com/p/phpbb3-to-bbpress1-converter/

BUGS CORRECTED

* works with bbpress 1.0.2

* corrects the single quote problem

* corrects the login problem

HOW TO INSTALL

1. make a backup from your online forum (if possible make an exact copy of your forum in your localhost server, this prevents any damage to the online forum).

2. install bbpress anywhere, just use the same database of phpbb3. this is important because the script assumes that all tables are in the same database.

3. download the script from here. extract it, and you’ll get 2 files.

4. copy the file phpbb3tobbpress.php to “phpbb3/” directory.

5. copy the file _phpbb3_pass.php to bbpress/my-plugins/ directory (if it doesn’t exist, create it!).

6. go to http://path-to-phpbb3/phpbb3tobbpress.php and start converting your board.

7. voila .. all your data is converted to bbpress tables, go to your bbpress installation and login. don’t forget to visit admin->manage->recount to make sure your converted board is updated.

As said before, it is advised to copy your phpbb3 forum to a localhost installation and make the conversion as stated in the steps above, this way if you have big forum with thousands of posts, it is easier and safer to run the conversion on localhost.

Hope this helps and thanx to the original poster.

Tested by http://numediastudio.com for http://forumcine.ma

[Abdessamad Idrissi]

I updated the current code and hosted it under google code at http://code.google.com/p/phpbb3-to-bbpress1-converter/

now it works with bbpress 1.0.2 and phpbb 3.0.7

have fun! and thanx original poster: wmnasef

[WimTibackx]

I might not have been very clear on that. Foremost I want to fork WordPress and turn it into a fast, modern and elegant cms. At the same time I want to fork WordPress and bbPress to run as plugins on that cms. I just used the backpress name in my post to avoid using WordPress two times.

I’m personally not that interested in a standalone forum, but in a forum that integrates on my normal website easily and a normal website that is modern, fast and easily extendible. The current WP codebase might have the fast-part but it isn’t modern and it isn’t easily extendible (ok, it’s better then phpBB for example but more object oriented code wouldn’t do bad at all).

[kevinjohngallagher]

Rootside ::

Has anyone considered the possiblity that Matt is keeping his eyes peeled on the current efforts of some people trying to use nothing but WordPress’ core functions to build a simple forum?

He might be mate, but probably not, as doing so isn’t that difficult at all. I creted a “theme” for WordPress that made it look/work like a forum in essence back in 2008. The same time I made and released the phpBB theme for bbPress. Both were availible on the bbProgress website (which closed last year but there should still be some links on t’internet).

And Justin’s coding one based on the new Custom Post features, which will work alot better than mine did (he actually build one last year too, but had a hard drive crash and lost it).

Basically though, a blog and a forum are different in their “n to n” nature. WordPress relies on a huge amount of caching to try and keep it’s memory intake down, and a customised caching mechanism is essential once you hit any form of modernday traffic. That sort of feature works well on “1 to many” software, but a forum is different. It has to call data differently, and handle multiple parent/child relationships.

Rootside ::

I’m guessing that any WP plugin which makes that kind of thing easy to set up and enhances its functionality would be really lightweight.

No, no way mate The opposite.

I understand the desire to make a WP plugin that is a forum, I can see Matt’s viewpoint on that, but in comparison to bbPress as it stands, it’ll be far from lightweight.

Not only will it struggle with the caching that WP relies on, but you’ll have all the overhead of loading everything in WordPress before hitting any actual forum content (including the WordPress admin sections and plugins).

It’s basically going to be very similar to the BuddyPress “bbPress” plugin, as thats a hacked/stripped version of bbpress1.0 (in general terms it removed BackPress and rewrote the function calls to call WP/buddyPress functions directly). But in order to get it to work, every page has to load WordPress then BuddyPress then bbPress forum module.

Lightweight it ain’t!

Even if the very clever people that work at Automattic and contribute to the community manage to pull a great number of rabits out of hats, there is no way that it will be anything but bloated.

But you know, 90% of folks won’t care. Take Marius (poster above me), he runs a forum about Michael Jackson with aboot 100+ users and maybe 50 topics started a week. He’s not that uncommon to alot of the folks that pass through here (other than that he is allergic to manners). They won’t care in the slightest about the small hit as the chances of them noticing it are going to be slim, and they get access to all the good stuff that comes with WordPress, heck for the most part they’ll get the stuff they think they should from bbPress/Wordpress integration now. For a percentage of people, there will be no downside, even if it’s far from lightweight.

I realise that software moves on, and I realise that as it grows there will be some bloat. Thats the reality of where we are, and WordPress does a really great job of being quick despire it’s bloat. But the sheer difference between a bbP0.9/WP2.5 deeply integrated forum (which has MORE features than we have now) and a bbP1/WP3 deeply integrated forum is unbelievable. Bloated, slower, more prone to errors and less features.

