Ask your questions here re: Drupal and phpBB

I am sure it would be much appreciated by ALOT of people if there was a "semi-official" script to import PHPBB (whatever the latest version is) to Drupal.

I am aware of these database scripts:
http://drupal.org/node/12311#comment-23314
http://drupal.org/node/12311#comment-28057

Currantly this seems like a huge pain. Is there anyone working on an easier / solid way of importing PHPBB (At least some well laid out instructions for the everyday person would be great)

Possibly someone could update this script by "axel"?
http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/contributions/tricks/phpbb2drupal/

Thanks,
Marand B.

I tried to post a page to the Drupal manual some time ago, it got posted but does not appear in the contents under Migrating from other weblog software.

Anyone can help?

I would also share my experience but I am not sure it will not get buried somewhere in the forums/unattached nodes.

Why port phpBB?

You can make drupal forums look EXACTLY like phpBB forums, and add more features than phpBB ever could. The secret is with the flatforum module (although not necessary), and custom theming. I wrote a basic walk-through with an example how to do it here:

http://www.drupalart.org/phpbb

Let me know what you think. Here is an example of drupal forums that I themed to look exactly like this phpBB style.

You could customize it even moreso of course. So now that you can get it to look the same, the question is how to transfer the database information.

Farsheed

see my post at:
http://drupal.org/node/26966

... with big threads, if the comments span multiple pages, the links to the comments not on the first page don't work at all.

I consider this to be a *major* problem with popular message boards where threads can have 100, 200, 300 posts very quickly.

I'd like to convert my phpbb to drupal including forums, threads, users, etc. The thing is I'm getting confused with all the scripts recommended above.

Does this script work? I got this from the russian guy.
http://www.mova.org/~lowry/phpbb2drupal.html

It all seems pretty confusing to me but I do understand a bit of SQL statements. I'm using phpmyadmin and my phpbb database is called pinoy_phpbb and my drupal database is called drupal. How does the abovementioned script transfer data?

pls help

I recently got a project thrown into my lap to create a brand new community website for a group of people who are used to using PHPBB as their base of operations but have since outgrown it. Because of this background, the forums are really the "crux" of the community, although they welcome the advanced features Drupal can supply such as blogs, etc.

Here is a list of functionality they've cited so far that they miss from PHPBB with the built-in forums, which I'm either going to have to figure out how to get working in Drupal, or else migrate to another CMS (noooo!):

Signatures
- Signatures not attached to new threads as they are in comments. I was actually able to fix this one pretty easily, but it's weird that it's not that way by default.
- No way to initially discern what's a signature from what's a comment. I like what Drupal.org does with the "-- " separating the comment text from the signature text. Again, probably won't be too tricky to figure out but kind of weird that it's not done by default.
- The way in which Drupal attaches the signatures is awkward; since there's text sitting in the box before you even type anything, your cursor actually appears *after* your signature when you click/tab into the box, at which point you have to move your cursor back to the beginning of the box to type your reply. This has bothered users to the extent that most of them don't bother using signatures anymore. I really like irwin's suggestions here: http://drupal.org/node/16726

Posting Stuff
- No box on the side of the comment posting area to show them what smilies are available, which will transfer the smilies into the textbox when clicked.
- The only WYSIWYG editors available for inclusion into Drupal don't have support for Safari or WebTV, which happen to be the browsers used by two of the administrators of this new site. PHPBB's interface for inserting BBCode, though rather primitive compared to something like TinyMCE, works great on these alternate browsers.
- No "quote" button/link, to quote another person's text in a reply.
- When replying to a thread, only the post you're replying to, rather than the last X replies, is viewable below the textbox. This causes problems for users who want to get more of a "context" of the discussion when replying.

