[SMF Converter] Invisionfree/ActiveBoards/iPBfree

[FreddyJames]

Found the problem, conversion stage 1 is in progress.

[Deal]

nneonneo, We have made some great progress using your conversion script. We now have all the major components working and are successfully importing into a phpbb3 forum that sits on the same host as the SMF forum we ultimately want to use. Once we get everything into the phpbb3 forum I anticipate that the next conversion should be a breeze.

There are just a couple hopefully small issues that we can't get working. Would appreciate any advice you might be able to offer.

When we run your python crawler script (on the darkbb forum) first of all we only get the first 25 users copied into members_phpBB3.sql. Not sure why it stops there.

Then, when we import categories_forums_phpbb3.sql. Only the first forum actually displays. The rest sucessfully import into the DB and in fact in the admin controls we can see them. I'm not sure why only the first one displays but thought it might have something to do with the numbers that are used for the forum_id. I included some of that here without repeating the insert clause that is part of each line.

INSERT INTO phpbb_forums (forum_id, parent_id, left_id, right_id, forum_name, forum_desc, forum_type)



VALUES (2, 1, 2, 3, 'Moderators\' Discussion', '', 1);

VALUES (4, 1, 4, 5, 'ANNOUNCEMENTS', '', 1);

VALUES (6, 1, 6, 7, 'Introduce Yourself', '', 1);

VALUES (8, 1, 8, 9, 'General Poker Discussion', '', 1);

VALUES (10, 1, 10, 11, 'Strategies, Tips and Advice', 'You are invited to write articles with advice and tips to share with other members', 1);

VALUES (1, 0, 1, 40, 'Forum', '', 1);

If you can help us past these two issues we should have it!

Thanks,

Deal/Freddy

[nneonneo]

Members: hmm, I'm not too sure why that would be. I performed a test conversion on your forum about a week ago and got 67 members.

As for the "missing" forums: the imported data has no permissions information (phpBB3's permissions are rather arcane and easiest to avoid), so the forums are defaulted to "no-view". This is easy to fix: you simply edit the permissions for each forum, granting permissions as necessary. However, it's probably worth noting that permissions don't transfer to SMF from phpBB3, and on SMF, they default to viewable for all users (AFAIK). So, you might want to give just the Admins access simply to view the forums and make sure everything is OK.

[Deal]

nneonneo, another successful convert to SMF. Thanks so much for your scripts and your support. I look forward to exploring all the features of our new forum software.

ftr. We went from a forumotion / darkBB board to a phpBB3 board then to SMF.

Thanks again,

Deal

[FreddyJames]

Thanks nneo!

As deal has said, once we made the first conversion it was plain sailing from there - your help was invaluable!

Thanks again

FJ

[Deal]

nneonneo, is there a trick to finding out what the table_prefix is on an IPB board you didn't install?

I was thinking it might be exposed when viewing source from within the forum. I really don't have a clue what it is. I assume that receiving the message Error: Topic is empty over and over again while crawling a forum is due to that issue.

[nneonneo]

@Deal: IPB? Use the regular IPB->SMF converter, since my converters are for iPBfree and Invisionfree. The table_prefix in the crawler converter is used for the destination forum (i.e. SMF), and being a crawler, has nothing to do with the source board database.

[Deal]

thanks for the response. I'm not an admin on the IPB board I tried to crawl. It's being shutdown by the owner and thought I might be able to get some of the posts to move to the new forum. Your crawler did gather the category info but like I said I got a 'topic is empty' error after that. I'm not worried about it though. We have moved on and our SMF board is thriving. Thanks for your help.

[gk007]

I'm using the ForumMotion converter.
Is the cookie data value the cookie data for the new SMF forum, or the old ForumMotion forum?
Where do I upload the .py files to?

[Sailor Libra]

This is a nice bit of information to have.  Does anyone have any feedback to how invisionfree converted over to zetaboards handles this?

[nneonneo]

@gk007: Cookie data should be for Forumotion. The .py files should be executed on your own computer. Also, I realized that I've somewhat neglected to update this page, so please grab an updated copy of the converters before you start.

@Sailor Libra: I don't know what you mean. I have a board converted to ZB from IF that can be crawled by these crawler converters, so it should work for converted boards, but the only way to know for sure is to try it...

[sP0ng33]

This is an amazing converter, everything went according to plan, but when I upload the topics_posts.sql file it tells me it's too large. I tried zipping it up and uploading it but it says it cant accept it as a .zip and i have to change the config somewhere?

i use godaddy hosting btw

how can I split the file in 2 and upload in pieces?

[bros]

Use bigdump.php instead.

[moss]

I have to thank nneonneo....    He built me a Script that converted my Chatarea forum to SMF.    Worked beautifully.   Converted over everything:  Topics, posts, members and their profiles.....  even had a script that put a private message in every members' Chatarea mailbox with a new Temporary password to the new site.

   Much much much thanks my friend.     The SMF forums are ruling everyone right now.

[comtech]

Thank you for the converters.
I just have to ask.. how do I get this to work?

I installed python on windows 7.  But when I click on a file it just pops up the windows command box for a second...

sorry... just needing some help here!

[comtech]

I keep getting "Invalid Syntax"

[nneonneo]

Install Python 2.6. The converters don't work with 3.0 yet.

[comtech]

Thank you. Now it seems to be working but I am getting an error:

Post 1329: Bad timestamp (01/12/09 09:16)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Yuku\members_topics_posts_smf.py", line 292, in <module>
    post[0]=parsetime(ln[4].strip('(').strip(')')) # brackets? wtf?
  File "C:\Yuku\members_topics_posts_smf.py", line 122, in parsetime
    return mktime(strptime(tm,fmt))
  File "C:\Python26\lib\_strptime.py", line 454, in _strptime_time
    return _strptime(data_string, format)[0]
  File "C:\Python26\lib\_strptime.py", line 325, in _strptime
    (data_string, format))
ValueError: time data '01/12/09 09:16' does not match format '%m/%d/%y %H:%M:%S'

Any help on this?

[nneonneo]

It's exactly what it says: the date format you specified doesn't match the format it expected.

Try removing :%S.

[comtech]

Thank you again.  I have all of the categories, threads and posts downloaded now.
Will the second file about pm members their password include the members?

I ask because the first did not.