Simple Machines Community Forum

SMF Support => Converting to SMF => phpBB => Topic started by: sntjohnny on November 18, 2006, 02:32:29 PM

Title: phpbb to smf, some topics did not come over... can topics be manually imported?
Post by: sntjohnny on November 18, 2006, 02:32:29 PM
SMF Version: SMF 1.0.9
My apologies if this has been covered somewhere.  I did some searching but failed to find the answer to this particular question.

I recently converted from phpbb to smf 1.09 and it appeared to have gone without a hitch, although there were some 'write' errors listed, though they seemed to be inconsequential.  They were there even when I did the process over again making all directories 777.   Anyway, the whole thing seems to have worked... with one little exception...

Out of some 15,000 topics, about 50 of them did not come over.  Many of these, but not all, were older threads, and we didn't notice immediately.  We do not want to lose these threads.  I don't want to close the forum down again over 50 topics.

Is anyone aware of a way to import only particular threads?

I did the 'find and repair errors' under SMF maintenance which gave me a list of what appear to be the lost threads, but the repair seemed only to have just deleted the records of their existence.

Help would be appreciated.

Forum in question:  www.sntjohnny.com/smf

Thanks
Title: Re: phpbb to smf, some topics did not come over... can topics be manually imported?
Post by: Oldiesmann on November 18, 2006, 07:18:51 PM
Are you sure there's no "salvage board" with the missing topics in it?
Title: Re: phpbb to smf, some topics did not come over... can topics be manually imported?
Post by: sntjohnny on November 18, 2006, 08:18:45 PM
Gosh.  I never saw one.  I hope when I did my 'repair' operation they didn't go bye-bye.  But I never saw anything other than my existing forums and categories whereever I looked, and still don't.  You'll have to forgive me, I'm a long time phpbb dude.  A good idea like a salvage board is completely outside of my realm of expectations.
Title: Re: phpbb to smf, some topics did not come over... can topics be manually imported?
Post by: Oldiesmann on November 21, 2006, 04:17:41 PM
If there is a salvage board, it will be at the bottom of the main index, below all the other boards and categories. SMF will create it automatically if needed, so it shouldn't get deleted unless you delete it yourself.
Title: Re: phpbb to smf, some topics did not come over... can topics be manually import
Post by: drswift on November 27, 2006, 03:13:57 PM
i have the same problem. Again with older posts.

Nothing is appearing. No salvage board that I can see....

Anyone any ideas how to solve this?
Title: Re: phpbb to smf, some topics did not come over... can topics be manually imported?
Post by: sntjohnny on November 28, 2006, 07:26:48 PM
Yea, no salvage board here.

Not sure how we're going to handle it.  Linking back to the old forum's thread would work, except I really want to lock that thing down for security purposes.
Title: Re: phpbb to smf, some topics did not come over... can topics be manually import
Post by: drswift on November 29, 2006, 12:22:35 PM
Ditto. Our members value security.

Any way someone could mod the tool to only convert older posts?

Also interesting is topics which were started ages ago and were replied to more recently are missing the first post and only contain the replies (it looks like the first person to reply to it wrote the post).

Is there a way to fix this?

Swift.
Title: Re: phpbb to smf, some topics did not come over... can topics be manually import
Post by: drswift on November 30, 2006, 03:58:51 PM
shameless bump ;)
Title: Re: phpbb to smf, some topics did not come over... can topics be manually imported?
Post by: sntjohnny on December 05, 2006, 06:51:07 PM
QuoteAlso interesting is topics which were started ages ago and were replied to more recently are missing the first post and only contain the replies (it looks like the first person to reply to it wrote the post).

We've got a few of those, too.  And they are funny, in a sick, twisted way, as in several cases the person getting credit for the topic are the absolute last persons on my board expected to post such things...
Title: Re: phpbb to smf, some topics did not come over... can topics be manually imported?
Post by: JayBachatero on December 22, 2006, 12:36:28 AM
What version of SMF and what converter are you using?
Title: Re: phpbb to smf, some topics did not come over... can topics be manually imported?
Post by: drswift on February 17, 2007, 08:58:36 AM
The one I downloaded from the website :-/

I assume it's the most recent one.

I think the problem is specifically with the oldest posts and replies on the board. I'm still suffering greatly from the lack of the old topics. Many of our earliest posts were articles of great interest to folks. Backing them up is a long job.

Oh and in attempting to fix it I've spotted a feature we're lacking on SMF that might be a good idea to introduce -

Re-ordering posts. I can easily post the first post in a topic that's lost it's first post later down...but this is confusing. Looks like the posts are being ordered by chronology. Even if you merge posts the merged topics will be chronologically merged.

So the features I think we're missing are:

1. Ability to assign a post to become the first post in a topic.

2. Option when merging to either merge chronologically or place the topic that is being added before/after the other topic.


Thanks for the GREAT work all of you guys do. SMF is awesome and kicks the ass off even the paid software.

DrSwift.
Title: Re: phpbb to smf, some topics did not come over... can topics be manually imported?
Post by: JayBachatero on February 18, 2007, 12:53:07 AM
Try using the converter in this topic: phpBB 2.0.19+ (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=142124)  That one is more up to date.
Title: Re: phpbb to smf, some topics did not come over... can topics be manually imported?
Post by: drswift on April 23, 2007, 05:41:48 AM
Thanks! Will do.

We're actually being forced to change host right now so the timing is perfect.

Thanks folks.

Anyone know if there is a way to write a fix for people stuck with such old posts? (i.e. not to delete the old message table but update it with the missing posts?)