hi !

am working on moving my site from phpbb3 to bbpress, of course there is no converters out there for that purpose, so i decided to write my own.

am still testing it and trying to improve the code a little bit. right now it can convert the following :

1- forums

2- topics, completely with topic types and status.. announcements and glopal announcements are stickied to front page.

3- posts, all bbcode is converted into html, smiles are changed into img tags, so you might want to install allow images plugin.

4- users, including permissions .. notice that bbpress doesn’t support per forum permissions as phpbb3, so it only convert users as following :

founder -> key master

inactive -> inactive

banned -> blocked

moderators and admins are converted into normal users, so you have to assign them again

because phpbb3 doesn’t use md5 hashing anymore, the script copies passwords as it is. to solve that problem i modified the md5 insecurity for bbpress plugin to first check the passwords the phpbb3 way, if it matches, it will rehash it using bbpress functions.

the script converts all the table rows at once, so it’s very heavy and consumes too much cpu depending on your forum size, i strongly suggest that you do the conversion on your own machine, not on a shared hosting account. you might also want to increase the php max execution time on your machine before starting the script cause it takes lots of time converting posts.

here is the steps for converting your phpbb3 board :

1- make a backup from your database and files.

2- install bbpress anywhere, just use the same database of phpbb3. this is important cause the script assumes that all tables are in the same database.

3- download the script from here. extract it, and you’ll get 2 files.

4- copy the file phpbb3tobbpress.php to phpbb3 directory.

5- copy the file _phpbb3_pass.php to bb-plugins directory.

6- go to http://path-to-phpbb3/phpbb3tobbpress.php and start converting your board.

7- voila .. all your data is converted to bbpress tables, go to your bbpress installation and login. don’t forget to visit admin->manage->recount to make sure your converted board is updated.

i can’t stress enough on how consuming is the process of converting posts, my board has 25,000 posts, and it takes nearly 15 minutes to convert them on my local machine, so again : i don’t recommend using this converter on shared hosting.

ciao !

[@jleuze Member 15 years, 5 months ago]

I was converting another forum tonight and ran into a MySQL error while running the converter.

The error had the name of one of the forums in it, and that forum happened to have a contraction in it. I’m not sure how one could edit the script to accommodate apostrophes, but I simply renamed the forum and removed the apostrophe.

I reran the converter without the apostrophe, and it worked just fine. So if anyone else runs into an error, pay attention to what it is choking on, maybe you can remove some funky characters and sneak around it!

[@dennish Member 15 years, 5 months ago]

I got the following error when converting:

General Error

SQL ERROR [ mysql4 ]

Data too long for column ‘post_text’ at row 1 [1406]

An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.

[@dennish Member 15 years, 5 months ago]

Also, do all passwords need to be reset afterwards?

[@andrewrh Member 15 years, 5 months ago]

Where is the conversion tool these days? The link to the fileserver, in a message just above no longer works. Is the original script (here) still the best one to use, then? Its folder has _phpbb3_pass.php and phpbb3tobbpress.php files in it dated 09/12/2008

Thanks,

~Andrew~

[@chandersbs Member 15 years, 5 months ago]

I managed to convert from phpbb3.0.5 to bbpress 1.0.1, but user’s can’t login, their password isn’t working anymore. I tried the md5 thingy, but it doesn’t seem to help.

[@dennish Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

I got the following error when converting:

General Error

SQL ERROR [ mysql4 ]

Data too long for column ‘post_text’ at row 1 [1406]

An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the Board Administrator if this problem persists.

I solved this issue. It was the © symbol in some of the posts causing the error.

Another question: any ideas on redirecting perm links from the old phpbb to bbpress?

[@dudenas Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

I confirm that after converting from phpbb 3.0.4 to bbpres 1.0.1 the user passwords don`t work anymore..

[@unholyfruitbat Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

cloo, were there any errors during your conversion?

I was going to attempt 3.0.4 > bbpress 1.0.2 until I saw this

[@dudenas Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

No errors.

Everything seemed OK, except passwords didn`t work.

[@dennish Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

Same here. Passwords do not work. Users need to reset them.

[@unholyfruitbat Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

SQL ERROR [ mysql4 ]

You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ’em’, ‘0’, ‘1’, ‘646’, ‘6973’)’ at line 1 [1064]

I’m using phpBB 3.0.4 and bbpress 1.0.2, MySQL 4.1.22

Am I going to have to upgrade MySQL to complete this?

[@unholyfruitbat Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

Bleh, I found the cause, it was the previously mentioned ‘ in the forum name or description.

[@heartson Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

Tried to convert phpbb 3.0.5 to bbpress 1.0.2 and got this error:

SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

Table ‘xxx_phpbb.bb_forums’ doesn’t exist [1146]

An SQL error occurred while fetching this page.

