Forum module: Discussion thread for converting PHPBB data

Hey Everyone.. I’ve been getting some emails from folks about assisting with transferring their forums from PHPBB to EE. I’ve also been asked when I’ll have the script available on my web site. This is something that somewhat dropped off my radar with some of my full-time-job work and some of my contract jobs work including some customized PHPBB to EE forum conversions. I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m still working on this and hope to have something posted before long. I now have several “flavors” of this script and need to homogenize it somewhat so I have one script that can perform all of the various functionality and make it useful for people to actually run without needing to be a PHP programmer.

Yep. I was delayed in doing this on my site. Going to be doing the manual conversion this week (i hope if work doesn’t explode again). Any advice?

Here it is: http://plastik.hu/media/phpbb_to_ee.zip Everything has been explained in “convert.php” – please DO READ the PHP file.

Hey, just used your script last week and wanted to say thanks. It worked pretty well but there were a few hitches: - I had to delete a user, still not sure why, but the script choked on him everytime till I whacked him. - Deleted one forum record that the script was choking on too. - Changed all the poster_ids of ‘-1’ to ‘1’. Not sure why they were -1 but I suspect that’s PHPBB’s way of marking anonymous posts (anyone know?). Otherwise it went well. Thanks so much for putting this out there!

Thanks to this I was able to easily convert my forums. Thank ya! I still have to go in and do the post counts by hand, but that is more than alright.

Thanks to this I was able to easily convert my forums. Thank ya! I still have to go in and do the post counts by hand, but that is more than alright.

Did I mention that I spoke too soon? What happened using that script was that the main information was transferred except polls and more importantly the contents of every thread after the first post (which is the bulk of the last six years of the forums). Currently I’m waiting on mbagnall to have a free moment this coming weekend so I can test his script. It sucks to be a coding newbie with all this, but hot damn is the learning curve necessary to running a site with EE. Its good to have a break to learn it as well.

Hi,

I fixed the issue in the phpbb_to_ee script where only the first post is copied. No guarantees it would work for you but it did work for me. And off a fairly clean install it won’t delete the current Superadmin and won’t create a new Superadmin, so you can still login with your old logins. On a fairly clean install with only three users, I imported over 800 users and over 900 posts with no issues. Everything worked great.

I think I modified angelday’s script but I am not sure. It worked on phpBB 2.0.x -> EE forums 2.1.0 with no troubles. If anyone is interested and is willing to try it entirely at their own risk with lots of backups first, please let me know and I would be happy to post it here with the original author’s blessings.

Hi, I fixed the issue in the phpbb_to_ee script where only the first post is copied. No guarantees it would work for you but it did work for me. And off a fairly clean install it won’t delete the current Superadmin and won’t create a new Superadmin, so you can still login with your old logins. On a fairly clean install with only three users, I imported over 800 users and over 900 posts with no issues. Everything worked great. I think I modified angelday’s script but I am not sure. It worked on phpBB 2.0.x -> EE forums 2.1.0 with no troubles. If anyone is interested and is willing to try it entirely at their own risk with lots of backups first, please let me know and I would be happy to post it here with the original author’s blessings.

I would love it!

I’d love it, too. I need to migrate a small-ish phpBB forum to EE next month and this is probably the only option.

Here is the file.

A few things about this file:

1 - I removed the need for the setting.php file and now connect directly to the main config.php file. As such, please be sure you run the script in the browser from the folder it comes in: phpbb_to_ee_converter 2 - BACKUP your databases first! 3 - The script still requires that the phpbb tables be installed in the same DB as your EE install. 4 - BACKUP your databases first! 5 - I have not tested this on the polls or smilies. Just the users and posts. Though I didn’t touch anything for polls and smillies so they should work still if they worked before. 5 - You agree to run this at your own risk, and you have a complete set of backups… right?

Let me know if you have any problems–though I am swamped right now with trying to find a way to integrate the Coppermine members into the EE members as the EE gallery just won’t cut it for a client–so I might not reply very quickly.

Here is the file. A few things about this file: 1 - I removed the need for the setting.php file and now connect directly to the main config.php file. As such, please be sure you run the script in the browser from the folder it comes in: phpbb_to_ee_converter 2 - BACKUP your databases first! 3 - The script still requires that the phpbb tables be installed in the same DB as your EE install. 4 - BACKUP your databases first! 5 - I have not tested this on the polls or smilies. Just the users and posts. Though I didn’t touch anything for polls and smillies so they should work still if they worked before. 5 - You agree to run this at your own risk, and you have a complete set of backups… right? Let me know if you have any problems–though I am swamped right now with trying to find a way to integrate the Coppermine members into the EE members as the EE gallery just won’t cut it for a client–so I might not reply very quickly.

I’ll run it later in the week and get back to you with the results.

Here is the file. A few things about this file: 1 - I removed the need for the setting.php file and now connect directly to the main config.php file. As such, please be sure you run the script in the browser from the folder it comes in: phpbb_to_ee_converter 2 - BACKUP your databases first! 3 - The script still requires that the phpbb tables be installed in the same DB as your EE install. 4 - BACKUP your databases first! 5 - I have not tested this on the polls or smilies. Just the users and posts. Though I didn’t touch anything for polls and smillies so they should work still if they worked before. 5 - You agree to run this at your own risk, and you have a complete set of backups… right? Let me know if you have any problems–though I am swamped right now with trying to find a way to integrate the Coppermine members into the EE members as the EE gallery just won’t cut it for a client–so I might not reply very quickly.

I’ll run it later in the week and get back to you with the results.

This worked like a charm. There were some problems with the bbcode changing over, but that just took some tweaking to make it work. The dev team could even use this with some modification for production when it comes to converting phpBB forums over.

If you can post the bbcode that had troubles, I would try to squeeze in a moment to fix that up, at some point this week. Currently working on a Menalto Gallery G2 -> EE 1.6.x converter which is taking most of my spare time.

If you can post the bbcode that had troubles, I would try to squeeze in a moment to fix that up, at some point this week. Currently working on a Menalto Gallery G2 -> EE 1.6.x converter which is taking most of my spare time.

It was just the usage of quotes having no closing. No big deal in the whole scheme of things. I think that was the only thing we noticed right off the bat. Good luck with the gallery conversion.

FYI, one problem I was having after running the script was that none of the members had connected entries in exp_member_homepage. With the help of Robin Sowell in the thread “CP Home not displaying” this issue was resolved. Hopefully this helps if you see yourself running into this problem.

Thank you Nelson for pointing that out. I have added the queries and am uploading a new version of the file here. Again, I tested it on my database and it worked as expected. Had to run the recount on the statistics still, but at least the member area appears to be proper.

If you see anything still amiss, please let me know. Thanks.

(Sorry, I uploaded the wrong file first time. It is correct now :-( My little fingers went a wee bit fast. )

Does anyone know if there’s an import script for UBB (Ultimate Bulletin Board) to EE? I’ve got a site running on an old version, but there are so many things I can’t do because I’m using UBB. I’d prefer not to lose years worth of posts. Suggestions?