[lxp149]

I’m considering moving my vbulletin forum to bbpress. But I want to be able programmatically create the forum because it’s impossible to migrate manually. Any suggestions? Where do I even start?

[Pascal Casier]

Hi,
bbPress has a converter from vbulletin. You can install the latest stable bbPress 2.5.8 as a plugin to your WordPress and start the conversion. I would however like to indicate that bbPress 2.6-alpha (so not yet stable) is however much improved for conversions, so it could be an option to do it with that version.
You can find information on installing and importing in the codex: https://codex.bbpress.org/getting-started/

[_az_]

In case anyone stumbles upon this.

I wrote a plugin to generate topics and forums from a JSON File but it is still somehow specific to a certain project i am working on.

The effort to make it more generic is not that huge, so drop me a line and i will consider doing that and release it on github.

[Stephen Edgar]

You can also use bbp_create_initial_content() with some bbp_parse_args() to generate your content, bbPress uses this to crate some sample/initial content when installing on multisite installs.

https://bbpress.trac.wordpress.org/browser/branches/2.5/includes/core/update.php#L174

[_az_]

Thanks for pointing that out. I think i should make more use of bbp_parse_args().

bbp_create_initial_content() seems to be a good idea for deploying initial content, but i needed something more flexible, which can be used in the Dashboard. E.g. for deploying a default structure, given in said JSON File to a newly created Forum.

[Stephen Edgar]

You can also use the built in export WordPress WXR (which is just an XML file), and WordPress Importer plugin.

[_az_]

Can you please provide more information how to use one of those two plugins to create a “default” structure in a sub-forum that is added manually at some point after installation?

It seems those plugins are suitable for creating/importing backups of WordPress content from one instance to another.