Any way I can fix this? Thanks in advance for any help.

[@dennish Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

@heartson is bb and phpbb in the same db?

[@heartson Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

Yes.

[@willscootforfood Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

I am getting the following error:

SQL ERROR [ mysql4 ]

You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘s bike’, ‘5’, ‘8’, ‘0’, ‘0’)’ at line 1 [1064]

SQL

INSERT INTO bb_forums (forum_id , forum_name, forum_desc, forum_parent, forum_order, topics, posts) VALUES (‘6’, ‘Bike of the Month’, ‘Each month we will showcase a different member’s bike’, ‘5’, ‘8’, ‘0’, ‘0’)

BACKTRACE

FILE: includes/db/mysql.php

LINE: 174

CALL: dbal_mysql->sql_error()

FILE: phpbb3tobbpress.php

LINE: 201

CALL: dbal_mysql->sql_query()

[@chrishajer Participant 15 years, 4 months ago]

@willscootforfood – looks like the apostrophe (single quote) was not escaped before trying to insert. Can you explain what you’re trying to convert and what script you’re using? And what version of bbPress are you going to use?

[@willscootforfood Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

@chrishajer I was converting a PHPBB 3.04 install to a bbPress 1.0 install. I am using the original script in the first post of this topic. Should I be using a different script?

Sorry for the lack of details in my first post. I was trying to keep my 17 month old girl alive another day LOL.

[@jeffhiggins Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

You, sir, are a godsend.

I was having so many problems with my modded phpbb3. I had started off with a modded version (NEVER EVER DO THIS!), and it proved to be very unstable and equally insecure (extensive spam). Cookies also failed to work properly. In short, it was a disaster. I tried to revert to a clean install, and I was unable to. Ghost db tables kept breaking the clean installs (the forums can’t find x element, or y table, or z style), and so no one new could register, and there were broken links and tabs all over the place. It was a nightmare (which ironically enough kept me from having any because I’ve hardly had time to sleep trying endlessly to fix these broken forums).

After days and days of trying to transfer the database to a fresh install of phpbb3 (repeating the process over and over and over again), I realized that at the heart of the problem was a horrible architecture (phpbb3), and an utterly failed modification concept (an epic fail – basically the opposite of WP/bbPress plugins). If only there were a way to transfer the database from phpbb3 to bbPress! Maybe bbPress would snuff out all the corrupted db tables that were giving me such grief and corrupting each clean install of phpbb3! Turns out, that is exactly what happened. And it’s all thanks to your plugin – which literally saved my site.

The only “problem” area with was with forums that had ‘ in them (I “” problem because it was so fantastically easy it literally took about 2 minutes). I just renamed each forum to 1, 2, 3, 4 etc, and then changed them back in bbPress! Also, users password were not transferred, but that hardly matters!

Thank you so much! Do you have a PayPal account so I can donate?

[@dudenas Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

Hi once again,

could you please give us a hint on non-working passwords? Is it a real issue, or did we do something wrong?

As I see, we dont need to do anything with md5 insecurity for bbpress plugin - its already integrated?

phpbb3 password plugin is autoloaded.

Could it be problems with mysql version? Mine is 4.1.22

Thanks in advance,

Justas

[@jeffhiggins Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

For what it’s worth, I don’t think the non-working password “issue” is such an issue at all.

All that one has to do is inform their members that they will need to prompt the board for a password reset, and then they can reset their password to whatever they like (including their old password).

It takes all of two minutes for each member to reset their password. Of all the inconveniences associated with switching forums from one architecture to another, this one seems to me to be so minor it is hardly worth mentioning.

[@dudenas Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

Sorry, cannot agree.

1. Ive done a little survey, and it showed that often people dont participate in forums only because they have to register, and they don`t like it.

2. Most of my users are not very computer-literate.

3. Also you have to keep an ugly technical sticky post for as long as the last user changes password.

Not so nice imho.

[@jeffhiggins Member 15 years, 4 months ago]

I suppose. In my case, I’m developing (or rather, redeveloping) a forum for a club, so I don’t have to worry about people not re-registering (or just prompting the system for a new password), because their participation in the club (which they pay for) hinges on their forum experience. In your case, I suppose it might be more concerning.

[@adamkayce Member 15 years, 3 months ago]

There was a post on page 2 that said the script was no longer downloadable… does anyone know how to get a hold of it now? (I tried all the links in this thread, but none of them worked.)

[@jleuze Member 15 years, 3 months ago]

It looks like the original poster’s link still works Adam:

http://members.lycos.co.uk/wmnkhayal/files/phpbb3tobbpress%20converter.tar.gz

Maybe it was a temporary outage?