By sleddoggin on

Has anyone had success in converting phpbb3 forums, including the users, over to the in-board drupal forums? I think I would like to bring all of my forums into drupal. Thanks!

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

naheemsays’s picture

naheemsays commented

There is a phpbb2drupal module for converting from phpbb2.x which I maintain.

If you want, you can help get it upto scratch for phpbb3. Just run it on a test installation, see where it works and where it fails.

fyi, your users will need to set a new password - phpbb has changed its storage to something stronger and Drupal cannot use it (yet?).

sleddoggin’s picture

sleddoggin commented

I will most definitely help to get it working with phpBB3. I will try it on a test installation - and see if it works. And I don't mind if users have to set a new password.

Also, is switching to the drupal forum system a good route to go? I am just a little bit nervous about such a big change. I just think though that the added benefit of a good SEO system, site wide search, a perfectly integrated theme with the forum will make all the difference. :-)

sleddoggin’s picture

sleddoggin commented

Okay, I have the phpbb2drupal converter module installed - and am playing around with settings.

First of all - it says that to continue, the proper tables need to be found. The two tables that aren't found from the phpbb3 installation is phpbb_posts_text and phpbb_categories.

As of phpbb3 the posts_text has been turned into a field in the phpbb_posts table called "post_text". Just let me know what other information you need regarding my database - and I can keep checking in to help get this module switched over for phpbb3.

Thanks!

naheemsays’s picture

naheemsays commented

Thanks for that info. I won't get a chance tonight to do anything, but I should tomorrow.

As for whether it is a god idea or not, it really depends on your needs. For the Drupal forum you can get feature parity with phpBB, but there will be many modules, quite a bit of custom theming (which should hopefully be reduced once advanced_forum is out).

From my experience the Drupal 6 forum is much faster than the phpBB 2.x series, but this is subjective as I also changed the hosting platform. Some users WILL be annoyed about change. Others may find a feature you could care less about to be essential. Other will love the change.

Think long and hard about the features that you need Vs the admin overhead. For me it was almost a no brainer to change (I would have had to go through some pain either way - either move just the forums to phpBB3 or integrate everything into a new Drupal install.), but it will not be the same for everyone else.

sleddoggin’s picture

sleddoggin commented

At this point I am sold on using the drupal forums instead of phpbb3. The added benefit of having a site wide search function, not having to mess with bridges, and having just one system to maintain - outweighs the pros of using phpbb tenfold. I also believe the phpbb functions and utilities to somewhat "clutter" the most important part of the community. The discussions! So for me - switching to the drupal forums is what I am most excited to do.

nbz, let me know if you have a YAHOO or Windows Messenger account - so I can give you any of the information you need regarding the makeup of my phpbb3 database and drupal 6 installation. Like I stated before though, you can easily reach me at my email all throughout the day.

Cheers,

Christian

naheemsays’s picture

naheemsays commented

Sorry about the delay - RL kind of caught up and will cause a few problems for some days.

Can you please have a look at this issue queue:

http://drupal.org/node/209195

sleddoggin’s picture

sleddoggin commented

awesome. will check it out and start testing. I have a test install of drupal and phpbb3 located on my site in sub-folders - and have put a couple test users and posts in phpbb3 to see if it will transfer. thanks for the update!

Lonepare’s picture

Lonepare commented

Hi I am interested in converting my phpbb3 to the drupal on board forum is there any update on the conversion module for this.... regards Micheal.

cambeyk’s picture

cambeyk commented

now the drupla has upgrade to 6.3 has the convert to phpbb3 also need to upgrade?
http://www.allercheap.com

naheemsays’s picture

naheemsays commented

A long time sine the last post, but HEAD should (within the next hour when the release is re composed) be fully compatible with importing from phpbb3 - including user passwords into the phpass module.

Read about it here, test it, file bugs.