[snoopy5]

o.k., I looked now further into this. I will update here each step that I have done for the switch for the sake of all vb-user who want to do the switch too.

And I will surely have questions inbetween

There seem to be some significant differences, whether you switch from

a) phpbb3 -> vb 3.8x or from

b) vb3.8x -> phpbb3.

The link above from chuck in posting #4 describes only option a).

But I need Option b). I switch from vb3 to phpbb3

So I used obviously not Impex, I used the "vb3 converter" of phpbb3, found here:

phpBB • View topic - [Convertor] vBulletin 3.x to phpBB3

This is the file as of 25.10.2009:

vb3x_to_phpbb3.zip

This converts your vb3 forum into a fresh installed phpbb3 forum. Installation of phpbb3 and converting is all in one process. So make sure you have uploaded the converter files on your server before you install phpbb3 and make also sure, that the install directory of phpbb3 is not deleted.

The conversion goes smooth and easy. Depending on the size of your board 5 minutes to 20 minutes. Of course there will be later many things in the ACP to set new, but this is not the subject of this thread.

Now I compared both databses, the old vb user table and the now imported phpbb3 usertable. It seems that the importer of phpbb3 keeps the userid's of the vb-users. They are the same.

But as Chuck pointed out in another posting if users gets deleted, this UserID gap will be filled from the importer script. And you do not see this if you have many users. So always use in the last step #6 the User-ID fix script of Chuck.


But now it is getting trickier.

According to the description of the Link in posting #4, I exchanged the words of vb and phpbb3, so that it makes sense for someone who wants to do it the other way (my way) around:

remarks: I updated these steps:

1. upgrade Reviewpost if not using the latest

2. & 3. install phpbb3 & convert at the same time old vb3 forum

(use "vb3 converter" of the phpbb3 site to import old vb3 forum into new phpbb3 -> step 2 & step 3 have to be done simultaniously)

4. empty the pp_usergroups table in your photopost database (with phpmyadmin) so on next step your phpbb3 usergroups will get imported

5. Rerun photopost install like a fresh install using same prefix and databasename of the old Reviewpost installation. With this step you integrate now with phpbb3. This will not delete data. There will be errors because it can not overwrite the data, ignore them. It will only write data in the empty pp_usergroups table of step #4.

6. Run the userfix script from here. This script makes sure, that all users have really the proper User-ID

7. Compare your Cookie prefix names in RP and in phpbb3. In my phpbb3 installation, they were different then the recommendation with RP. Change it so that they are the same, otherwise global login does not work.

Now step 4 and step 5 are tricky.

@ step 4 Question:

Whe I import into phpbb3, the converter adds many new usergroups to the default ones, since I have more usergroups as the standrd vb and phpbb3 settings. These additional usergroups can not be merged later on in ACP of phpbb3 as it is possible with vb3. But I can do this later on in the database.

Will this change later on after teh integration be a problem for the integration? Shall I do this usergroup merge maybe befor rerunning the Reviewpost installations script? Or will this mess-up everything?


@ step 5 question:

rerun photopost install using same prefix and database to integrate with phpbb3...

Which same prefix exactly?

I have for example for the old vb forum the databasename "141" and prefix of "vb_forum_"

For the phpbb3 installation, I have the same databasename "141" but a different prefix of "phpbb_forum_"

So what shall I do now?. I can not import vb3 into phpb3, when I have to use same prefixes. This would delete data during the import. So what kind of prefix of my example shall I use, when I rerun reviewpost installation?

Could you clarify this for me?

Thanks