Viewing Stuff
- No avatar displayed next to name. chx's flat-forum module seems to address this, so I'll have to install that and then see.
- No "tags" and "levels" or whatever they're called.. when after X posts you have a label of "super poster" or whatever under your name and after Y posts you can make up your own... and you're given a rating via a system of stars or whatever based on how active you are.
- No post count. Further, these folks want to use the post count as a means of enabling certain site functions (after 1000 posts == create blog access, etc.) which I think is a cool idea but I don't see any means of enabling that easily.

I think that's it, at least for now. I'll be working on solving these issues myself in the meantime (and can post back with my progress), but I'd appreciate any help people could give so I don't have to end up downgrading to some other piece of software just to have a nice forum. :(

i've been using phpbb and have also watched the drupal and civicspace develop over time, but have hesitated to swtich due to the many MODs that are available on phpbb. Since I am no programmer, I have used the included mod instruction to add things to the forum which is easier than programming.

Here are some of the features I enjoy with phpbb:
-bookmaker (make bets on events using points*)
-activity (flash game to keep member high score and ranking)
-*points (provide an automatic reward system to posters)
-referral (refer friends and get points* rewarded)
-topic calendar (calendar of events that users can add with link to the forum topic)
-auto group (forum permission based on number of post)
-inline banner (banner system)
etc. etc. etc.

i thought civicspace would be the solution, but it kept on giving me errors (already installed) when i tried it the first day it was released, but after uninstalling and still getting the same error, i finally decided to give up.

can I use drupal as the main community while using phpbb as the forum? i prefer their forum layout/theming. if not, i guess i would have to wait until drupal can offer some of the features listed. any suggestion/comment regarding this is appreciated.

Here's a little note on how the conversion went... might be of use to other folks looking for the workarounds.

First step, I downloaded the script from CVS:
http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/*checkout*/drupal/contributions/tricks/php...

(Use the scripts/prefix.sh to prefix the drupal tables if needed or use them as it is with "drupal_" removed on the above script at all occurances. Put both drupal tables and phpbb tables on one database - use phpmyadmin to do this)

I had an admin user already, so:
@first_phpbb_user_id:=2

I had to use:

DELETE FROM drupal_vocabulary WHERE module='forum';
INSERT INTO drupal_vocabulary (vid,name,description,help,relations,hierarchy,multiple,required,module,weight)
  SELECT @drupal_vocabulary_vid+1,@forum_title,'','','0','2','0','1','forum','0';

as mentioned by beginner above.

The private messages wouldn't export siting some unrecognised column. So, for private messages, replace:

INSERT INTO drupal_privatemsg ( id, author, recipient,subject,message,
  timestamp,new,hostname,folder,author_del,recipient_del )

with

INSERT INTO privatemsg ( id, author, recipient,subject,message,timestamp,newmsg,hostname,folder,author_del,recipient_del )

After all this doing, the /forum still showed "No Forums Defined", but the nodes were appearing with phpbb's topics.

I had to edit the "forum_nav_vocabulary" in the table - "variable" to "i:3;" (3 being the number of the vocabulary I was using for forums.
I added a new entry on the same table with "forum_order" for name and "s:3:"8";" for value. ( 3 - Vocabulary number of the vocabulary used for forums, 8 - taxonomy number of the first taxonomy in that vocabulary)

I had to install bbcode module, quote module and smileys module (bbcode toolbar is a plus) to make the port complete.

Here's the modified script that works without any errors on 4.6.3:
http://hpnadig.net/drupal-php-script-with-slight-modifications.txt

http://hpnadig.net/blog/

Has anyone been able to do something with the attachments in phpbb? It would sure be nice if they could be transfered over some how.

I am trying to migrate phpBB2 to a new Drupal 4.6.3 installation. I have used the script from hpn above, and all the topics and forums come in ok.

BUT, when I try to create a new topic after the import, it only appears in the 'Active / New Forum Topics' blocks. The topic doesn't appear in the forum itself.

Has anyone else had this problem?