I see why Matt thinks things have to change, i don’t agree with the direction and thats cool, i don’t have to agree, nor does anyone

But really the history of this project has taught us one thing repeatedly: Heading in a direction without planning or a roadmap will definately lead us somewhere else, but we’ll be just as lost. Who knows though, 40 years later he may just lead us out of the desert

Hopefully on Matt’s way up to Montreal he’ll see a burning bush

[Rootside]

He even admitted that right now, it would be better off to use another plugin rather than bbPress.

Nevermind if it’s insulting, it’s just wrong. I’ve looked closely at a few WP forum plugins, and they’re all spectacularly ugly, near-impossible to customise, or criminally bloated. Or all of these things.

That said, he does have a point when it comes to installation. I’ll happily jump through a few hoops to get something working, but I’m not sure I’d recommend bbPress unless I was sure the person knows what they’re doing.

All in all though, I went for bbPress precisely because it’s still better than all the other solutions. I realise I’m only speaking for myself and other people might miss functions they consider to be essential; and I wish them good luck trying to tame Simple:Press or wrestle phpBB into their site, but I consider bbPress to be a niche product because it provides a simple, basic, themable forum, and I just assume that that’s what people who use it were looking for.

I’m further assuming that the majority use bbPress in conjunction with a WordPress site, and in that context, I don’t understand why it shouldn’t be a plugin. I personally can’t wait for that to happen, because as bloated as WordPress might be, most people are using it anyway, so the question whether it’s good or bad to load WordPress in order to use bbPress doesn’t even arise for most people.

(edit) If we’re talking loading WP core stuff on every forum page, fine, I get that argument, but again, I doubt that bbPress is the right solution for a big, high traffic forum anyway.(/edit)

And the way I understand it, if someone wants to run just a forum, wouldn’t they probably be looking for something more powerful and feature-rich than bbPress in the first place?

A bbPress plugin would surely be a lot lighter than the current bbPress, no? How is that not a good thing? Am I totally off with my guess that most bbPress users are also running WordPress anyway?

Maybe it can go different ways indeed (renaming it would be a good idea in that case, obviously). That would preserve all the good work that has gone and is going into bbPress.

By the way:

Has anyone considered the possiblity that Matt is keeping his eyes peeled on the current efforts of some people trying to use nothing but WordPress’ core functions to build a simple forum? I’m guessing that any WP plugin which makes that kind of thing easy to set up and enhances its functionality would be really lightweight.

On a different note, I also don’t get how anyone could read a flame war into any of the discussions here. At all.

[ckeck]

I am setting up a new intranet site built on WP 3.0 and would really like to keep the forums to a very simple tool just like bbPress (phpbb, vbulletin, etc are all too bloated for our needs). Since the site is only accessible inside our company network I don’t want to have to worry about authentication, I would like the ability for users who visit the forum to simply post messages or responses.

Is this something that can be done out of the box or would a lot of custom work be involved? Thanks!

-Chad

[citizenkeith]

I’m using Tapatalk on my iPhone right now, accessing an SMF forum and I love the layout. It’s much easier to browse, reply and post with Tapatalk than using Safari on the iPhone.

According to Tapatalk’s website:

“Tapatalk is a forum app for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Nokia. The app provides super fast forum access to any vBulletin, IPBoard, phpBB and SMF forums that have activated Tapatalk. Forum owner can download the free plug-in to activate Tapatalk in your forum.”

I searched their site for mention of bbPress, and found this thread:

http://tapatalk.com/forum/showthread.php?p=10919

The final post, from the moderator: “we can provide the API doucment if someone from the BBPress team want to take the bullet to implement it. I know that someone has ported it to MyBB so I don’t see why not?”

I would love to see a Tapatalk plugin for bbPress (especially one that supports v0.9).

Interested parties should check the “About Us” page on the Tapatalk website…

[btko]

Those Cube cars are cool, and I like your custom forums. Speaking of moving from PHPBB did you import your old database into the bbpress database?

[kieranyo]

Thanks for the constructive crit

Yeah it’s going really well.

[wtfmatt]

FORKPRESS 1.1 … July 2010?

Let’s hear from some of the biggest plugin developers people.

Let’s hear anything for christ’s sake. Spill your thoughts, PLEASE.

If we want things to change, action is needed. Inaction will simply keep things how they are, with crippling wishful thinking.

There is no need to feel abandoned by WP… if we retain our own community with our own goals and our own work.

Look how fast myBB is growing right now, the world is desperate for alternatives to hacking SMF and phpBB to work with a CMS like WP.

The fact alone that bbpress supports SEO friendly URLs is keeping this software alive, I swear to god.

[kevinjohngallagher]

I’m really not a fan of the colours and layout, but I love that you’ve done so much with it and have a thriving community. From what I can see, signatures and image posting are working really well for you as have Avatars etc.

While my personal taste preffers your Kate Humble forums, its great to see you and your forums doing so well!

