[bbolman]

As far as I can tell, there isn’t one, but you can always do it old fashioned ipb -> phpbb -> bbpress

[Trent Adams]

I had a massive phpBB forum and this one worked for me!

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/402?replies=28

I don’t completely recall an IPB to bbPres importer, but it kinda rings a bell somewhere…..just couldn’t find it for you! Maybe someone else will have the thread (if it exists!)

Trent

[Sushubh]

has anyone been able to develop a covertor from IPB to BBpress?

i have already tried converting one of the phpbb forum to BBpress but it failed massively. only imported the users not the post content.

[bbolman]

I think that he has switched to phpBB so it looks like it is abandoned for right now.

[cweb]

Thank you very much for the detailed response. I’m sure this will help out many folks who have this issue. Let me ponder a lazy man’s approach. That lazy man being me, since I already have said bye to phpbb and have bbpress up and running. Couldn’t I run mysqldump to extract the bb_users table, then go in and modify the first few user ID’s (across the data I know ) and then just import that table into wp_users?

Or since my WP install is still fresh with only a couple users, it might be easier to change their ID’s in the database, then import bb_users into wp_users?

[wittmania]

I had the same epiphany as you did when I learned that bbpress existed.

Here’s what I did:

1. I looked at the currently registered users in WP (I only had a few) and noted their numeric ID numbers. I then went over to my phpbb database to see which users they would conflict with (i.e. which ones had the same unique numeric ID number).

2. I used a phpbb mod which allowed me to go into these users’ profiles and change their ID (not their name) to a number that would not conflict with the WP users, or any other user in the DB.

At this time, phpbb.com is having trouble with their mod downloads, so I just uploaded the mod file to my own server. You can view the complete mod here:

http://www.wittmania.com/change-user-id-mod.txt

It takes about 10 minutes total to make all of the changes. Basically, what it does is add a field to the user’s profile when viewed by an administrator. In this field you can change their ID number to whatever you want it to be.

So, once the mod has been implemented, go through and change the ID number for whichever users conflict with your existing WP users.

3. Once you have gotten rid of all user ID conflicts, download Jaime GÓMEZ OBREGÓN’s incredible phpbb to bbpress importer, which can be found here:

http://www.iteisa.com/phpbb2bbpress/

You will need to edit the file so that it reflects your DB permissions for both the phpbb and the bbpress databases. Also, if you are running a WP integrated installation (as you obviously are), you will need to change the prefixes for a couple of tables further down in the code.

Change lines 172 and 173 from:

$bbpress_tables['users'] = DB_BBPRESS_TABLEPREFIX . 'users';

$bbpress_tables['usermeta'] = DB_BBPRESS_TABLEPREFIX . 'usermeta';

-to-

$bbpress_tables['users'] = 'wp_users';

$bbpress_tables['usermeta'] = 'wp_usermeta';

Note: be sure that you use the actual WP table prefix if it is something different than wp_. This change will make the importer put the users into your existing wp_ tables instead of in new bb_ tables, which would defeat the whole point of your import.

Once you have modified the file, upload it and navigate your browser to it. It should run automatically, importing all of your phpbb info into your bbpress installation.

4. At this point my memory gets a little fuzzy. In either WP or BBP (or both?), the imported users did not have a role assigned to them. Make sure you check to see what role they are assigned and that it is what you want it to be.

Of course, before you do anything you should backup your existing WP database, and probably your phpbb database as well just in case. Then, scrap the bbpress tables that you have in the current (broken) installation so the importer has a blank canvas to work with.

You will also need to install the bbpress integration plugin in WP, which can be found here:

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-integration/#post-34

This plugin will assign the default WP new subscriber role to users who register through bbpress. However, on my blog/forum I changed things around a bit so registrations for both WP and BBP are handled through the WP registration screen. I don’t know why, but I’m just more comfortable with it that way.

I’m sure as time goes by more plugins from both sides will be developed which will allow for even tighter integration between WP and BBP.

Good luck!

[cweb]

I saw the post at http://bbpress.org/forums/topic/323?replies=11#post-1569

It seemed to get derailed into some other topic though. Here’s the scenario:

– WordPress has been up and running with a few users (not many)

– admin gets bright idea to convert phpbb to bbpress and integrate everything

– bbpress conversion from phpbb goes okay, all 300+ users can login fine.

– admin wants to merge these users with the WordPress wp_users table, so they can add comments to WP, subscribe, etc.

The bbpress sync plugin at http://bbpress.org/documentation/integration-with-wordpress/ works the exact opposite, it merges WP users into bbpress!

This leaves those of us who took the plunge into converting from a phpbb type platform… stranded! It’s probably just a few SQL queries away from working, right?

