Moving from multiple forums to a single forum and multiple catagories

[KalkanPrince]

Hi All,

I currently have a number of forums split over a number of SMF installs / domains; lets call them forum1.com forum2.com forum3.com - All forums are of a different subject matter.

What I would like to do is remove all the 3 forums and create a new forum on a subdomain of a new domain, for example forum.newdomain.com

Would it then be possible for me to create a new category for each old forum, eg forum1 category, forum2 category, forum3 category within the new forum and move the existing boards under these categories. It would be nice if you could have subcategories so i could retain the current forum1, 2,,3 categories etc but I do not believe this is possible?

Then, I would like the change the forum1.com url to point to forum.newdomain.com/forum1_category in order to display the "old" forum. Is this possible?

Any ideas welcomed - My ultimate outcome is that once a member of the forum you can move between the other (sub)forums (The subforum mod is one way I have seen but I thought this may be cleaner for future upgrades to smf etc)

Thanks

[Illori]

currently is not possible to merge several forums into one. the main issue with attempting this is that all members id's, post id's and message id's would be duplicated as the merge is attempted. you could try searching the forum and see if there are any posts on this, but i dont think you will find much.

[KalkanPrince]

Sorry maybe i didnt explain properly,

I am happy to loose forum2.com, forum3.com etc as I just want to keep the posts and database from forum1.com. I have created forum.newdomain.com now and hoping there is a way to do an "import"

[KalkanPrince]

also would this affect SEO?

[Illori]

as i said above you cant import/merge the users/posts/messages etc without major conflicts.

[KalkanPrince]

So how would i restore the database from one domain to move it to another if the domain name changes? I was thinking i could do a clean install on the new domain and then recover from the old?

[Illori]

take a look at What is repair_settings.php?

[CapadY]

as i said above you cant import/merge the users/posts/messages etc without major conflicts.

A little correction.
It IS possible to import posts, messages etc. But only those from one forum. So, if you wish you can take over all messages and users from just one forum, the members from the other forums can't be merged with it.

Why not ? Every forum the member ID starts with number one. So, if you try to merge them you'll have several members with the same member_ID. Because this member_ID also is used in the post- topic- and message records (and a lot other places) You wil mess up everything when you try to merge them. You will have post and topics with several owners, but you will also have posts and topics without a owner.

Good luck

[Illori]

that is the same thing i said the first time, thanks for clarifying it again though.