There are no importers yet. Does phpBB have any sort of export format or would we have to work directly with their DB?
I just had a chat with Patrick on Live Messenger, the guy that runs phpBBhacks.com , and he said, you’ll mostly have to work directly with the database.
Or atleast that’s how he does it, he said. Also, I’m not sure if this would, or could possibly help in any way, but.. they wrote up this article: “Write a converter with the Unified Convertor System.”
Of course, like anyone would do, they made it up for the people to convert from their current forum software, to their’s, but, wasn’t sure if maybe you devs could use it to benefit yourselves or not?
Just wanted to throw this out onto the table for ya’ll.. 
I think it’s great that bbPress made a official release finally.. and *hopefully* soon, I’ll get to making themes for it.
spencerp
/Sidenote quick: I had dealt with phpBB before, for a few good years, installed it for peoples, for money, and shot out a few themes too. Submitted them to the phpBBhacks.com site, and had patrick in the MSN mess list for a few years.. 
Here is a plugin for phpBB that help to export messages to XML.
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=281925
Thanks for sharing that Detro, the thought saving the PMs is important as well, now if *only* there was a way to grab ALL of the informations from a phpBB board, that’d be awesome.
If no one around here can do one up, I’ll see if I can get *someone* I know, to do it..
spencerp
I second this request; bbPress is absolutely perfect, and I’d love to switch, but I have a six-year-old phpBB support forum filled with support topics for users to search through. What a shame it would be to lose all that info!
I might do a converter for you. It’ll depend on a couple of things. If someone “in charge” here gets in touch (leaves me an email addr to contact them on) I’ll discuss with you.
You should always feel free to discuss this or anything eles on the mailing list: https://lists.bbpress.org/mailman/listinfo/bbdev
I did this: http://brunotorres.net/unsorted/phpbb2bbpress.phps
Worked fine to me, importing a phpBB database with about 30000 records, including users, metadata, topics and posts. It takes a lot of time to finish, but works.
The code is a mess. I just finished doing this. Maybe I’ll make it better, if there’s people interested.
You have to use it on a fresh instalation, since it’ll delete any existing data.
It was just tested by me and I can’t ensure it’ll work for anyone, but I’d like some feedback.
Enjoy!
brunotorre, you’re a life saver! I’ll give the script a test shot tonight, and I’ll let you know how it goes.
OK, I gave the script a shot and it imported everything very nicely!
The only snag is that the bbCodes weren’t stripped or converted in the process, so many of the posts end up looking like gibberish. Also, sticky threads and announcements weren’t converted as such, although that’s less of an issue.
I certainly hope there’s enough demand for this script to justify adding these features. Otherwise, nice job!
What about importing from PunBB?
*sigh*
One more quick note: the imported posts don’t seem to appear in the admin interface, even after re-counting everything and such.
Marky, just after posting here I realized I forgot to convert the bbcodes. I’ll try to make it shortly.
About the announcements and sticky, I’ll give a look too.
But I still don’t have a clue why posts don’t appear on the admin. If you or anyone know why, please let me know.
Marky, I can be wrong, but the only posts which appear on the admin are the deleted ones. That may be why the imported posts don’t show.
My mistake; you’re absolutely right — it only displays deleted posts.
What about importing from PunBB?
*sigh*
Please! You’ll have to be patient.. we are lucky we got this phpBB to bbpress importer this quickly.. jeesh! I’m sure brunotorre will probably make up more import scripts then..
If not brunotorre, then someone else I’m sure.. We’ll just have to be patient here.. Just my 2 cents …
spencerp
Please! You’ll have to be patient.. we are lucky we got this phpBB to bbpress importer this quickly.. jeesh! I’m sure brunotorre will probably make up more import scripts then..
If not brunotorre, then someone else I’m sure.. We’ll just have to be patient here.. Just my 2 cents …
I was able to use his script to bring over all of my users, just by modifying the table names that it was calling for from phpBB. But his code got more complicated, especially for the posts.. For someone who has a firm grasp on php, it wasn’t as much to ask as it might seem.. But I ended up bringing over the info by hand via PHPMyAdmin… Nearly everything, minus the dates of posts since PunBB put that info on a different table altogether.
But yeah, I’m not faulting brunotorre for not getting to my issue immediately. The demand for PunBB->BBPress is prolly going to always be small. Kudos for brunotorre’s work, def!
I got this message….
Access denied for user ‘root’@’localhost’ (using password: YES)
I am very new to databases, and I really could use some help here
Well, dunno…I cant get it to work ;-(
Did you edit the plugin to have your database username, database name and password? The plugin requires that information hardcoded into the space provided.
Trent
Interesting. Shouldn’t be too difficult to convert & import from any forum to another.
Hi,
I enhaced the excellent Bruno Torres’ script and made it able to import bbCode, as well as to cleanly import topics marked as closed, sticky and announcements, as well as some other improvements and bugfixing.
Have a look at this: https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/402
Hey all,
I’m not sure, but this script does not work and seems to send all your emails to spammers. Careful. Use Bruno’s instead.
too bad it doesn’t work for phpbb3
