Hi,
After a few attempts, I got my forum converted from vBulletin to bbPress. But I forgot to click on the Username conversion, so everything came up as Anonymous. I deleted the conversion fully and started again. This time: I clicked on the “Attempt to import user accounts”.
Now this comes up:
`WordPress database error: [Unknown column ‘user.user_nicename’ in ‘field list’]
SELECT convert(user.userid USING “utf8”) AS userid,convert(user.password USING “utf8”) AS password,convert(user.salt USING “utf8”) AS salt,convert(user.username USING “utf8”) AS username,convert(user.user_nicename USING “utf8”) AS user_nicename,convert(user.email USING “utf8”) AS email,convert(user.homepage USING “utf8”) AS homepage,convert(user.joindate USING “utf8”) AS joindate,convert(user.aim USING “utf8”) AS aim,convert(user.yahoo USING “utf8”) AS yahoo FROM user AS user LIMIT 0, 100`
If I continue and skip this step, the forum converts still but all the posts will be anonymous.
How do I fix?
Hey guys. We are now starting our forum, and we expect that it will pay off to put a lot of thought into the different features we want to incorporate before getting it started. We are including social login. These forums will be for a video game news and opinion website, and we are trying to build a long-term, self-sustaining community, which may prove difficult in an environment where there are lots of forums where people might spend their time. I know a lot of these are answered elsewhere, but what are the MOST IMPORTANT features to you guys for a forum in which you might be spending a lot of time, and what plugins are must-haves?
http://www.twinfinite.net/forums
Features to consider:
What themes do you guys like for forums?
Is BuddyPress necessary (we aren’t sure how it will integrate with social login)?
Do you like points systems, and if so, what rewards? Titles?
Are there good social integration plugins that allow people to share threads?
What other plugins?
What about upvoting / downvoting, do these have a place in forums or just comment systems?
friends lists
following
community blogs
image/video support
signatures
polls
custom formatting
I am running the most recent version of WP (at the time of this posting, I believe it’s 3.5.1?), and a multi-site installation. I have two questions, and I apologize if they’ve been asked before. I’ve been looking but haven’t found an answer:
1) Can I install a BBPress theme separate from my primary wordpress theme? I have a heavily-modified version of conduit, but the theming of our forums doesn’t look great: http://www.twinfinite.net/forums/topic/first-topic/.
2) We have been trying to install the theme, but are having issues. I can’t figure out how to do it. It seems like the process is different based on the version, and none of them seem to work. I’ve created a “my-templates” folder in the BBPress root directory. I can’t find a dashboard for BBpress, and I can’t find anything on the settings page. I believe that at one point I saw a “BBpress themes” option (or something like that), and it linked me to www.twinfinite.net/wp-admin/themes.php?page=bbpress-theme-admin.php, which, despite me having both superadmin and keymaster roles, simply displayed:
“You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.”
When I returned to wp-admin, the BBpress themes option had vanished, and I haven’t seen it since.
Frankly, I am stumped. I just want forums that look like normal forums would, rather than a wordpress post with a sidebar, etc.
Thank you for all your help!
-Keith
Converting a Snitz access database forum to BBpress
This documents how I transferred from a website using Snitz and an access database to a new site with BBress using Mysql.
This briefing assumes knowledge of
• FTP programmes and uploading/downloading files
• A way to access your wordpress database eg myphpadmin
• A way to see your access database
Introduction
BBpress has a conversion tool that lets you import data from several other forum packages. However two things are needed for this to work.
1. The data in a MySQL database format
2. A convertor programme that understands the structure of the source (in this case Snitz) forum.
If you already have a MySQL verison of Snitz (Snitz supports Access, MS SQL, and MySQL), then you’ll still need to fix the date, and run a specific Snitz converter, but don’t need the upload to MySql in step 2.
Plan
The plan therefore is to
1. Fix date format (it is different between the two forums)
2. Convert the data to sql format
3. Run a snitz converter
4. Run repair to fix the links
Execution
I can only describe how I achieved this, I suspect there are lots of ways, but this one worked.
