phpbb migration tool

vulcano

hello everyone,
the extension seems like it's at a stall at the moment (as the priority is, justly so, stable), but I'd still love to migrate my phpbb forum to flarum.
Has anyone done it and is willing to share the tools?

I'm also pledging some money to whoever can do it, 100€. I know it's not much, but I hope more people will join. If you have a request please contact me and we can talk about it.
It should have 301 redirect from old to new post links, and the code will be open sourced (GPL'd)

Let me know if someone can help be, either for previous experience or by hire.

Thanks!

[deleted]

vulcano It can be done, but it's somewhat convoluted.

One way this could work is this https://github.com/robrotheram/phpbb_to_flarum

Another way would be to export to wpForo - see https://wpforo.com/community/phpbb/how-to-migrate-from-phpbb-to-wpforo/?foro=allread&foro_n=81bc139a46 then https://discuss.flarum.org/d/22127-migration-script-from-wordpress-wpforo-to-flarum

[deleted]

vulcano It should have 301 redirect from old to new post links

This part is more complex, and would require mod rewrite or something similar in a .htaccess file.

vulcano

[deleted] thanks! I tried with the github tool but I have errors, I think it doesn't work with phpbb 3.2.x, it's just for 3.1.x.
The migration to xenforo and then flarum is a possibility, I can see it going wrong in many ways and I would still need a help with the 301 redirects though

[deleted]

vulcano Best to spin up a dev instance you can play with before doing this in live. We can help with the redirects, but it could get messy in the sense that multiple rules need to be created dependant on how the posts are identified.

vulcano

[deleted] Thanks! I'm working on it at the moment. By "we" you mean the Phenomlab forum? in case I have troubles with the 301 I can open a topic there?

[deleted]

vulcano No, that's my forum 🙂 By "we", I meant either the official "discuss" channel here, or the discourse channel. If you'd like me to assist directly, this is possible, but will be a paid for exercise.

vulcano

[deleted] Sorry, I wasn't sure what you meant!
Actually, regarding the 301 redirect, I have a doubt. Do you reckon that I should have the migration tool to write a line for each topic (that is, to redirect to the new url) or there is some way I can "catch 'em all" with a more comprehensive line? I'm not very practical with this more server stuff, so if anyone could help me understand the best way to do it would be great.

Of course, the migration tool will be made public with a github repo once it's done

[deleted]

vulcano I don't think you can pull it off with one catch all redirect. Typically that only works when redirecting from one domain to another and the path remaining the same.

Ideally, this would be how it should work, but unless the slugs match in terms of the URL, this isn't going to be a simple affair.

vulcano

[deleted] Yeah I see no other way than adding lines for each topic... in my forum, that would mean over 5.000 lines, which shouldn't slow down the request for more than 50-60 ms as I understand. It's worth it to keep to SEO intact

If anyone has any other better idea, please let me know

Thanks for your help and support!

Fantomen

vulcano

Hi,
I migrated my forums (https://hockeybulletin.se) from phpBB to MyBB and then from MyBB to Flarum using the existing MyBB-Flarum migrator.

I was able to migrate all posts and users but the users had to reset their passwords. If you can live with password reset it’s quite fine.

mybb to flarum - https://discuss.flarum.org/d/5506-mybb-to-flarum/68

PhpBB to mybb - https://github.com/mybb/merge-system

Sorry for terrible formatting, on mobile

vulcano

I think I solved the issue with the 301 redirect in a single htaccess line. Basically the id from the topic in phpbb is something like viewtopic.php?f=23&p=104390. that number after the p= is also used to identify the topic in flarum, which would be something like /d/104390, so a simple regex RewriteMatch should do the trick. I think the tool is getting there, after this 301 it's just a matter of testing, but it's mostly done, including profile pics, resolution of conflicts between same-name tags, nested tags and same email conflicts

Fantomen , thanks! I didn't know about that... I feel silly now to have wasted money and time to do it again in nodejs! I may as well finish it now that I'm here though