How do I restore topics and catetogories?

[[email protected]]

I have been running SMF for several years ... and recently discovered that I could no longer add members ... I noticed that my version 1.0.3 was far out of date ... so I tried several times to do an UPGRADE ... I abandoned this approach

Next I did a new install of 2.0.19 and created a new database

Would some kind soul pleas assist with moving over from the old database the Categories and Topics from the old version?

Thank you for your help

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

What version exactly?    And what went wrong with your attempt to upgrade?

Anyway, theoretically at least you should be able to upgrade all the way from the days of YaBB SE. Realistically, at this point your only true option is to upgrade one way or another - because you can not just move contents from one branch to another.

Upgrading SMF

[Sir Osis of Liver]

If you're actually using 1.0.3 ( ) you may have to dick around with earlier php versions to get the upgrader to run.

[shawnb61]

Yeah, the best way to restore everything is to do an upgrade instead...

How long ago did you attempt an upgrade from 1.0?  We have fixed a number of issues in legacy upgrades, as recently as in smf 2.0.19.  We're trying to make it easier to do so. 

What version of mysql was used?  What version of php?  Any specific errors?

[shawnb61]

If you're actually using 1.0.3 ( ) you may have to dick around with earlier php versions to get the upgrader to run.

SOoL - I just ran a successful 1.0.3 => 2.0.19 upgrade using PHP 7.4.  To the best of my knowledge, we have worked thru all the version compatibility issues we had previously.  Once you've copied over the new files, you are subject to the PHP support requirements of the version you are upgrading to.

The only issue I had was the 2.0.19 upgrader language version issue...     I danced around that by changing the version in index.english.php.  (For some reason, the other suggested workarounds did not work...)

[Arantor]

That was always how it was supposed to work - in theory the 2.1 upgrader should be able to take you all the way from YABBSE's non-DB structure to current 2.1 without you having to manually step through each of the steps.

The only reason it was ever evangelised to actually get through to the end of a given tree before upgrading was simply to ensure you had a known starting point to reduce edge cases, not because the upgrader couldn't cope.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Haven't upgraded from any early versions recently, but up until a few years ago it was an adventure.  Difficulty seemed to vary with hosts.  GoDaddy was especially bad, had to upgrade couple of forums by dumping database, upgrading on my server, then importing it back to prod forum.  Upgrader just wouldn't run.  Haven't had opportunity to try 2.1 upgrade, I've recommended all of my guys to stay at 2.0 until 2.1 goes final.