I had an access database on site x with hosting company a, and needed to transfer to a Mysql database on site y with hosting company b (basically I was taking over running someone else’s website management)
Step 1 fixing the data format
Snitz stores dates in the format yyyymmddhhmmss
BBpress stores dates in the format yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss
You can fix this
• before you transfer the data to sql,
• after you have transferred it
• or during conversion,
this will depend on where you knowledge lies. But you will need to fix it. If you don’t fix this, all the entries you import will show as posted 2014 years ago (basically year 0)
I converted before transferring to sql, as I an old and used to working with flat files! If you are more capable in sql, you could no doubt write a small programme to change the data format after you’ve uploaded to sql, and if more capable in php you could do it within the converter programme (see later)
The Snitz database has two tables with dates in that need changing. These are :
FORUM_TOPICS
FORUM_REPLY
This is how they showed in my Snitz database, but the prefix may be different with yours.
In FORUM_TOPICS you need to change
T_DATE
T_LAST_POST
In FORUM_REPLY you need to change
T_REPLY
I downloaded the access database from the old site to my PC. I then exported the two tables to an excel spreadsheet (in Access go to external data, and look for export to Excel. You’ll need to have created a blank spreadsheet with the name you want to use first) and ran the formula
=CONCATENATE(MID(N2,1,4),"-",MID(N2,5,2),"-",MID(N2,7,2)," “,MID(N2,9,2),":",MID(N2,11,2),":",MID(N2,13,2))
Where column N contained the old date.
I then prefixed the original heading with OLD (eg heading T_DATE became OLDT_DATE) and headed the new column with the heading of the old one (eg T_DATE). I did this to a) preserve the original columns just in case, and b) to use for the clean slug in the conversion (see later).
I then deleted the old table in access, and imported the two excel ones back into Access (as before external data, then import).
I then had the same access database, but with the correct date formulas and a couple of extra columns with the old date format in them.
Step 2 – Convert access database to MySql database
The first thing you’ll need is a MySql database to upload to.
You can use the one you presumably already have with WordPress/BBpress. However you’ll just need to check that none of the names co-incide. Since my Snitz database used capitals (I don’t know if they all Snitz databases do), and BBpress uses lower case, I suspect that there is no risk in doing this, but one for you to consider.
I took the safety of creating a fresh blank database (my hosting package allows the creation of databases and manages them through phpMyadmin).
There are numerous programmes on the web that do access to Mysql conversion, but for no particular reason I chose Bullzip www.bullzip.com/.
However this needs a 32bit ODBC driver to work, so unless you already have Mysql on your local PC, you’ll need to download the driver from http://www.mysql.com/downloads/connector/odbc/ – choose the 32 bit one.
Once installed it is a doddle to do the conversion.
You’ll need :
The access database on your pc
The host address of your MySql database
The database name
The username
The password.
Run the wizard, and it’ll upload in minutes.
Finally if you’re going to do the date conversion discussed in Step 1 at this stage, now’s the time to do it.
Step 3 – Importing/converting the data
This is easy once you’ve got your head around it, but initially it can be very frustrating.
In essence you need to translate what one forum calls something to what the other needs.
For Snitz, I used the following translation
Forum section FORUM_FORUM forum
Forum id FORUM_ID _bbp_forum_id
Forum parent id CAT_ID _bbp_parent_id
Forum title F_SUBJECT post_title
Forum Slug (see note 1) FORUM_ID post_name
Forum description F_DESCRIPTION post_content
Forum Display Order F_ORDER Menu_order
Forum Date Update Post_date
Topic section FORUM_TOPICS topic
Topic id TOPIC_ID _bbp_topic_id
Forum id FORUM_ID _bbp_forum_id
Topic author T_AUTHOR post_author
Topic title T_SUBJECT post_title
Topic Slug (see note 1) T_DATE post_name
Forum id (if no parent 0) FORUM_ID post_parent
Topic date update T_DATE post_date
T_DATE post_date_gmt
T_LAST_POST_DATE post_modified
T_LAST_POST_DATE post_modified_gmt
Tags section
Ignored
Post section FORUM_REPLY reply
Post id REPLY_ID _bbp_post_id
Forum id FORUM_ID _bbp_forum_id
Topic id TOPIC_ID _bbp_topic_id
Author ip R_IP _bbp_author_ip
Post author R_AUTHOR post_author
Topic slug R_DATE post_name
Post Content R_MESSAGE post_content
Topic id TOPIC_ID post_parent
Topic date R_DATE post_date
User Section FORUM_MEMBERS user
Store old user id MEMBER_ID _bbp_user_id
M_NAME user_login
M_PASSWORD _bbp_password
M_EMAIL user_email
M_HOMEPAGE user_url
M_AIM aim
M_YAHOO yim
[NOTE if you copy this and post in a word doc, you should be able to get a nice tabbed table]
Note 1
I used OLDR_DATE & OLDT_DATE from the step 1 as my clean slugs. A slug is what BBpress uses for a URL to reference a post. It needs to be clean – ie not have formatting, odd characters like spaces etc. in it. I did debate using the topic ID, but was unsure if this was unique for BBpress – it may well be fine. So I used the references above as I was pretty sure that with our forum being not that busy, that no two people would have posted in the same second. If you choose to use some other field, such as topic ID, you’ll need to change the field in the converter document – see below.