The effects are the same as the bug reported at http://drupal.org/node/22960, but the workaround shown there seems to be to delete the forum - which means I lose all the posts from phpBB2.

The test installation of drupal I'm working on is up at http://67.15.157.14/~batgung/3drupal/forum/10

Another thing I notice is that before the import, if I choose to 'Post new forum topic' the following page includes a field 'Forums:', which is a drop-down list of forums.

After the import, that field and drop-down list no longer appear on the 'Post new forum topic' page.

Any ideas?

For those interested:

http://drupalhacks.com/phpbb2drupal.txt

Marcel
B2B trade Leads
Wholesale Letter
Mac Mini

After the migration, many links, Google searches, etc will still point to the old phpBB2 site. Here's a simple way to get anyone using those old links over to your new drupal topics.

Fortunately after the migration, the drupal node number is the same as the phpbb2 topic number, so ...

Go to your phpBB2 directory and rename viewtopic.php -> oldviewtopic.php (so you can still view the original post if needed). Then cut and paste the following php code into viewtopic.php and save to your phpBB2 directory.

header("location: http://www.YOURSITE.com/drupal/node/".$_REQUEST['t']);

Now when anyone access a topic on the phpBB2 forum, they will be redirected to the equivalent post on the drupal forum. (This example is for a drupal site with "Clean URLs" enabled. The format of the url in the above code will be slightly different if you have them disabled)

MrB

Instead of migrating from phpbb to drupal you could go from phpbb to VB and use VB with Drupal ( http://vbdrupal.com )

Marcel
TargetedPixels.com - Pixel Advertising
BusinessLetters.com - small business articles and advice

Thanks for this great module, its been really good so far. Just the one problem of polls myself and someone else need some help with - http://drupal.org/node/71780 - as can be seen here.

Also it would be cool if the original post was updated to include these URLs for this project:

http://drupal.org/project/phpbb2drupal
http://drupal.org/node/57197

And maybe linking those two urls better - the http://drupal.org/node/57197 seems rather surplus tbh tho. Whats the point of it?

Hi

Just a general question about converting from phpbb to Drupal - and I hope I'm posting this in the right place; if not, apologies!

I could be wrong but I've noticed with these drupal.org support forums, that the feature set available seems to be less than that available with phpbb. Mainly it seems that you don't get emails when someone replies to a thread you're 'watching', which I think isn't great.

On our phpbb board we've also set it up so users can get emails of any new topic or reply posted to the board; I just want to know if I try and convert this board, are these features available under Drupal? Or is it like Mambo, where you can install different forum modules, and therefore have a choice of functionality/features according to what the different modules offer? If so, what are the choices.

Am I making sense?

Cheers

This is my first post so if I make any mistakes, please say so.

I've got a site with Drupal and phpbb3 installed and I want to synchronise my user accounts, but it's a bit difficult. I've also got an old module from phpbb3 to display user data and it used a seperate table in the database.

I've seen some nice projects to convert phpbb3 to drupal but the forum is working fine so I don't want to make any changes. What I want to do is make one table which contains all the data regarding users where both Drupal, phpbb3 and my module can tap into.

Does anyone know how drupal uses the database and how i can manipulate it?

Thanx in advance

Hi i am using drupal 5.7 i used the module phpbb and integrated phpbb with drupal.but when i click the link for phpbb it is asking 2 login again.. so how do i get rid of this? is there any way for an auto login into phpbb from drupal?

Hi i am using drupal 5.7 i used the module phpbb and integrated phpbb with drupal.but when i click the link for phpbb it is asking 2 login again.. so how do i get rid of this? is there any way for an auto login into phpbb from drupal?

Hi,
phpbb forum module installing into my site..but am getting these erros.

Error locating phpBB installation. Please fix your settings!
Error locating . Please fix your settings!
Unable to connect to the phpBB database. Please fix your settings!

how to rectify these problems..please provide me detailed documentation/step by step process.
thanks.