[cweb]

Ok this worked for me, here’s how I actually reset the auto_increment counter.

NOTE: If you’ve already integrated WP and bbpress and/or if you’ve already had a bunch of new users register, this wont be so easy for you. If however, you’ve performed a fresh installation and conversion then this will be simple.

1. make sure one of my existing users in the normal ID range is a Key_Master (this is very important). For me, I made one of my users with ID =5 the Key Master.

2. login with the new Key Master, and delete all the users who are registered with a number => 999999999. For me this wasn’t a problem because “admin” was the only user, I haven’t had any new user registrations. If you do have new users in the 1000000000 range you’ll need to reset their ID’s (I’m not a MySQL guy so I dunno how)

3. Once all users in the ugly high number range are deleted, you can run the command to reset the counter on your *_users table, for me it was:

ALTER TABLE bb_users AUTO_INCREMENT = 400

I just added a few new users and they indeed started at ID 400.

BTW, here’s the code in the phpbbtobbpress.php converter that sets this very high ID:

//Let's clean up the trash.

//Your admin user will be given the biggest possible ID (I tried the biggest BIGINT but it didn't work inside bbPress)

//If you have more than 999999999 users on your forum, you may have problems... 

@mysql_query ("UPDATE " . $bbpress_tables['users'] . " SET ID=999999999 WHERE ID=1");

@mysql_query ("UPDATE " . $bbpress_tables['usermeta'] . " SET user_id=999999999 WHERE user_id=1");

@mysql_query("TRUNCATE TABLE " . $bbpress_tables['forums']);

[cweb]

I’ll confirm that I have this problem as well, from a phpbb to bbpress conversion. I actually tried to reset the auto_increment like chrishajer said:

ALTER TABLE bb_users AUTO_INCREMENT = 400

Since my original ID’s stopped at around 350.

It didn’t work though, still incrementing in the billions. MySQL documentation says:

“You cannot reset the counter to a value less than or equal to any that have already been used.”

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/alter-table.html

So to me that reads I need to delete the admin user 999999999 first, am I correct?

[wittmania]

He does make a good point, though. Most people can’t/won’t figure out how to use html code in their posts. Heck, for many people who use my forum, the bbcode in phpbb was too difficult for them to figure out. It’s not that the people installing/administering BBP can’t figure out what they are doing (although his post does make me a little nervous about his ability to maintain a board), it’s the general public using the board that are likely to have trouble.

The quicktags are nice, but you still have to know a little about opening/closing tags (and what they all mean) in order to use them appropriately. This is one area that I think many plugins will address as BBP becomes more popular and stable.

[Null]

Don’t think so. Vbulletin is obsoleet even phpbb3 (more then 1.5 years late) isn’t as fast and need as bbpress is. I don’t think 1000 post will be a problem since bbpress is “build” a differnt way (don’t know the english terms to explain it right)

[Arlo]

This is my migrated phpBB forum. It’s integrated with my main site rather tightly (UI-wise, not database), and I did a bit of modification to the post layout, making the best use of the narrow column I think. Other than that, just your usual CSS tweakage.

It’s not live yet, so I welcome feedback:

http://automatorworld.com/bbpress/

The plugins I’m using are:

Comment Quicktags

Front Page Topics

Post Notification

Page links

Quote

edit: Please feel free to register and test post, I would welcome the Q&A

[chilifrei64]

http://www.fusioncrew.org/bb

It is a site for me and all my friends to stay in touch.

The only plugin I am currently using is the topic notification plugin. It was all completely migrated from a phpbb installation in the previous version of the site.

[chrishajer]

This is very interesting to me. How about these ideas?

For the close a forum, I don’t know how you would do that. There’s nothing I know of in the bb_forums table that marks it open or closed. The best I think you could do is mark the topics closed. To do that with SQL, you could do something like

UPDATE bb_topics

SET topic_open=0

WHERE topic_id IN

(your comma separated list of topic_ids)

You could drop the WHERE part if you wanted to mark all existing topics as closed. Before you do anything with SQL though, be sure you have a backup of the data.

I can see why you want to take a snapshot of the old forums and mark them “archived/old” but, I would assume if you are moving things from phpBB to bbPress that your forum structure is going to be similar, so closing the forums to new topics wouldn’t make sense anyway.

Another option is to create a new forum called “phpBB Archive” or something then move all the topics and posts over to that “archive” forum, then create your forum hierarchy again in bbPress like it was in phpBB (i.e. World News, World Labs, Support, etc.)

For the users, why not just change all the passwords? That would make the usernames still valid, so no one else could re-register as an existing name, no one could log in with the old name, and all the existing posts would still be attributed to the original poster.

