I’ve fixed this error in the database file, and everything ran smoothly. Thanks a lot.
Hello,
I’m getting an error during the convert.
General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysql4 ]
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘ve bought in the past or intend to buy.’, ’51’, ‘8’, ‘3’, ’26’)’ at line 1 [1064]
An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.
paulhawke, I’d like to give it a shot as I’m still several weeks away from a final cut-over. My two biggest pain points right now are preserving user passwords and preserving user email notifications… both of which are outside the scope of your project but issues I’m working on.
I would like to start discussion regarding a single sign on feature, and developing integration for other platforms other than just wordpress “joomla, drupal, etc” in order to open up the usability of bbpress and be less restrictive than just supporting WP.
conversion methods and tools for both CMS platforms and forum software conversion “preferably from “phpbb, smf, vb, vanilla” to bbpress of course ..
any ideas and suggestions are welcome
I think the only reason people are hanging on is because the vast majority of us are aware of the beauty of WordPress, and we’re convinced that bbPress can become a similar product – unfortunately there isn’t an existing piece of software that’s like the WordPress of forums. There isn’t a piece of software that has a simple core, that allows you to write an index.php file with ‘if has threads while has threads the thread’, and that is exactly what bbPress needs to become. I’m not bothered if it becomes a WordPress plugin, because WordPress isn’t really a lot of hassle to install, and I already know how to make a WordPress theme. I just want it to hurry up. I’m tired of working with phpBB3.
paul – I understand private messages aren’t part of the bbpress core, and I haven’t investigated all the possible plugins yet. If there could be an optional conversion that relates to a certain plugin, then of course that would be great. However, at the moment if I’m going to transfer my forum across, I was planning to inform my users before the move just to backup their PMs if they have anything important in them.
I just got a test conversion to work so will start to check out possible plugins etc next! Thanks for the help, hopefully bbpress can continue to grow!
@yoyopop – I have been looking at what is core to bbPress thus far. It hadnt even crossed my mind that private messages would want to be converted. But there’s a problem – if I convert them, what do I convert them to? Does the community feel that any one private messaging plugin should be endorsed over any other, and, does the private message plugin provide the code I need to create its raw data? If the answers are “yes” (or a ‘qualified yes’) then I’ve no problem working it in.
For those interested in beta testing, the plugin (at present) is grossly inefficient as far as memory goes and now that it works at a basic level, I’m looking at optimizing & reducing memory footprint.
tflight – I didn’t have rights to give php more memory on my server so I ran the php script locally on my machine using XAMPP, which successfully converted the database. Now just to replace the old db! 
thanks tflight, I thought it could be something like that, I’ll give it another go!
paulhawke – this sounds great for the future, having a more user-friendly way to convert will open the door for a lot more people to use bbpress. Any plans to copy of private messages?
I have an experimental plugin for bbPress I’ve been working on this week that adds an “Import” wizard under the admin area “Tools” menu. As it stands I have been using a phpBB 2.0.23 forum with 3 users (“Anonymous”, “admin” and one other) and about a dozen posts for testing and things look pretty good.
The “Import” plugin needs beta testers who’re willing to give it a run through and provide feedback.
The plugin reads data from the phpBB database, and rather than generate an enormous SQL file that is version specific, the plugin calls the same internal methods inside bbPress as occur when you manually create forums/topics/posts/users. A mapping is maintained between old and new user/post/topic/forum ID values, and referential integrity is maintained throughout.
yoyopop, that happened to me the first few times as well. (I converted a database with about 120,000 posts this morning.) PHP was just running out of allocated memory. I bumped it up to 16 MB, then 64 MB, then 256 MB and finally 1 GB. After I gave it 1 GB the conversion went through.
So check your Apache error_log or your PHP error log to see if it is running out of memory… then give it as much as you can.
have been attempting this as well but getting the same problem as eslavin83
the script says it’s connected to the server and exporting the forums/users etc but nothing comes up after ‘Sending all your database e-mails to all major world-wide spam sending mafias…’ – I’m waiting for it to say its exported the new db, or give me an error message, but nothing else happens.
Any ideas?
thanks in adance!
