Hey All,
I currently have a successful site (www.themoviesplanet.com), with Postnuke as the main cms engine and PNphpBB2 as the intergrated forum (site also includes coppermine as the gallery). The site has some 3700+ members and I was wondering how difficult it would be to convert this site from Postnuke to TP.
I realize some of the stuff would have to be converted manually, such as the downloads, articles, etc, but how would I go about converting the forum, members, coppermine gallery over to TP? Is this possible?
Any Help appreciated.
Thox
If you jump over to the SMF forum you have all the help needed with conversion of your forum, There are some tools you use to convert your forum and bridges for SMF/coppermine etc.
So i think you are more lucky getting the info from SMF :)
As G6 mentions, you need foremost a converter from PhpBB to SMF for the forum.
But from postNuke article/downloads to TP the only way currently is manually doing it I am afraid. It might be an easy job to make a converter though..it seems the articles have text/author/date.. and categories too maybe?
Hi Bloc,
Yes, the news stories which feature on the front page have categories (or Topics as they are known in Postnuke), which are Developer News, Site News, Studio News, E3 News and Mod News. I would like to convert the news stories across (not so concerned about the comments) to TP. All the other articles I can convert across manually as there are not so many.
I experimented with taking one of the old news stories across from the postnuke site to a SMF TP site and found If I used Articles I could amend the date to the date the story was originally posted, which is great. However, there are over 180 New Stories and copying them all across will be a bit laborious.
I do have a question about archiving though. As I have over 180 news stories, how can I archive the older stories? and what happens to the news stories after the fall of the Frontpage.
Any help appreciated, I would like to the make the switch to the new SMF TP site on the 4th April as this will be the sites First Birthday and what better way to celebrate than with a new design and format.
Thanks in advance.
Thox
PS. Any chance of getting a copy of bz7 theme? Really like it and would like to use it as the basis of the sites new theme? Just thought I would ask.
I will need to look at an example database of Nuke, with these articles and categories in it, and simply write a simple conversion script. Do you have a few values+setup for these tables by any chance?
Bz7 theme is only for this site, sorry.
bz7 = drat :coolsmiley:
Quote from: Bloc on March 27, 2006, 01:21:52 PM
I will need to look at an example database of Nuke, with these articles and categories in it, and simply write a simple conversion script. Do you have a few values+setup for these tables by any chance?
What sort of values and setup are you looking for? Do you require access to the database, this can be provided if required?
Regards
Thox
If you can provide that, yes. Or just show how the table looks like.
Thanks for all your help on this so far Bloc, much appreciated.
However, I have some more questions regarding the conversion from Postnuke. I have posted on the SMF forum, but have had little joy with responses, so if I may post this here, I ask the community the following questions: -
1. When setting up SMF, do I create a new MySQL Database or just add it to the existing Postnuke Database?
2. If I create a new SMF user for setting up SMF and TP, can this be the same username I use on the site I wish to convert from? or will this cause problems when using the converter? I have used the username Thox on the Postnuke Site "The Movies Planet", and have setup the SMF site in the folder forum, with the same username, Thox. What happen when I convert the PNphpBB2 board over to SMF with these two usernames on each board? Am I better setting up a temporary name for SMF for now?
3. When I use the converter will it remove all the information from the postnuke site or will it remain in Postnuke, and copy all the information to the SMF TP site?
4. I already have a large quantity of downloads available on the Postnuke Site. Rather than upload all these again, is there a way to add these to the downloads module on the proposed TP site?
I'm sure I have more questions, but thats all I can think of for now. I'm a little nervous about transferring the site over to SMF and TP, as I don't want to loose any data and I want to make the switch as seemless as possible.
Thanks in advance
Regards
Thox
Can anyone assist with the above post? particularly question 4.
Kind Regards
Thox
OK, have decided to remove the smf site I had set up and reinstall it in with the smf database included within the mysql postnuke database.
Tried to convert the existing PNphpBB2 board over to SMF using the phpbb-to-smf.sql and convert.php, but got this error:
Notice: Undefined variable: dbname in /home/thox/public_html/forum/convert.php(334) : eval()'d code on line 1
Notice: Undefined variable: table_prefix in /home/thox/public_html/forum/convert.php(334) : eval()'d code on line 1
Sorry, the database connection information used in the specified installation of SMF cannot access the installation of phpBB2. This may either mean that the installation doesn't exist, or that the MySQL account used does not have permissions to access it.
The error MySQL gave was: No Database Selected
can anyone help?
Regards
Thox
This is something that you need to post at SMF for help. I don't know anyone here who is well versed in board conversions.
Well versed or not - the converters generally run on base code - in this case, it'd be phpBB to SMF. Add an invasive portal like Nuke or MKPortal and you're bound to have troubles. THe converter chokes on the extra and/or modified tables.
What you must do is first, forget about a converter taking your Nuke data to TP. That you'll have to manually duplicate or beg someone to create a custom converter.
Now, do a database backup and note your Nuke data for later importing.
Then you will go into your phpBB database and dump all of the extra tables.
Now you will convert board to board.
But wait, there is more! You will probably still have some errors. If you're particularly blessed, you won't have any, but be prepared for them. Each error will indicate something which the converter doesn't recognize. You will need to modify your base DB to eliminate this error, then restart your conversion. Repeat for each error.
For any portion of your DB that errors on conversion, you learn which information will not transfer directly over and will need to be recreated.
This is one of the dangers of modifying code. To convert a message board I was running from SMF to vB recently, I had to first get rid of a few mods (not all) and remove TP, then repair/optimize. Then the conversion went smoothly.
If the converter was designed to handle portal/CMS data, or mod data, it might stumble if run on a site which didn't have this data. There are too many variations to write a converter which would handle everything. Converting accounts, posts, avatars, smilies & numbers is relatively easy. Converting those things PLUS galleries, arcades, signature mods, profile enhancements and more would be too problematic.
Thanks TwÃÆ'Ã,ÂnsX2DÃÆ'Ã,Â¥Ã,,‘ÂÃ,³,
I have managed to convert existing PNphpBB2 forum across to SMF, but not without problems.
First I had to install a fresh copy of phpBB2, export a number of PNphpBB2 tables and import them into the fresh phpbb2 database, which took awhile. The new phpbb2 board contined all the data I had on the PNphpBB2 board. The only problem was, when I didn't have admin access to the board, so I logged out and tried to login again, thinking it would resolve itself. However, it did not recognise my password, I tried the forgotten password route, were it would send me a new password, but that didn't work either. Bugger.
Undeterred, I tried the phpbb2 to smf converter anyway, which came up with a few errors. There was an option at the bottom to try again, so I clicked that, and it ran through the conversion process again and only came up with one error this time, which had something to do with poll voters table, which I wasn't too bothered about.
I went to my new SMF forum, which contained all the users and forum data. HURRAY. The only downside is that it doesn't recognise your password. You have to click on forgotten password and the user has to enter a new password, which isn't too bad.
So success, even with a couple of errors.
Thox
WOW!! Glad you manage it, gave me a headache just to read it.
hehe, Thanks. Looks like the user passwords are working as well though. So a complete success. Yay.
Thox
Good to hear you made it. I can't tell you how many times I've had to install/reinstall/setup a board half a dozen times just to convert.
In the end, it is a fun challenge. :uglystupid2: