Any easy way to export the database?

[lemur21]

Hello,

I love SMF, but one of my message boards wants to move to a content management system -- where everything is inclusive (blog, wiki, forum, image gallery, etc.)

This board has nearly 20,000 messages on it.

I am NOT a programmer - and pretty much learned what I needed to learn about SMF by trial and error. I know its folly to expect that I could, conceivably, retain *everything* on the message board (since so much of it uses mods, etc.), but, I'm optimistic I can at least get the content.

I'm not worried about importing it -- I'll deal with that later. But, I'm assuming / hoping I can get the data from this message board into an import-able format.

Is there an easy way to do this?

Thanks so much for any help you can provide!

Chris

[rsw686]

What you are looking for is a converter script. You would want to just backup the database normally. The script then does the mapping of content between the forum and your CMS.

I'm not sure what converters there are available for the CMS you are looking at. I name would be helpful.

Have you just through of adding these features into SMF. I use Coppermine gallery (has built in bridge to integrate it) and MediaWiki (with a bridge I wrote). You would only need to integrate in a blog and I know there are some available for SMF.

You might have a look at my site, the link is in my signature.

[lemur21]

I was looking at TikiWiki

I did not see a converter for that.

It never occurred to me to check into integrating everything - in truth, I'd RATHER do that, because I really do like the SMF interface!

With your site, is it fully searchable?

I wouldn't even know the first thing, however, about 'writing a bridge' -- heck, I don't even know what writing a bridge even means!

But, if there's a fairly easy way to have me NOT vacate SMF, I'd want to do that. A primary reason is DUE to the great support I've gotten here, over time!

Chris

PS: I checked out your site (which, btw, is quite interesting -- I actually own a pair of leopard geckos that will be 16 years old this September...)

Did you disable commenting on the photo gallery? Or is that not something available?

[rsw686]

Wow 16 years old!! We have 7 leopard geckos, the oldest is around 4.

The gallery allows commenting. Just not a lot of pictures have comments.

http://www.thereptilefile.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=lastcom&cat=0

The search doesn't integrate between them all. You can only search the forum from the forum, the galley from the gallery, etc.

The mediawiki bridge you can download from

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SMF_Auth_Integration
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=221622.0

I have my forum at /forum/. I installed the gallery into /gallery/. After install you go to the Admin section and setup the bridge. It has a wizard to walk you through the process. When logged into the forum you are automatically logged into the bridge. Coppermine also supports SMF 2.0, so its future ready.

Same thing for the wiki. I installed the wiki at /wiki/. After setup you just add my bridge to the extensions folder and add the required settings. It will automatically log you into the wiki when logged into the forum. Mine supports SMF 2.0 as well.

With all that done you will have a working integration of all three. However the themes will not match. You will need to customize the themes to make it flow between the forum, wiki, and bridge.

I actually took the Kind of Blue style for media wiki as it fit the closest to my forum. I change a few colors and added in the header.

[Rumbaar]

Well the best way to allow for importation into an alternate systems is to goto your cPanel and choose the backup section there.  You should be able to access the smf db and download a compressed file of your db.

Or go into your phpMyAdmin and export the particular db.  Just export with drop tables, full structure and data.

Shame SMF can't be all that you want/need in a CMS system.  Tho with a bit of work and mods you can do most if not all of what you wanted.

[lemur21]

Hi Rumbaar,

I'm not convinced that it can't be everything I want. However, I don't have a great deal of programming skills.

I'll put up another post, asking for recommendations on what I can use to build my site around SMF -- besides being a huge pain to try and get this information elsewhere, I actually DO like the SMF interface and features.

Chris

[rsw686]

I gave you a good amount of information on how to integrate those applications. It only requires html knowledge to edit the themes. Of course you would have to do this with any CMS. Why not set up a test site to play around with the integrations.

[lemur21]

Hi RSW...

I meant, more about getting recommendations for the blog and search engine.

That being said - I will (probably) ask you for some advice on 1) bridging, and 2) editing themes -- I'd try to keep the same theme I have now on SMF, because, otherwise, all my mods will need to be updated/reinstalled, no?

And, I'd like to get a search engine that searches the whole site (and, in turn, I'd like to turn off the search engine (and private messages) in SMF, and whatever blog system I use).

But, most assuredly, the biggest case for me keeping my site using SMF, is because of the support -- which (for SMF, especially, is unparalleled).

As far as setting up a test site - that's not AS easy. I don't actually have access to the machine - a friend hosts my site; sets up the database, and tells me what I have access to (in terms of path) - so, I'd prefer to "know" that I can do what I want, and *then* start testing things out.

Thanks!

Chris

[rsw686]

Reguardless of the integration its always better to try it out before going live. You can make a folder called test and extract SMF, the blog system, etc into there. You don't even need a new database. Just use different table prefixes when installing them.

For the search engine you might look at implementing Google search on your site. You can play around with this by searching google with

keywords site:yoursite.com

This would be the only way to interface all the different app's searches. Otherwise you'll have to go with an all in one CMS solution. However in most cases their forum software is lacking. Atleast from what I've seen looking around.

[Rumbaar]

If you're after a CMS site and current working bridge have you looked at Mambo.  I haven't personally used it, but it might offer additional features that will be easily implemented by a non programmer and become a complete package.