IP.Board Importer - Feedback Required

[Kier]

As those of you who run both IP.Board and XenForo will have found out, the forum permission scheme between the two is fairly radically different.

IPB has a concept of permission sets, which are set uniquely on every forum that is created.

XenForo on the other hand starts with a base of user group permissions, and then adds custom forum permissions on a per-group basis if required. If no forum permissions are defined for a particular user group for a particular forum/node, the user group permissions are used.

This leads to a dilemma as to how to import these permissions.

On the one hand, we could import all the permissions verbatim, but this would mean that every user group would have specific permissions set for every forum. While this is possible, it it not the way that XenForo is intended to be used, and may make ongoing management difficult.

Alternatively, we could do a more simple interpretation of the IPB forum permissions and limit the translation to private / public switches and then allow the admin to go through the forums and set up specific permissions as they required.

Thoughts? Ideas?

 

[majdi]

Will there be a redirect script included, Kier?

i hope so

 

[CTXMedia]

I noticed on a test migration that all PMs are marked as unread after import - is this because there is no way to import the read-status from the IPB tables?

It could be a potential problem area as there is currently no way of marking all PMs as read from the XF interface!!

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[Marc]

I noticed on a test migration that all PMs are marked as unread after import - is this because there is no way to import the read-status from the IPB tables?

It could be a potential problem area as there is currently no way of marking all PMs as read from the XF interface!!

Cheers,
Shaun

Found this problem myself. I just went for the option of marking them all read in the database. For the sake of doing it once

 

[CTXMedia]

Found this problem myself. I just went for the option of marking them all read in the database. For the sake of doing it once

Yeah, I suppose I could tell everyone that their PMs will all be marked as read after the conversion, so they should catch-up on unread beforehand ...

 

[CTXMedia]

I've noticed that reported items don't import from the IPB Report Centre into XF Reported Items.

Can we please add this to the importer to-do list (if it isn't already there )?

Thanks,
Shaun

 

[Kier]

I've been checking into the unread PMs issue described above, but I've been completely unable to reproduce it. Anyone who has the issue want to open up database access for me to take a look at their IPB data so I can try to work it out?

 

[CTXMedia]

I've been checking into the unread PMs issue described above, but I've been completely unable to reproduce it. Anyone who has the issue want to open up database access for me to take a look at their IPB data so I can try to work it out?

Yep - I'll send you a PC with access details.

 

[CTXMedia]

I've found an issue with signatures when I've imported from IP.Board 3.1.4 into XF 1.1 beta 3.

If you members have quoted people's posts in their signature, the importer isn't re-writing the quote as it does in the post message text (don't get me wrong, I don't expect it to, but I wanted to make everyone aware of this who is going to import).

So, for example, if I've added a signature in IP.Board which contains a reference to a post:

[quote name='coffeejo' timestamp='1307479954' post='1699120']
NT, you are officially bonkers
[/quote]

When it comes across to XF, it displays as it is written, rather than as the expected wrapped-up proper quote:

[quote name='coffeejo' timestamp='1307479954' post='1699120']
NT, you are officially bonkers
[/quote]

So be aware that some of your members may have to re-do their signature, or you may have to re-work them on their behalf.

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[Tiscan]

I would much prefer the simple import, that way I can build the permissions in the way Xenforo intended. However my community is tiny and thus the overhead is not an issue.

 

[Mike54]

As one who is looking to be converting, I would hope to see things be simply converted, so management of all permission will work as originally designed within XenForo. When in Rome, aye?

Permissions did not carry over from vBulletin to IPB during that conversion, so it's not that big a deal for me. I would likely be checking everything before opening the site back up anyway.

As for the unread PM issue, I experienced that during the vBulletin to IPB conversion, as well. This would certainly not a deal-breaker for me.

 

[CTXMedia]

TBH I reached the same conclusion about permissions and instead of worrying about mapping everything over from the multiple usergroups I had, I've consolidated the usergroup instead so I'm down from 10 of them to just three, with two of those being merged the day of the migration ...

I'll still manually review all the forum permissions as I make them "live" in XF, but at least with a reduced set of usergroups it'll make the job much easier.

It will also help too when I recreate the new permissions as I'm going to take advantage of XF's permission stacking and just create specific priviliges for secondary groups.

Should be fun ... lol

 

[CTXMedia]

USER ADDED AS MODERATOR - I found a member showing up in the staff list tonight on the test forum.

I checked her account and sure enough it said "Moderator" - but funnily enough she didn't show up in the moderator list.

I then added her as a moderator, and then removed her, and she was no longer showing on the staff online list - but I wonder if there is a query I can run to see if anyone else is "upgraded" to staff who shouldn't be?

Cheers,
Shaun