It depends on the size of your old bb, but should take less than 30 minutes for any install.
At what point do I give up and start again. Should it take over four hours?
You should see it start and offer you some sort of notice that it has within seconds.
Via FTP or your web host cPanel admin etc, open your phpBB config file /public_html/phpbbv3/config.php and make sure these are the values you are using on the bbPress importer screen.
<?php
// phpBB 3.0.x auto-generated configuration file
// Do not change anything in this file!
$dbms = 'mysqli';
$dbhost = 'localhost';
$dbport = '3306';
$dbname = 'my_phpbb_database';
$dbuser = 'my_user_name';
$dbpasswd = 'abcdefgh';
$table_prefix = 'phpbb_';
(The $dbhost & $dbport may be blank as thats the default so use the settings I list above which are the default on the bbPress importer anyway)
It depends on the size of your old bb, but should take less than 30 minutes for any install.
@robin-w Not quite true, typically yes, when importing boards with up to a few thousand topics/replies it should be done in under 30 minutes.
Get into the tens of thousands, hundreds and even millions this does take a bit of time. 😉
Thanks very much
It’s a tiny database 455KB, the forum has only one forum, 70 topics. So it seems I can safely assume it’s just not working.
I have all the correct vales, exactly as on the config.php
This is what I see:
“Delete users WordPress default passwords (0 – 99)
Converting users (0 – 99)
Deleting previously converted data (0 – 99)
Starting Conversion”
After an hour or so of this (with the spinning wheel thing) I can go to Forums in the admin dashboard and sometimes there will appear to be a forum with 70 topics, but on the fornt page only a forum with 0 topics.
Other times I try the import and there is just no forum at all.
Is there a premium support for this? I would be happy to pay for some help.
sometimes there will appear to be a forum with 70 topics, but on the fornt page only a forum with 0 topics.
after you get this, you need to do a repair
tools>forums and as yours is a small database I’d just click all of them
after you get this, you need to do a repair
Yes, I did the repairs, all of them – it made no difference.
Do not check the following setting:
Purge Previous Import Purge all information from a previously attempted import
Do check the following setting:
Start Over Start a fresh conversion from the beginning
There is something weird going on with the above that ‘Purge Previous Import’ setting that I am looking into, it works for some and not others and is really bugging me 🙁
In between imports if it doesn’t finish and you need to try again you will manually have to delete the imported users from the WordPress User admin panel and reset bbPress’ forums as per https://codex.bbpress.org/reset-forums/.
Thanks Stephen
I tried again as suggested. Manually deleted previous suer import, reset forums, did not check purge previous
Same problem, it’s just hanging.
A couple of things I noticed, on the reset its is all successful except:
“Deleting Conversion Table… Failed”
As well as the actual users there are a lot of bots etc. (e.g. AdsBot Google, Ask Jeeves Bot)
Before importing I had pruned phpbb users down to only actual users with minimum 1 post, so i don’t understand where those bots are coming from. They certainly don’t show up in a search on phpbb forum for users.
Same problem, it’s just hanging.
What stage do you get to though now?
(As you shouldn’t be seeing “Delete users WordPress default passwords Deleting previously converted data” etc)
“Deleting Conversion Table… Failed”
This is fine, it just depends on if bbPress used a conversion table to do the conversion or it used the source database tables correctly.
As well as the actual users there are a lot of bots etc. (e.g. AdsBot Google, Ask Jeeves Bot)
These are special phpBB user accounts that I haven’t found a way to ignore importing just yet and must be manually removed after importing, see the follwing for a list of them all.
https://codex.bbpress.org/import-forums/phpbb/
What stage do you get to though now?
It just imported nothing. I will try again today.
