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 !

[@the-dk Member 15 years, 3 months ago]

Hi All, very interested in a phpbb3 to bbpress converter. Have searched all over and I keep getting linked back to this post. Any updates?

[@kawauso Member 15 years, 3 months ago]

The very, very first link in this thread (where it says download ‘here’) works:

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

but that’s the version without any fixes

[@adamkayce Member 15 years, 3 months ago]

Whoops, my bad – I missed it. The link in the first post still works – reposting it here just in case. (You should still read that first post, though, for the directions…)

[@maumont Member 15 years, 3 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. )

Hi all,

that’swhat i was looking,too. Thank you.

But:

I got the same error as above. I solved it.

I made a new table which i named like the missing file. So it seems to work. But the database has been deleted by half after excecuting the script. I have no idea what to do anymore. Help is needed.

Thank you

[@adamkayce Member 15 years, 3 months ago]

Now, of course, the Big Question is: is it possible to take this newly-converted bbPress forum and get it to integrate nicely w/ a WordPress install? From the poking around that I’ve done, it seems that people have only had success integrating a brand-new bbPress install, not one with data/history in it.

I’d love to be proven wrong, though… any ideas?

[@kawauso Member 15 years, 3 months ago]

Most integration issues I tend to see are related to deep integration, rather than straight forward user integration. I guess it boils down to, does bbPress transfer over existing users to WP’s user tables cleanly (or at all) if you integrate it post-install. It would be possible to do manually anyway, since their respective user tables are essentially identical in structure, but bbPress users would have no WordPress meta whatsoever.

[@adamkayce Member 15 years, 3 months ago]

Thanks, Kawauso… so, any guidelines/instructions about getting bbPress to use the WordPress user tables on a post-install integration? And am I right in assuming that the issues stem from having two databases (since you’ve got existing forum data, you can’t merge the two, right?) ? Sorry if these are newb questions.

Do you know if the ideas on this post would do it? https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/wordpress-and-bbpress-integration-101 — The reason I ask is because it seems like there’s a lot of info circulating about how it worked, or might work, under earlier versions of WP & bbP… but it often changes. Now that we’re up to 2.8.4 and 1.0.2, is it any different, or more viable? Is it as easy as pointing bbP at WP’s user tables, in addition to the “normal” integration steps? (I’m hoping to save myself a few hours of reading, that’s all… )

[@johnhiler Member 15 years, 3 months ago]

adamkayce – It’s absolutely possible. I’ve done it a few times now.

These links are hugely helpful:

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/integration-of-established-wp-and-bbpress-installations

https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/successful-reverse-integration-steps

The hardest part of the integration is how to handle “name collisions”… i.e. what do you do when two users share the same usernames in bbPress (from phpbb3) and WordPress. That’s discussed nicely in the above links.

Good luck!

[@adamkayce Member 15 years, 3 months ago]

Thanks @johnhiler – definitely fills in the puzzle a little.

A couple questions:

• Any thoughts about using more recent builds than 2.7.1 & 0.9?
• One difference I’m seeing with my situation is that it’s WP’s users we need to bring into bbPress, not the other way around. The WP setup is a membership site, handled with the Wishlist Member plugin, so they’ll be logging in there first.

Ugh… I’m realizing I’ve got a bucket full of ugliness here… from the fact that there are going to be bbPress users (old, inactive ones) who aren’t in WP, trying to match up the WP users with the bbPress users, and the whole “logged into WP/logged out of bbPress” issue, since it looks like I may not be able to have shared cookies since I’m working with new versions of both software packages…

… this may be more than is possible right now. I’ll keep trying to figure it out, though. Thanks for your help, everyone.

[@johnhiler Member 15 years, 3 months ago]

No, but I wouldn’t recommend using more recent builds of bbPress… since a lot of plugins aren’t supported in 1.0 yet. Unless of course, you don’t plan on using many plugins… then ymmv.

You can get user integration (complete with cookie support) between just about any two versions of bbPress and WordPress. Start a new thread with your questions around that, and we can all chip in and advise!

[@adamkayce Member 15 years, 3 months ago]

Wow, I’ve been at this for like 12 hours straight now…

The conversion of phpBB3 › bbPress seems to work, but it leaves me with no users in the bb_users tables. Is that normal?

Problem is, I have no idea what to do about it. I’ve tried importing into 0.9, and while it looked like it worked, I can’t get admin access, since it didn’t make me a user. I also tried importing into 1.0, but that looks even worse – on the forum index page, it doesn’t even show author’s names for the posts.