I’d be interested to hear from anyone that has converted larger forums (100,000+ posts) from phpBB2 to bbPress. I’ve got 0.7 running in a dev environment, I’ve got the conversion script, but I haven’t fired it up yet. I’m going to take this slow and methodical. I also want to import user passwords and topic_watch (email subscriptions). Those I know I’ll end up having to do myself. I’m planning on temporarily storing phpBB passwords in a new table using two-way encryption as people login to the current site so that I can transfer those over when the time happens. I’ll also be working on my custom theme/templates before the conversion as well to make it as seamless as possible for users. Finally I might try to build a database of common words and do some auto tagging of old threads… that might be a bit too ambitious though.
Still… I’d be eager to hear from anyone that has converted a 100,000+ post site with the script for any info or tips.
I’ve just converted my PHPBB3 forum to BBpress – everything seemed ok at first, the posts have converted and I was logged in and went to the admin panel. All of a sudden I am unable to log in, cannot reset a password and I apparently ‘do not exist’.
It appears that my user list hasn’t converted either as all my posts are labelled as made by anonymous users.
What can I do?
We just imported nearly 20,000 posts from a phpBB forum to bbPress. The version of phpBB did not support tagging, so none of the posts/replies is tagged.
Is there a script or other plugin to search these posts/replies and assign a set of tags to them?
@onthebeach96 I had the same problem as you with phpBB. I was getting bombed every hour by spam. When I installed BBPress I forgot to activate Akismet, and although spam users where registering they didn’t post anything (maybe because the bots weren’t ‘smart’ enough to think that the password was emailed at them). By activating Akismet and reCaptcha plugin no spam users have appeared.
I get a lot more than 3 good posts in my spam queues every day… but my forum does 3.5k-5k posts/day, so on a percentage basis I can’t complain. The real problem is when a long-time user gets stuck in spam – they get SO upset! That’s why I wrote some code to let them skip the spam software completely…
@onthebeach96 – Dunno much about phpbb… sorry I can’t be of more help! I used to really struggle with undeleted spam posts, before I installed this batch edit plugin which made life so much easier!
https://bbpress.org/plugins/topic/mass-edit/
Interesting info @johnhiler wow you’ve been a Akismet user for awhile now. Is there a way to delete individual posts on PHPBB?
Awesome info @kevin thanks for all that! I’m using PHPBB and there is no way to manually delete posts, you can only wipe out entire forum content which isn’t good because it’s not usually all spam. Any way around this? Or maybe there is a way to manually delete each post individually, I just wasn’t able to figure that out. Seems like bbPress is much easier to use though.
Glad to see things are still moving here. This thread was started 2 years ago, and is still active as of 3 months ago!
We’re trying to move from phpBB that we’ve had for 5 years to bbPress. obviously, the 2 databases don’t match at all. We found this script. Can someone please update on the best way to migrate from a very active phpBB forums to bbPress? Has there been any new updates to this script?
Thanks.
I’m currently using PHPBB for my forum software but I get SO MUCH spam. I’m considering either putting a recaptcha code on there for each post, or I’m looking into other software like bbPress. I love WordPress and so I would really like to use bbPress but I see there is no code that must be entered before posting so I wonder if spam will again be a problem.
What are your thoughts people? How do you control spam in your forums? I’ve had to lock my forums until I get a good solution.
Another thing to consider is to find converter that converts from Wotlab to some other software like phpBB and then use existing converters for bbPress. This is how I converted on SMF forum.
Sorry to sound impatient, but I’ve had my forums on hold for months betting that some of the little bugs would get worked out and it seems like things are just a big stall at the moment. I can’t really tell from the dev sites if anything’s going on. Does anyone have a real idea as to when bbpress (plugin or not) is going to make its next phase? I’m kinda tempted to go back to the drawing board with phpbb or something like that unless something is imminent…
I’m trying to install bbpress 1.0.2 into my site and later integrate it with wordpress. Right now I can’t seem to get the installation process to start unless I have the files in a directory specifically labeled “bbpress”.
Otherwise I get an error that reads “An old config.php file has been detected in your installation.” I’ve never installed bbpress on this site before.
I’ve tried installing the directory as “bbpress” and then renaming the directory to “boards” (I already have a set of forums phpbb that I’m unhappy with). Renaming is breaks the install. I have NOT gone ahead and put in any DB info yet into bbpress.
Anonymous UserInactive
Hi Thomas,
if you have some deeper knowledge in php, mysql and regular expression – you can use the phpbb3 converter and make some change to the code. The code of the phpbb3 converter is understandable – you only must change the tables and row to match the database structure of the Woltlab Burning Board. Its only the question of understanding …
https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/phpbb3-gt-bbpress-converter-beta-release
Greetz
Markus
