Wildcat Media
Well-known member
Right now, I'm battling with an ancient WebBBS forum installation. I contacted *ahem* the "other place" who shall remain nameless, and their reply was that since the WebBBS is considered a "tier 3" Impex module, it would not be supported. (So tell me, just what am I buying with that license, other than more bloat?) The ImpEx module does nothing--it fails without any indication of what is wrong. It also was not really clear on which directory the module should point to. (I would think it's the WebBBS data directory, since it often did not reside in public web space or, IOW, outside of public_html).
I do have a Perl-based converter for WebBBS to phpBB2 but it, too, is far from perfect--we're finding dates and post contents are missing. Since this was a "threaded" as opposed to a "linear" forum, writing my own PHP importer would take a bit more work than I could handle right now. In addition, I would be adding code to assign known long-time users (using email address and/or name they gave in the posts) to actual user accounts in
Anyway, enough venting and on to the question. The WebBBS forum ran from 1997 to 2002, and then we switched to phpBB. During the XF 1.0.0 "release party sale," I grabbed a second license and we're anxious to get on the new forum.
Is there any ill effect to getting our current forum running, but importing the earlier forum at a later time?
I will likely put the old posts into an "archive" forum section as read-only. I am more concerned about timing. I know our post ID numbers will jump by about 35,000 (the number of WebBBS posts we have) which is no problem of course, but other that, I am thinking the original post dates should probably keep everything sorted properly in terms of date and time. Just wanted to confirm this, as I'd rather get off of phpBB2 as hastily as I can, rather than hold up the conversion for weeks while I try to get Impex to work, or roll my own PHP importer.
As with the bbPress import I just did, I'll keep everyone posted here as to progress, hoping it will help someone else down the road.
I do have a Perl-based converter for WebBBS to phpBB2 but it, too, is far from perfect--we're finding dates and post contents are missing. Since this was a "threaded" as opposed to a "linear" forum, writing my own PHP importer would take a bit more work than I could handle right now. In addition, I would be adding code to assign known long-time users (using email address and/or name they gave in the posts) to actual user accounts in
Anyway, enough venting and on to the question. The WebBBS forum ran from 1997 to 2002, and then we switched to phpBB. During the XF 1.0.0 "release party sale," I grabbed a second license and we're anxious to get on the new forum.
Is there any ill effect to getting our current forum running, but importing the earlier forum at a later time?
I will likely put the old posts into an "archive" forum section as read-only. I am more concerned about timing. I know our post ID numbers will jump by about 35,000 (the number of WebBBS posts we have) which is no problem of course, but other that, I am thinking the original post dates should probably keep everything sorted properly in terms of date and time. Just wanted to confirm this, as I'd rather get off of phpBB2 as hastily as I can, rather than hold up the conversion for weeks while I try to get Impex to work, or roll my own PHP importer.
As with the bbPress import I just did, I'll keep everyone posted here as to progress, hoping it will help someone else down the road.