This is then used against the example converter that BBpress supplies.
Whilst initially looking daunting, this is fairly easy to change to get it to work.
Step 3.1 Creating a Snitz.php
Firstly go to your site. Using FTP go to web/wp-content/plugins/bbpress/includes/admin/converters and locate example.php. FTP this to your PC and using an editor (notepad ++ is good – download it from http://notepad-plus-plus.org/) you need to change the default “froms” to those above
But first save it locally as “snitz.php”, and change the first couple of lines to read
/**
* Implementation of snitz converter.
*/
class snitz extends BBP_Converter_Base
If you don’t do this, the converter won’t recognise it.
Then you need to work through each of the lines of code changing the “default” source database tables and names to the correct ones.
So looking at you new snitz.php, you’ll see for instance the first conversion is :
// Forum id. Stored in postmeta.
$this->field_map[] = array(
'from_tablename' => 'forum', 'from_fieldname' => 'forumid',
'to_type' => 'forum', 'to_fieldname' => '_bbp_forum_id'
So to get this to work for Snitz you need to change the source table from ‘forum’ to “FORUM_FORUM” and the from field needs changing from ‘forumd’ to’ _bbp_forum_id’
Making the lines now read :
// Forum id. Stored in postmeta.
$this->field_map[] = array(
'from_tablename' => 'FORUM_FORUM', 'from_fieldname' => 'FORUM_ID',
'to_type' => 'forum', 'to_fieldname' => '_bbp_forum_id'
Using the translation table above you work through each of the lines, doing the substitution.
I commented out the tags section, as I couldn’t see that Snitz had tags. I also commented out the “
Store old user salt” and “User password verify class” sections as passwords won’t come across – see later on this.
CRITICALLY I also added the following as the example doesn’t had a bit that brings the actual topic content across !
// Topic content.
// Note: We join the posts table because topics do not have content.
$this->field_map[] = array(
'from_tablename' => 'FORUM_TOPICS',
'from_fieldname' => 'T_MESSAGE',
'join_tablename' => 'thread',
'join_type' => 'INNER',
'join_expression' => 'USING (threadid) WHERE post.parentid = 0',
'to_type' => 'topic',
'to_fieldname' => 'post_content',
'callback_method' => 'callback_html'
Once all that is done, save the file locally.
Then using FTP upload it to the same directory that example came from
Viz : web/wp-content/plugins/bbpress/includes/admin/converters
Now you’re ready to run the conversion!
You’ll need the following info
Database server (localhost if your using you local Mysql database)
Database name
Database User
Database password
Then in Dashboard, go to tools>forums>import forums
Select “snitz” from the converter list, and fill in the database info from above.
Click to select users, presuming that you want to bring these across.
Then click start, and sit back and watch. If you’ve got everything right, you’ll see a steady stream of lines such as “converting topics 1-100”
If Fails :
If it falls over, then you’ll need to work out which part of the snitz converter it doesn’t like (it’ll give you a line number). Usually you’ve got punctuations wrong, or called something by a wrong name. Remember snitz (in my case anyway) uses capitals, and bbpress needs lowercase, so ensure that’s all ok.
If nothing comes through (it usually says “starting conversion…conversion complete”), then you have got the connection wrong, as it’s not finding the database and tables.
If Success :
Then you’ll need to repair the links (Dashboard>tools>forums>repair forums). Otherwise in my case the forum listings came through, but with no topics listed against them.
Do as the tool suggests – I ran several at the same time, and wrote most of this document whilst waiting !
Finally – users
If you successfully imported your users, they’ll have accounts, but their passwords won’t work – Bbpress can’t bring these across.
The easiest way is to tell them to click “lost password” and enter their email address and then they can reset their own.
And that’s how it’s done !
