SMF 2.1 to Flarum, anyone?

exolon

Was just recommended Flarum by someone this morning, and from what I see I really LOVE it!

However, has anyone tried converting from SMF 2.1?

Thanks!

Jbugy

Hello,

Having tried many methods including SMF to flarum, the most successful one I had was converting to myBB and then from myBB to flarum.

I would do the smf to myBB offline but found most easiest to run the myBB to flarum via SSH in my cPanel server

Hope this helps

exolon

Jbugy Thanks for the reply!

I don't have a problem with going through loops to get it working, but did the myBB converter work with SMF 2.1? IIRC it only goes up to 2.0 🙁

Thanks again!

Jbugy

Yes it didn’t appear to give me any problems

What will give you a problem is not downloading the latest version. Download the converter from GitHub not from the myBB website. I found this solved many problems I was having

exolon

Jbugy

Ooh great tip, thanks! Will do a test run on a test server...

hrvoje_hr

I've successfully migrated large SMF 2+ forum with all the data, including custom fields, passwords etc writing my own script, but it takes a lot of SQL micro managing if you want to do it right

exolon

hrvoje_hr could you share a few details about it and the sort of massaging it needs?

hrvoje_hr

Dominion you'll stumble on random illegal strings, some weird data from previous SMF versions, especially on larger forums etc

The same is with FluxBB. I'm just finalizing migration of one really old forum. Logic then was completely different than today

exolon

hrvoje_hr thanks. Ours is an old forum, going all the way back to 2005 or so, so it's been through many version updates. Therefore I guess I should be expecting lots of errors...

What happens in those cases? Is info provided to help address the issue or are you left wondering?

hrvoje_hr

There are always logs for errors and sometimes you will notice something only after extensive testing. It's messy work, but it's doable. And it's worth it. Flarum is great forum software, your community will benefit it greatly

wolfman

I migrated a SMF 1 Forum - which to my knowledge is prettey similar in database-structure as SMF 2 - to Flarum in the past.
https://discuss.flarum.org/d/3585-smf2-to-flarum-migration-script-alpha-3/52
The GitHub-Repo for the script is here: wolfgang-demeter/smf2flarum

While some things might work out of the box others most certainly require tinkering with the script and tuning the SQLs or handle (skip) corrupted data or attachments. It's like hrvoje_hr said, it's messy work. You do a test-migration on a dev/test server, check the errors, handle them and do it all over again. And don't forget to recruit some of your forum members (Mods, Admins) to test the test-migrations.

It's tedious but it's totally worth it. I'm so happy with Flarum. It's a really awesome Forum solution without the clutter and weirdness of old forum systems - like SMF, phpBB and others.

luceos

This discussion is so wholesome ♥️

If any of you get stuck on errors make sure to post them here, or better in a dedicated discussion for your own migration. We will do our best to follow up and assist.