[bnfw]

Hi,

I’m just doing some research for a client and they’d like to migrate all their content (forums, posts and users) from their VanillaForums.com account to bbPress.

I see that after bbPress has been installed, under Import > Forums in the WordPress backend there is an option to import from Vanilla but it doesn’t specify whether it’s their managed .com service or their self-hosted .org service.

Can someone tell me if it’s just one or the other?
If the case, how do I go about finding the database info for a VanillaForums.com account in order to import everything into bbPress?

Thanks for any help in advance,
Jack

[Stephen Edgar]

The bbPress importer only supports importing from self hosted versions of Vannila from http://vanillaforums.org/get/vanilla-core

If you want to import to bbPress you will need to find a way to export your data and then do a custom CSV import.

Here is probably the best place to start http://vanillaforums.com/search?Search=export

Also CSV imports https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/custom-import/ & https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/import-bb-data-from-csv-file-to-bbpress-forum/

[bnfw]

Thanks Stephen,
That’s really helpful.

It might be worth that being explained somewhere as I can’t be the only person whom that’s confused.

Do you know how well the CSV import option that you suggested compares to the Vanilla to bbPress import that is built into bbPress?

[Stephen Edgar]

It might be worth that being explained somewhere as I can’t be the only person whom that’s confused.

I made a note of this at https://codex.bbpress.org/import-forums/vanilla/

A CSV import will work perfectly, it is just a matter of matching the to & from fields in the dataset, good data = good import.

[bnfw]

Brill, thanks.

Is it possible to request help here if I get stuck doing the conversion?

[Stephen Edgar]

You can give it a shot, time permitting I’ll try to help where I can, there is a lot of info in those links I shared above and in the codex I linked to also.