Is it ok to manually change post time in database?

[tjrpcaft]

Hi,

Is it ok to manually change post time in database?
And also poster id, name and email?

The reason I'm asking is because I want to import some topics and post from a CRM.
And I am thinking of creating new topics and posts, and then change the time, poster id, name and email, all editing manually the database.

[Gwenwyfar]

Should be, but importing topics won't be as simple as adding/editing posts. Make sure you are adding them properly.

[tjrpcaft]

Should be, but importing topics won't be as simple as adding/editing posts. Make sure you are adding them properly.

Thank you.
And yes, I'm thinking of adding/editing.

[Kindred]

no.... what she means is that the posts table is not the only table you need to worry about.

Instead of doing direct SQL, you might consider using the create_post function

[live627]

the poster time can be any Unix timestamp (yes, even the epoch! Try changing it to 1!)

The poster id is linked to an entry in smf_members
Each message is also linked to id_topic which corresponds to smf_topics
smf_topics then has id_first_msg, id_member_started, id_last_msg, I forget what else

Can you keep track of all that? Good luck.

[Sesquipedalian]

Also be aware that changing the poster_time value will not change the order in which your posts and topics appear on the forum. SMF sorts by ID number rather than by timestamp. So if you change the timestamp on some posts but not others, they might appear to be chronologically out of order.

[tjrpcaft]

Thank you all.
Those advices are valuable and appreciated!