Will you be creating an importer for phpBB?

Paul B

Paul B

XenForo moderator
Staff member
I know phpBB isn't widely regarded but my site started out on a free host and we still use phpBB for the forum.

I've been waiting for the right thing to come along before upgrading and I think I've found it.

A migration script would be absolutely essential though and is a show stopper.

I understand that your priority is to get the core functionality working and presumably you'll be targeting vB forum owners first but after that?
 
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If/when you get around to doing a phpBB importer Jerry, will you be creating regex's to deal with all the differences in BBCode?

For example, align code in XenForo is [right][/right] but in phpBB it's [align=right][/align]

So although I can do a simple UPDATE xf_post SET message = REPLACE(message, '[align=right]', '[right]'); for the opening tag, I can't easily replace the closing tag as replacing [/align] with [/right] will also replace it for any centred content.
 
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Yup, I've seen some major process go on for imports.

Which in itself is a good thing ........ it's when people don't plan and prepare that it's scary, you end up getting emails along the lines of "Oh I just took my whole site offline and ran an import, it didn't work perfectly, fix it now" ;)

Test, test and test again !
 
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Well I'm ready to do a test import for the first time.

I suppose I could always go the phpBB -> vB -> XenForo route just to test it all works and see what needs tidying up afterwards :)
 
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im eagearly waiting for the converter from phpBB to xenforo.
i have two sites phpbb and its high time to switch to paid site.
hope xenforo guys can make it asap even before the stable release is out
 
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It's unlikely there will be an importer for phpBB before the stable release.

You can always go via vBulletin as I did.
The only difference really is the loss of passwords, but none of my members had an issue with that and a simple password reset is all that was required.
 
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swatme said:
im eagearly waiting for the converter from phpBB to xenforo.
i have two sites phpbb and its high time to switch to paid site.
hope xenforo guys can make it asap even before the stable release is out
Click to expand...

We offer a phpBB->XenForo convert service if you can't wait for a post-stable release script.
 
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Mr.Bishop said:
What's the cost of a conversion?

Also this is probably a mega n00b question, but is there a target release date for the stable version?
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You can take the time to install vbulletin, impex and a dump of the database, and a dump of your xenforo board. And do the convert yourself. However, we have the experience now, including dealing with bugs and importing over data that impex has failed on (highly customized import script atm tbh) and if you have less than 250k posts, it's about $35 atm. and if we fail, we refund the money

I say try it yourself first perhaps?
 
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Brogan said:
Free, if you do it yourself :)


Soon ;)
Click to expand...

Soon like days, weeks, months, years?

I'll think about paying for a conversion though... .honestly at this point I'd just love to have someone who knows how to do it right.

That still has the password re-set issue though correct? i'd love to avoid that. Is there conformation that there will be an officiall phpBB port in the official release?
 
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Mr.Bishop said:
That still has the password re-set issue though correct? i'd love to avoid that. Is there conformation that there will be an officiall phpBB port in the official release?
Click to expand...

After 6+ years and thousands of imports, the password "issue" ........ basically isn't an issue. 99.99% of people send out a "We've changed forum systems" email when they change, so you can put in a link to the password reset in that email.

If you have users that aren't even going to click one link to see what is going on, then what kind of real engagement do you have with them.
 
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Jerry said:
After 6+ years and thousands of imports, the password "issue" ........ basically isn't an issue. 99.99% of people send out a "We've changed forum systems" email when they change, so you can put in a link to the password reset in that email.

If you have users that aren't even going to click one link to see what is going on, then what kind of real engagement do you have with them.
Click to expand...

See I agree with you there. But one thing I realized...

#1 25% of my users did NOT have updated emails. So they signed up 2,3,4 yrs ago and kept that old email, which no longer works. So unless I know them personally, or can match IP's it's hard for me to just give someone access to the account.

#2 Some servers have limits on emails, so if you can only send 100-300 emails and have thousands of members. Right there it can take half a day almost or a full day to send out all the emails.

I know the members that got the email and did reset where fine. However, there should be some way of converting user passwords. Or just using the same password encryption algorithm.
 
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i agree most cpanel servers todays have limited number of emails sent per hour to avoid spam abuse.
so 10,000 members resetting their email password on the date of forum conversion will be an issue
to forum owners on a shared hosting.

surely theres a way to convert phpbb-->xenforo without having a password issue
 
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