Just my thoughts: maybe they’ll be useful. Good questions though…

[Arlo]

I have a few things I’d like to do, and not sure if it’s possible:

I’ve migrated a phpBB forum over to bbPress. What I want to do is twofold:

1. Lock or close a given forum so it’s read only. Basically to call this the “archive of the old forum”

2. Delete the bulk of users that migrated with phpBB while maintaining the usernames on the original posts. If I just delete users, all those old posts become “anonymous”.

Thanks…

Steve

[samureye]

If this is in the wrong place, my bad. I couldn’t find all the answers I needed, so I decided a new thread would help.

* Can I import my data from an Invision Power forum?

* bbPress can integrate with my WordPress blog, right? Meaning users make a profile and use an avatar that would show up in the forums as well as in comments on the blog?

* Is there a WYSIWYG editor for bbpress?

* What about signatures for posts, as you would find with phpBB, Invision Power, etc?

* Is there a quick reply feature?

What I’m looking for is a forum to integrate with WordPress, but Invision can’t do that, so it would be ideal if bbPress had features like it.

Thanks!

[wittmania]

http://www.lne97.com/bbpress/

user name: just a test (note the spaces)

password: justatest (no spaces)

This is a WP/BBP installation for my upcoming 10 year class reunion. I originally launched the site as static pages and a phpbb board. However, about a month ago I put WP behind it to manage updates, add payment collection capabilities, and rotating ads. After that I added a bbpress installation, which is integrated with WP. I used the phpbb import plugin, with some minor tweaks, to bring all of the posts and users over from phpbb. I’ve made minor changes here and there to the default template, and I am using most of the available plugins. So far my classmates haven’t had any trouble with anything, and it has been much easier to manage and moderate the boards, especially with MUCH less spam and bogus user registrations than on phpbb.

Cheers!

[chilifrei64]

I migrated from phpbb to bbpress. phpbb had a watch topic mod which would send an email whenever a reply happens on a topic. I was just wondering if there is like a “Watch Topic” plugin. I know there is a summon user but this does not help me because I want to summon whole groups of people. I know bbpress is young, I was just wondering if anybody was working on something like this. My users dont use RSS unfortunately.

[fel64]

The easiest way to add tags with spaces is to post the topic then add tags one at a time in the top right-hand-corner of the thread (next to the post title), which are not space delimited (must be added one at a time though!).

No plugins for any of those as far as I know. BBPress is great but perhaps a solution with (currently) more features and plugins like phpBB is for you.

[chrishajer]

So, it sounds like this is related to the conversion from phpBB. At least that narrows it down.

In phpMyAdmin, select the table (be that bb_users or wp_users) and then select the “operations” tab up top. On that page, near the bottom are “Table options:” and in there is a field that says [ xxx ] auto_increment where the xxx is the next auto_increment value that will be used. That’s where you would change it.

You should first figure out what that value should be, and you should also fix the other high numbered users. But that’s where you reset it with phpMyAdmin. *** Perform at your own risk. ***

You can also just do it with SQL:

ALTER TABLE 'wp_users' AUTO_INCREMENT =whatever-number

The wp_users tablename might be bb_users or something else in your install. Also, the table name should be backticked, but you can’t do that in a block of code that’s already backticked here

[flaerpen]

I have exactly the same “problem”. It all started after converting my phpBB to bbPress so I think thats the problem.

[wittmania]

I did run the conversion, but it didn’t work very well because I ended up with duplicate IDs, and therefore posts from phpbb were attributed to the wrong authors in cases where their IDs conflicted.

Now that you mention it, I wonder if the phpbb importer makes a change so that all new registrations would start at 999999999 just so there couldn’t possibly be any conflicts. I don’t know enough about mysql to know if that’s the case (or if it is, how to “fix” it), but if I were the one building the importer, I would probably add a feature like that, though I think a number around one billion might be a bit of overkill!

[ebotunes]

this has happened to me as well. Two new users have registered and have IDs 99999999 and 1000000000. They appear to be spam though so I was very worried that they’d somehow managed to hack their user id from the front end??? Highly unlikely though.

I am wondering if the conversion from phpBB to bbpress has anything to do with it? ( https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/47?replies=12 )

Did you use this wittmania? I did, and these are the first users to register since the migration. I will investigate a bit further over the next few days when i get the chance….

[kessel]

Installing bbpress to replace phpBB. Got through everything, using the same database as WP, can access the database, WP, Coppermine — everything with my username. It’s correct in config.php. When I enter the username (I get no dropdown), it tells me:

“Username not found. Go back and try again.”

I’m no slouch at PHP, and I’ve tried everything.

Ideas?

[tgpuckett]

wittmania,

Fortunately I haven’t noticed any of that yet, as I started from scratch with a clean WP and bbPress install before doing the import. Thanks!