Help copying a forum from 1 domain to another

[sforum]

Hi all

I just bought XenForo about a week ago, but haven't had a chance to play with it in any great detail as I'm having a nightmare trying to copy my current PunBB forum from my live domain to my personal domain (which I plan to use for testing).

As in:

1) XenForo is currently installed and running fine on domain2.com

2) I have a PunBB forum on domain1.com, which is my main, live domain & has been running the installed PunBB forum for years. Not massive, but not tiny either - 1349 users, 125486 posts, etc.

3) I want to copy my PunBB forum from domain1.com to domain2.com, so I can then run the XenForo PunBB Importer, hope it works, and start work migrating in earnest!

Has anyone done a similar thing and got any advice? Both domains are with the same hosting company, which I guess helps.

I thought it would be a simple case of using phpMyAdmin to export the live database to a .SQL file, then import that into a database on domain2.com, but alas that doesn't seem to be the case.

I can export the database from the live site on domain1.com just fine, which results in a ~24MB gzipped file. I can't get this to import into domain2.com via phpMyAdmin at all, though! It seems to upload fine, but then the browser just seems to hang. I have tried it twice now - the first time, it didn't work at all, but the second time it partially worked (as in, I ended up with a db with 50 tables instead of 55, and it was less than half the size [in MB] than it should be).

As I say, has anyone done something similar and can offer any advice? I really want to get my forum moved to XenForo asap

Thanks!

 

[Slavik]

Hi all

I just bought XenForo about a week ago, but haven't had a chance to play with it in any great detail as I'm having a nightmare trying to copy my current PunBB forum from my live domain to my personal domain (which I plan to use for testing).

As in:

1) XenForo is currently installed and running fine on domain2.com

2) I have a PunBB forum on domain1.com, which is my main, live domain & has been running the installed PunBB forum for years. Not massive, but not tiny either - 1349 users, 125486 posts, etc.

3) I want to copy my PunBB forum from domain1.com to domain2.com, so I can then run the XenForo PunBB Importer, hope it works, and start work migrating in earnest!

Has anyone done a similar thing and got any advice? Both domains are with the same hosting company, which I guess helps.

I thought it would be a simple case of using phpMyAdmin to export the live database to a .SQL file, then import that into a database on domain2.com, but alas that doesn't seem to be the case.

I can export the database from the live site on domain1.com just fine, which results in a ~24MB gzipped file. I can't get this to import into domain2.com via phpMyAdmin at all, though! It seems to upload fine, but then the browser just seems to hang. I have tried it twice now - the first time, it didn't work at all, but the second time it partially worked (as in, I ended up with a db with 50 tables instead of 55, and it was less than half the size [in MB] than it should be).

As I say, has anyone done something similar and can offer any advice? I really want to get my forum moved to XenForo asap

Thanks!

Put simply, it may be worth you employing the services of a 3rd party to do the conversion for you. On a shared hosting solution, its going to be a long winded affair

 

[sforum]

Put simply, it may be worth you employing the services of a 3rd party to do the conversion for you. On a shared hosting solution, its going to be a long winded affair

Why is it going to be long-winded? Surely I just need the database to be there on the same host as XenForo so that I can run the PunBB Importer?

Perhaps I over-complicated things with my mahoosive post - I just need to get the database from my live server to import to my other domain; as long as the punbb importer works then that's all that needs doing really! I don't need a working PunBB installation on the test server (I don't think; do I?) - I just need the database to be there so that the Importer can work its magic! The rest will be tidying things up in XenForo..

as long as users and posts get migrated, that's all i'm fussed about.. the rest can be worked around/dropped

 

[Paul B]

As I posted on your other thread, personally I'd do it on localhost using XAMPP.

 

[CTXMedia]

Are the domains hosted on the same server? If so, you should be able to just make a copy of your PunBB database and point the XF importer at the copied database.

If not, just do an SQL backup of the PunBB database on the first server, copy the backup file over to the second domain server, and import it into SQL on the second server and go from there.

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[sforum]

As I posted on your other thread, personally I'd do it on localhost using XAMPP.

And as I said in that thread, I didn't have a clue what that meant lol. Incidentally, I started this new thread because that thread started going off on a massive tangent. Hence this thread - they're about 2 totally different things

If not, just do an SQL backup of the PunBB database on the first server, copy the backup file over to the second domain server, and import it into SQL on the second server and go from there.

You'd think so, wouldn't you? As I said in my OP, I tried that, and it doesn't work.

At first I got an error about not having permission to create a database, so I had to manually (locally) edit the .SQL file to comment out the following bit:

CREATE DATABASE `sforum` DEFAULT CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_swedish_ci;
USE `sforum`;

That at least allowed me to import the database, but then phpMyAdmin just hung and as I say I ended up with a half-populated db.

I think I'm just going to ask my host if they'll copy the db over for me, seeing as both my domains are hosted by them. Plus when I filed the initial ticket with them (to increase the import limit from 8MB, as my db was 24MB compressed) he ended with "Let me know how Xenforo is as I've considered replacing our forums with it."

 

[Paul B]

Installing a forum on localhost is no different to installing on a server.

The only additional step you have to do is install XAMPP, which emulates the server.

All of the instructions on how to do so are detailed step-by-step in the thread I linked to.

For editing, testing and upgrading, a localhost installation is invaluable.

 

[dtmcl]

I hate it when that happens, half way through importing a database.

When I had that problem I used sypex to import my database in seconds, nothing hangs it just does the job

 

[Jake Bunce]

That at least allowed me to import the database, but then phpMyAdmin just hung and as I say I ended up with a half-populated db.

I think I'm just going to ask my host if they'll copy the db over for me, seeing as both my domains are hosted by them. Plus when I filed the initial ticket with them (to increase the import limit from 8MB, as my db was 24MB compressed) he ended with "Let me know how Xenforo is as I've considered replacing our forums with it."

phpmyadmin is not always reliable for restoring backups. Try using bigdump:

http://www.ozerov.de/bigdump/

Of course the ideal is to use a shell command to restore the database:

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/how-to-backup-and-restore-your-forum.7213/