PHPBB3 again

Steve Brown

Member
OK, I've been preparing to move over to xen from a phpbb 3 board. The board has approx 200,000 posts and around 23,000 members currently.

I've followed the suggestion of doing this via impex however I have a number of questions relating to the best way to do this as well as questions regarding some of the ways to implement features I currently have but seem to be lacking with xen.

I was hoping to move everything over in August but having played around a bit and done a test import I'm a bit worried that without V1.1 I'm going to lack a lot of functionality and alienate a fair number of users and advertisers. Anyway, the questions...

1. On moving over the user list all banned users / email addresses are not imported and become valid users again - is there a way to combat this without having to do them all manually.

2. I appreciate passwords cannot be moved over, what's the best way to get users to change them - is there an option to mass email users with their temporary passwords to get them to change? Is this going to be more of a problem because of going via impex?

3. Is there anyway to move the forum permissions over or is it best to restart this from scratch?

I'm sure I'll have a load more questions as I go along but any help would be greatly appreciated. Part of me is thinking I may be better waiting until 1.1 and hoping for a dedicated phpbb importer - the impex stage seems to be causing more problems than anything else and seems a lot more flaky than the stage of importing from there into xen.

Many thanks

Steve
 
I'm fairly sure banned members should be handled correctly - I'm sure mine were.
Did you check the status of them in vB after importing your phpBB3 forum?

I made a point of checking everything in vB and tidying up users and groups, etc. before doing the XenForo import.

You can mass email all members from the ACP no problem.
I did that and added a small block to the sidebar below the log in/sign up panel with a link to the password reset URL and some instructions.

I built my XenForo installation from scratch, imported the phpBB3 database and then mass moved the posts to the new forums using SQL queries.
For me that was a better way of doing it as downtime was reduced to almost nothing, rather than spend time after the import setting all the forums and user groups up.

The next importer to be developed is for phpBB so you could always wait for that.
 
Banned members aren't showing up in vB either. I am trying to import into a vB 4 installation using impex in 3.7/8 mode so I don't know if that's what's causing the problem. Unfortunately it's an inherited vb license so I'm a bit restricted on that. I guess I may be better to do it as a vb4 DB and then use the Xen plug in to do it.

The time consuming bit seemed to be importing the users rather than the posts so I'm thinking I close down new user registrations and import that before doing the rest of it. I also intend setting up a temporary site whilst the change over happens and give myself a 48 hour window to do it. Just hell of a challenge and I don't really want to lose data or users in the process.
 
Look like I'm going to have to wait until the phpbb importer for xen is released to make the jump over.

I've tried importing through impex 1.96 & VB4 and it won't keep my banned users at all and puts them back into as standard users. Was hoping to convert over sooner but the 2 stage import system just isn't efficient enough for what I need and also involves me learning vB from the bottom up as well which isn't really ideal.

Would be great if anyone has any better suggestions as the 'coming next' status of the importer isn't overly useful for planning timescales.
 
Are you sure it doesn't keep the bans? xenForo doesn't have any public indications that a user is banned by default. You may wish to verify that the bans didn't import after completion.
 
I've had struggles with importing from another software and into vB4, so I sympathize with you.

I'was going to say that importing from vB4 was flawless with xenforo - well only thanks to Paul M. I can't say I like Paul, but his importer did the job. :)
 
What's taking such an ungodly amount of time for a direct importer from phpBB? Is there any realistic ETA on this? Because I've been told that it'd be done 6 months ago and still nothing, so it's hard to assume anything else except that nobody is working on it...
 
What's taking such an ungodly amount of time for a direct importer from phpBB? Is there any realistic ETA on this? Because I've been told that it'd be done 6 months ago and still nothing, so it's hard to assume anything else except that nobody is working on it...

What version of phpBB? If it's phpBB3 then you will probably want to wait for an official importer in order to preserve your user passwords. If it's phpBB2 then consider importing by way of vBulletin. vBulletin's importer can preserve passwords from phpBB2. You can import from phpBB3 using vBulletin but it doesn't preserve the passwords.
 
What's taking such an ungodly amount of time for a direct importer from phpBB? Is there any realistic ETA on this? Because I've been told that it'd be done 6 months ago and still nothing, so it's hard to assume anything else except that nobody is working on it...
Care to show where you were told it would be done 6 months ago? Because 6 months ago is when they released the IPB importer and they never mentioned any concrete plans on the next importer.
 
What version of phpBB? If it's phpBB3 then you will probably want to wait for an official importer in order to preserve your user passwords. If it's phpBB2 then consider importing by way of vBulletin. vBulletin's importer can preserve passwords from phpBB2. You can import from phpBB3 using vBulletin but it doesn't preserve the passwords.

Oh, so no phpBB2 importer will be coming...? In that case it really wouldn't make much difference if we'd go via vB. Do you know how much longer the phpBB3 importer is going to take?

Care to show where you were told it would be done 6 months ago? Because 6 months ago is when they released the IPB importer and they never mentioned any concrete plans on the next importer.

No, it was private correspondence.
 
Oh, so no phpBB2 importer will be coming...? In that case it really wouldn't make much difference if we'd go via vB. Do you know how much longer the phpBB3 importer is going to take?

I haven't seen any official information. I assume there will eventually be an official phpBB importer. I assume they will target phpBB3 since that is the current version. phpBB2 is EOL.
 
Please don't tell me that phpBB3 has been pushed back again...
Fear not! It'll get done eventually..
I went the phpBB3 > vB 3 > Xenforo route;
It was a fairly small board, though, maybe 2000 posts.. import still went great, though!
Have been a happy user of Xenforo since May. Best $140 I ever spent on the internet.
 
I saw a comment in another thread that SMF 2 is currently in development, but no word on phpBB... but the last time I asked, Brogan above said that phpBB3 would be next in line.
 
Excellent... will it be just phpBB3 or also 2? We've got a 2 million posts phpBB2 that we desperately need to move over to XF... we can provide dumps for testing if needed.
 
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