[Tanya]

I am going to start importing the forum from the current phpbb3 site, which is on a different hosting account, to my site and I have a few questions.

• Do I have to export the database from the current forum and then import it?
• I am on the Tools>Forums>Import Forums page. When it says Database Server, what do I type in here?
• Table prefix – what do I write here?

[Stephen Edgar]

You should export the entire phpBB database using from the current hosting provider and import it into your new hosting provider, remote migrations are not supported. Each of your hosting providers should have some documentation on how to import and export the MySQL database. You will not need to instal phpBB on your site to import the data, you only need the actual database.

This should also help https://codex.bbpress.org/import-forums/

The ‘default’ phpBB MySQL table prefix is “phpbb_”

[Tanya]

Thanks @netweb. From what you’ve said, I gather this is what I’m going to do:

1. Export the current forum’s database, then import it into my own.
2. Use the Tools>Forums>Import Forums.
3. Repair the forums Tools>Forums>Repair Forums.

Wish me luck! I will report back to say how I went if this does ever help anyone else in the future.

[Stephen Edgar]

Export the database but don’t import it into your WordPress database you are going to use, import the phpBB database is its own separate database as once the data is imported you will be able to remove/delete that database as it will no longer be needed (just make sure you do keep a backup).

Other than that it looks like you are good to go.

[Tanya]

@netweb Ah crap, I just started importing it into my database. I will see what I can do…

[Tanya]

I’m guessing I will wait for the import to go through, then go through all the tables and delete all the phpbb ones. Please correct me if I’m wrong!

[Stephen Edgar]

Yep, once you are done and have checked that the import worked and are happy with it just delete the phpBB tables.

[Tanya]

The import didn’t end up going through as the file size is too big (394mb). I’ve gotten in contact with my host as I’m unsure how to get it to import.

[abiliocaetano]

I used cms2cms to migrate one of my forums.

in addition to what everyone wrote, I would like to add something very important: keep the SEO juice.

if you want to keep all your SERP positions in google you must 301 redirect every topic from your old phpbb forum to the new bbpress topics.

to do this you just have to:

Open/edit:

/styles/prosilver/template/overall_header.html
(or the template you are using)

search for:

// Send vars to template
$template->assign_vars(array(
‘FORUM_ID’ => $forum_id,

and just above this lines add this piece of code:

##################################
$titleac = trim($topic_data[‘topic_title’]);
$relativeurl = str_replace(‘ ‘,’-‘,$titleac);
$relativeurl = strtolower($relativeurl);
header(“HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(“Location: http://www.YOURDOMAIN.com/forums/topic/”.$relativeurl.”/”);
#####################################

I have little more detail of the bbpress permalink, etc configurations in this article: http://abiliocaetano.com/seo-migrate-phpbb-to-bbpress/

regards,