Anyone ever convert from discusware??

[wing]

Hi,  I'm looking at taking over a site that is currently running discusware.

From what I understand it is a mySQL based board as well, has anyone converted this?  Or have any ideas if it is even do-able?

Thanks!

[[Unknown]]

I don't know of anyone who has converted from that software.

Do you have any more information on it?  A website, perhaps?  Is it free or is there a download available?

-[Unknown]

[Oldiesmann]

http://www.discusware.com

[wing]

Thanks Oldiesmann funny as I just found your site before coming here! hehehehe

There is a free version, the version I would be converting from would be the purchased version, I'm sure they are very similar although the free has a few features disabled.

Thanks.

[dtm.exe]

wing, can you please post a link to your website so that we can get a taste of what it looks like?

-Dan The Man

[wing]

http://www.canadiandriver.com/cgi-bin/discus/discus.pl

Well not mine yet, but I can dream right? 

[dtm.exe]

http://www.canadiandriver.com/cgi-bin/discus/discus.pl

Well not mine yet, but I can dream right? 

I can see why you'd like to switch to SMF .

-Dan The Man

[[Unknown]]

http://www.canadiandriver.com/cgi-bin/discus/discus.pl

Well not mine yet, but I can dream right? 

You pay for that?  Kidding !  Looks possible...

-[Unknown]

[wing]

Well I'm still working on obtaining the site, if I can then get ahold of a database can someone help me out with the conversion?  I looked at the code and not knowing what the heck it is doing (the conversion tools) it seems overwhelming.

I am guessing here, but I would suspect the conversion basically reads the database, gets all the fields out and then re-populates the new database with those same fields.  So The key is knowing which fields to extract?  Am I close?

So if I can get the database, I can dump the entire thing to figure out what the heck the fields are and then go from there.

[Grudge]

If you can get a dump I can probably help. Only thing is I'm on holiday *very* shortly for a few weeks so I can't promise to get anything done before then :/

[wing]

Thanks for the offer!  I don't think there is a hurry yet, I still have to develop the new site if this happens.  So I'll have to do graphics and create a new site first, then when everything is set and ready to go, I'll attempt to convert the old site over.  This wouldn't be until at least August.

[Grudge]

If you could provide me a schema before then I would appreciate it. You only really need to provide a dump of your forum STRUCTURE, although I'd appreciate a little test data if possible.

[Confused Too]

Did anyone ever come up with a converter for discusware?
I have just converted another site from eBlah to SMF and would like to do the same with another one I have at http://www.uvc-cog.org.uk/discus/index.html.
Grudge if you need a copy of the database I can arrange for you to have access to mine.

[wing]

Yeah I ended up creating one.

It's not the fanciest thing but gets the job done, several others have e-mailed me and received the converter and proceeded to convert their boards!   So it does work for more than just me.

Here's a copy of the converter, you'll have to rename .php to run it discus converter

And some instructions.....

My discus was not a sql database it was taken from the html files as that is where all my stuff was stored, not in a database. If this is the same as yours it should work without any changes.


You want to put the php file into the main forum directory of your smf
instalation.

WHen you run it, it will figure out where smf is, but you will have to
point it to your discus cgi-bin directory IE: /var/www/cgi-bin/discus


The script only converts the posts and the users (the only thing there
really IS to convert anyways).  When you run the script you will see a
check box to erase all posts. 


1 issue I ran into,  I converted my board on a trial run with no
issues, I re-ran another trial a few weeks later after having more
posts and for some odd reason it no longer worked

I believe it is timing out.   There was a simple solution, I
simply ran the conversion in smaller chunks by breaking up the
tree.txt file into multiple smaller segments, I had to run the script
3 times instead of once, and I had to ensure that I did not convert
the users more than once.  It only took me 2 minutes to set this up,
so if you run into a similar issue I can help you out.

My board has about 4000 users and 100,000 posts.  If yours is smaller
there shouldn't be an issue, if it's larger (mainly the posts that
matter, users are no issue), then I'll explain exactly what is
required to split up the process to work.

I didn't bother to figure out how to convert the admins over.  So what you do is make sure you have 1 account in
discus that you know the password of and is NOT an admin.

After conversion, simply go into phpmyadmin and find this user. Change
the ID_GROUP to 1 (all of them should be 0 after conversion).  Now
that user will be an admin and you can do what you wish from there.

If you have the users in a database convert the user DB to flat file first that makes it much
easier for you as you don't have to change the script in any way.

For passwords to work after conversion.......

You will have to make a change to the discus board itself.  In the
sources directory you'll have to edit LogInOut.php

Code Select Expand


Look for
// Old style encryption... now's the only time to fix it.
       if ($user_settings['passwd'] == crypt($_REQUEST['passwrd'],substr($_REQUEST['passwrd'], 0, 2)) || $user_settings['passwd'] ==
md5($_REQUEST['passwrd']))
       {


Change it to:

// Old style encryption... now's the only time to fix it.
       if ($user_settings['passwd'] == crypt($_REQUEST['passwrd'], substr($user_settings['passwd'], 0, 2)) || $user_settings['passwd'] ==
md5($_REQUEST['passwrd']))
       {



[wing]

If someone wants to figure out how to make this more robust and user friendly go ahead.  I needed to convert 1 board once, so I didn't bother, just making it work had me smiling for a while. 

[H]

Hopefully Grudge or Compuart will come along and edit this converter so it can be part of the offical converter system

[Confused Too]

Thanks Wing I will give it a go soon. The forum is not massive at all so should be OK to convert.
The problem is that the DiscusWare forums are quite secure and people who use tham appear to be totally dedicated to them or too scared to touch them incase they break them.  I must admit I have used them for 6 years and never had a problem with them but they haven't moved on with the times and lack a lot of functionality now available.
I will let you know how it goes.

[Sanhux]

Hi

I try to run the convertor and it gives the following error


Converting membergroups... successful.
Converting members... Notice: Use of undefined constant preg_ - assumed 'preg_' in /var/www/vhosts/domain/htdocs/smf/discus_to_smf_1.0.php on line 294
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: cgiit() in /var/www/vhosts/domain/htdocs/smf/discus_to_smf_1.0.php on line 294


Maybe the version of php?

[Sanhux]

Oops, that's was my fault. I made a vim command to replace .pl to .cgi.
Now the script runs but give one more error

Warning: fopen(): SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. The script whose uid is 502 is not allowed to access /var/www/vhosts/domain/htdocs/forum/messages/1/1.html owned by uid 33 in /var/www/vhosts/consciencia.org/htdocs/smf/discus.php on line 106
Warning: fopen(/var/www/vhosts/domain/htdocs/forum/messages/1/1.html): failed to open stream: Success in /var/www/vhosts/consciencia.org/htdocs/smf/discus.php on line 106Can't Open File /var/www/vhosts/domain/htdocs/forum/messages/1/1.html

I guess it can read the messages files, nor import it? I cant chmod these files, because it are created by www-data, like that:

-rw-rw-rw-  1 www-data sanhux 22858 2005-12-31 14:56 9.html

[Sanhux]

I searched google for the error and try a dummy solution. I compress the messages folder in shell and then descompress it. But now I belive the script is timing out. My forum is not that large: about 9000 messages. How I split tree.txt as mentioned?