Keep us notified of any changes you make too, and well done

[kieranyo]

I just thought I’d let you know that I’m made quite a few visual and functionality changes to the forum since posting this so if anyone is interested, take a look –

http://forum.cubeownersclub.co.uk

[andreascreten]

Hi guys

Thanks for the kind words. We are also very happy with the implementation and there is more to come.

The hardest part in this project was migrating the 2 million forum posts from phpBB to bbPress.

Don’t hesitate to ask us any questions on how we did this.

Cheers

Andreas

[ch8rt]

Just gone through this process, and for the most part it was painless (I had to go through and remove those offending characters).

But I can’t get my head around the password situation, the documentation with the plugin seems to suggest that the users password will be converted upon login, but they can’t log in because their password has changed.

Link to plugin https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/md5-insecurity-for-bbpress/

What exactly is this plugin doing then? am I just stuck with everyone needing to reset? In which case do I need this plugin installed?

[Ryan Hellyer]

No, they just told me about it via an IM chat a while ago.

IIRC they just converted to phpBB3 and then on to bbPress. That seems to be the standard way of converting between most forum softwares (via phpBB2 or phpBB3).

I think he had a few minor problems with a small details such as website links not being transferred over. But the guts of it, posts, topics, usernames and passwords were all shifted flawlessly from what I heard.

[kevinjohngallagher]

Oh yeah totally agree, and your forums are nice and work well for you.

I suppose then I’m asking if you have any tutorial/guides/tips from whoever converted from SMF to bbPress via phpBB3.

[zaerl]

Check this post: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/phpbb3-gt-bbpress-converter-beta-release

[marsaday1971]

Hello, i am thinking of moving over to word press to create a website for my town.

can i transfer a phpbb into WPBB ? my bulletin board currently has 1300 posts. Is it straight forward or do i need a programmer to do it.

thanks

[amplifiedshock]

Hello everyone,

I just wrote a guide to basically achieve what the title says. Two reasons:

(1) There isn’t a vb4-to-bbPress converter out there making the process more difficult then it should be

(2) The answers are out there if you’re willing to search for hours like I did I decided to piece together all my research into a single guide

Credit, of course, goes to the generous souls who created the vB-to-phpBB and the phpBB-to-bbPress converters, which are both required.

I’m still working on the integration with WordPress part which should be up soon. If you guys see any errors, please let me know.

Hope this helps!

Edit: Forgot the link! http://www.ericm.ca/2010/articles/vbulletin-4-to-bbpress-and-wordpress-integration

[CEThom]

I’m new to bbpress, having previously only used phpbb where all the codes are present as follows:

Italics:

Bold:

So on and so forth. But these codes aren’t working for me on bbpress.

What are the codes for formatting text on bbpress, ie. bold, italics, underline, centralising, changing the size, etc?

Or is there a plugin I can get so the text bar appears at the top of the page like it does on a phpbb forum?

[kevinjohngallagher]

Akismet is not great on forums, it catches alot of legitamite posts and marks them as spam. That said, it also catches a good percentage of the spam too.

On one of my forums, 100+ spammer registrations a day is about the norm. One of WordPress and bbPress’s plus sides is it’s easy to register, so there’s alot of automated bots out there.

Not having Akismet activated with the amount of registrations / traffic you’re recieving is probably a bad idea.

Phpbb has a feature where you have to approve a member’s registration before they become members

Thats not built into the core, infact very few moderation abilities are; but I’m sure there’s plugins to enact such functionality. Zaerl had something like that I belive.

I am using WordPress MU, the Buddypress Magazine theme

bbpress is not built to, and does not play well with WPMU.

If you’re using WPMU, I strongly strongly advice BuddyPress instead of bbPress.

They are somewhat integrated

We probably need somewhat more information

[jbrzr3]

Wow, why is this happening? Do any of you have the same problem? Phpbb has a feature where you have to approve a member’s registration before they become members. Does Bbpress have something similar?

Also, my akismet is not activated. I am using WordPress MU, the Buddypress Magazine theme. They are somewhat integrated. However, when a user signs up via the bbpress forums and not on the main page of the website which is WPMU, that user will not show up in dashboard of the WPMU, only the bbpress listing of users.

If I activate Akismet, will I kill my site?

-j

[Ryan Hellyer]

I know someone who converted from SMF1.1.x to bbPress 1.0 by converting via phpBB3

[mikkelsen]

Hey,

This is probably not what you want, but I just recently made the switch from vBulletin to bbPress. I converted my vBulletin database to phpBB, and then I converted the phpBB database to bbPress. The only issue with this solution is that all your users have to choose “Recover password” the first time the try to log in on the new forum, because the passwords can’t be converted due to some password protocol phpBB or vBulletin uses.

Everything else works great though, and I’m very happy with the switch.

[JCrosby]

OK thanks. I have unmodified the config file. The phpbb folder is directly above it.

So if I go 2 directories deep for setup, can I specify the URL of bbpress once it is installed?