How to merge two SMF Forums?

[Hoshi]

Are there any tools/convertors out yet that allow to merge two smf dbs into one forum installation?

[Peter Duggan]

No, sorry, it's not at all easy and AFAIK no-one's created one yet.

[Hoshi]

Thanks for your fast reply. I solved the problem by myself and converted my old ipb2 forum to smf and dropped the current db (80 posts).

[NoRad]

Well, I'm interested in possibly doing this myself so I'll bump this post again...

I have two websites that I essentially want to combine. One was a gaming website. The other was a general community website (with a small area for gaming). What I would like to do is take the bulk of the gaming website and bring them into the community site as child forums of the generic gaming area. The other facet of this problem is that I'd like to merge *most* of the user accounts (those that are active) from the gaming site with the accounts on the community site.

The gaming site:
Total Topics: 1351
Total Posts: 15092
Total Members: 438

The community site:
Total Topics: 3104
Total Posts: 41349
Total Members: 884

Any ideas?

[Pause]

Well, you'd obviously have to check first that there are no two usernames the same, and if you know SQL, then there's probably a way that you can combine users and posts (without dropping current users and posts) - but another thing you would have to make sure of is that the board structures are the same - e.g if the gaming site has 'General', 'Video Games', and 'Sport' in the 'General Discussion' category, the community site'd have to be exactly the same.

[Peter Duggan]

I have search this board for help topics for about 1+ hours last night.... I couldn't seem to find anything that helped with merging a SMF existing board into my SMF board.... here is a little more information.

From search string 'merge forums' (the first thing I tried):

It may be possible to merge forums in the future, but currently it is not possible.... well, not really - there are a lot of problems it causes.

Easy?  No, there is no easy way of doing that :/.

Not perhaps what you were hoping to hear but, since I remembered reading some of this stuff before, I thought I'd see how quickly I could dig it up for you!

I'm afraid that while I would like to make an "importer" for SMF to SMF, I don't currently have the time... because, for posts, it's quite a lot more complicated.

Im right in assuming that i can import 1 at a time, and change the ID's?

Yes, just as long as you change ALL the ids... it's no simple process, but that's how you could do it...

[Greybrow]

Did anything changed in last half of year?
I will do it anyway, but if it is already done, it would be easer

[[Unknown]]

I'm working on one for 1.1, but it's on the backburner currently.

-[Unknown]

[NoRad]

Glad I still have that old forum laying around. 

[markymoo]

Any updates on this?
 

[Greybrow]

Any updates on this?

[Ben_S]

Nope, still not possible,

[Puc conDoin]

Is it possible in MySQL to add something to an ID?

If you have 2 smf installations. And for example, the highest topic-id of the first one is 1500, and the second one has a highest topic id of 800, you can try to add 1500 to all topic-id's in the second smf installation, and then copy to the table in the first smf installation.

But what to do when it's the other way for the post-id's? That the highest id in the first smf install is 5000, but in the second smf install it is 8000?

[Ben_S]

Theres lots more to it than that.

[Puc conDoin]

Ofcourse, these are just some thoughts into it.

[Puc conDoin]

Hmmm, found this for phpbb:

http://www.typo.nl/misc/merge_phpbb.phps

[Puc conDoin]

Hmmm, found this for phpbb:

http://www.typo.nl/misc/merge_phpbb.phps

Some topics about it:

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=119777
and
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=203648

[NoRad]

So merge in PHBB and then switch to SMF lol

[Puc conDoin]

I don't think that is the right way to do it. You would lose information by doing that.

[NoRad]

I don't think that is the right way to do it. You would lose information by doing that.

Yup, it was only a joke.