Either way, I can’t get Admin access to the forum, which makes the rest of anything (integrating, upgrading, etc.) impossible.

Help?

[@adamkayce Member 15 years, 3 months ago]

A little clarification: it seems like the converter is working, because when I go to the forum index, I see a whole ton of posts. But when I try to click into a topic, there are no posts in it.

When I run the converter, it goes through a few steps, but on the screen where it’s processing posts, it ends with a blank screen. No “success” message. Is that normal, or is it getting hung up somewhere?

(I’ve seen error messages, and I rectified those, so I recognize that difference, at least.)

[@adamkayce Member 15 years, 3 months ago]

Okay, I found the “max time” thing (in MAMP -› conf -› php5 -› php.ini ), and set it much higher… and now, instead of the page going blank, I get:

SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

Duplicate entry ‘5’ for key 1 [1062]

But I have no idea what that means. What do I change?

[@adrianomelobbpress Member 15 years, 2 months ago]

I have modified the original script to work with a bbpress integrated with wordpress. but the password is not working!

http://svn.adrianomelo.com/labs/Wenetus/phpbb3tobbpress.php

– uses the table wp_users instead bb_users

– the users in the wp_users are not lost!

– conficts resolved (user exists on wp database and phpbb database)

PROBLEM: the phpbb password is not working when imported to wp database

[@diegozaks Member 15 years, 2 months ago]

First of all, thank you for a great script, I have run into a problem, it seems when I try to transfer the 60k posts it reads:

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

What can I do about this? Please help it is very urgent.

Also, in order for it to work, since I installed phpbb with a different table prefix, I had to define the prefix on the script file just under the bbPress prefix, then I worked:

$table_prefix = 'phpbb3_';

[@dennish Member 15 years, 2 months ago]

@diegozaks: Sounds like you have a special character(s) in your db. You need to find and delete them. I had the same issue.

http://www.forlang.wsu.edu/help/keyboards.asp

[@diegozaks Member 15 years, 2 months ago]

@DennisH: thanks for your reply, I am sorry, but I don’t really understand, how do I delete them? do I have to go post by post and delete all the special characters? Perhaps there is a way to increase the maximum length of an SQL command?

[@andrew40 Member 15 years, 2 months ago]

I have same issue and have over 25,000 posts, how do I delete all the special characters from the post or is their a way to have them imported through the SQL

[@af3 Participant 15 years, 1 month ago]

I have modified the original script to work with a bbpress integrated with wordpress. but the password is not working!

http://svn.adrianomelo.com/labs/Wenetus/phpbb3tobbpress.php

– uses the table wp_users instead bb_users

– the users in the wp_users are not lost!

– conficts resolved (user exists on wp database and phpbb database)

PROBLEM: the phpbb password is not working when imported to wp database

Same here — all worked out fine, except password. The _phpbb3p_pass.php file was autoloaded in bb-plugins folder; seems to be not working. Anyone has a workaround this (other than asking users to reset their passwords) ?

[@stevenhodson Participant 15 years ago]

Does anyone have a copy of the files provided by the originator of this thread (wmnasef) and originally found here?

For some reason the file is no longer available from that link.

Failing that does anyone know of any working methods to convert from phpBB 3 to bbPress 1? I am really trying to get from an SMF 2RC1 install and have no problems moving to phpBB3 but stalled at now migrating to bbPress.

[@jleuze Member 15 years ago]

Steve, it looks like the link in the original post is working again:

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

[@carylbbpress Member 15 years ago]

Hello,

Really great script !!!but….

I tried the “addslashes” version but it doesn’t work…there is the always same issue for French Forums version :

Erreur générale

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 ‘abonner au Forum ?’, ‘Toutes les possibilités pour s’abonner sont expliquées i’ at line 1 [1064]

Une erreur SQL est arrivée en chargeant cette page. Contactez l’administrateur du forum si ce problème persiste.

“s’abonner au Forum….” is the title of the first forum with a – ‘ – between – s – and – abonner -….

Did anybody find a solution for that ?

Thanks in advance…

[@david- Member 14 years, 10 months ago]

Hello,

I’m getting an error during the convert.

General 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 ‘ve bought in the past or intend to buy.’, ’51’, ‘8’, ‘3’, ’26’)’ at line 1 [1064]

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

[@david- Member 14 years, 10 months ago]

I’ve fixed this error in the database file, and everything ran smoothly. Thanks a lot.

[@navjotjsingh Participant 14 years, 10 months ago]

Please share your solution David.