PhotoPost Pro and vBulletin to Xenforo conversion

[rklug]

I will soon be converting my vBulletin 3.8.6/PhotoPost Pro 7.1-based website to Xenforo/PhotoPost Pro 7.1, and I have questions:

DATABASE question:
Has anyone confirmed whether or not the Xenforo importer correctly and completely brings along the PhotoPost data with it? (I believe I have read elsewhere that it will only import the data used by Xenforo itself and disregard any add-ons, which seems logical.) If not, what are my options for delivering the PhotoPost data to the new PhotoPost install?

FILES/FOLDERS question:
I would like to do a new, clean install of PhotoPost Pro 7.1 for my new Xenforo-based website and copy only the essential files and folders from my old PhotoPost Pro 7.1 installation to ensure my data carries over? Which files/and folders should I copy over?

Any info would be much appreciated. Thanks!
-Ryan

[Chuck S]

Why would you do a clean install of the gallery. There are several threads on "switch integration" on the forums here. In none of them are you importing gallery content so correct a forum import script is only going to import what it was written for meaning your vb content. For you not to lose anything you need to use your existing photopost folder and database tables.

here are the steps as I see it

1. You install your new forum

2. You use your xenforo import script to do your forum import

3. You delete or clear out your photopost usergroups table.

4. You reinstall photopost over top of the existing gallery database tables to integrate with xenforo.

5. There is a script in the Pro import forum called userfix.php you can download its in the realign userid's when switching to vb thread. You can use that to realign userids that will be messed up when you use forum import scripts to import to a new forum they change userids

Once all thats done you should be able to login with your xenforo admin and set permissions etc

[rklug]

Chuck, thanks for the info. I was just leaning towards a new install of PhotoPost because I'm going to a new forum solution, new domain, new server, etc. and I wanted to use this as an opportunity to clean things up and avoid bringing over any unneeded database tables, files, folders, remnants from years of upgrading from older versions, image files for skins, etc.

I would also like to separate the forum and PhotoPost data into two separate databases, so I don't run into this situation again someday. My vBulletin and PhotoPost data all currently resides and in the same database. Is there no way to move just the PhotoPost info from the old vB/PhotoPost database into a new PhotoPost-only database that would sit alongside my new XenForo database?

Sorry to ask all these questions. I'm just a bit obsessive about cleaning things up periodically (probably too much so), and I don't know much of anything about working with databases.

[Chuck S]

Well to keep your content you really cant do a clean clean install you need to move your stuff. You can backup whatever database tables of photopost etc but you need to have the photopost files and database tables on the new server to do a reinstall into xenforo to keep your existing data.

You dont need to move your vb stuff over but photopost yes.

[rklug]

Okay, I've moved only the PhotoPost data into its new, separate database, copied my entire PhotoPost folder from the old site to the new, successfully installed PhotoPost, and incorporated headers that are the equivalents to the mock headers created for the PhotoPost demo. All is working great so far, with only a couple more items to resolve.

1. I need to run the userfix script Chuck spoke of above to "sync" up the PhotoPost IDs with the XenForo ones. I have found a lot of scripts on this site to do this for other integrations, but none for vBulletin 3.8 to XenForo. Does one exist somewhere, or can you please point to something that will achieve this?

2. Possibly related to #1: My logging into to PhotoPost does not seem to log me into XenForo, and vice versa.

3. I don't want Unregistered Users/Guests to be able to view even the index of my galleries, and certainly not the galleries themselves. This was working with the VB integration, where you had to long in on the Photos home page to see anything. Now, I can see EVERYTHING without logging in, even though I have checked appropriate permissions on some of the categories. (These were apparently altered to match XenForo usergroups, but did not "line up" entirely accurately in terms of what was checked vs. what wasn't.

4. All cell padding is gone when viewing the PhotoPost pages in IE8 (the only browser I have to test). I read something about that being a problem with IE9 that was "easy to fix", but I can't find anything more about it. Please help.

Thanks again for the wonderful support!
-Ryan

[Chuck S]

1. The userfix script works with any integration. It grabs the userid of a user based off the username of a user. Like stated the usernames need to exist in your forum. it is the same script and is in the photopost import forum

2. well if you want logins to be write cookies need to be correct they need to be integrated correctly meaning also your xenforo global salt needs to be correctly entered where asked on install.

3. You need to reset any group permissions after doing what has been said above. This is why you need to delete any entries in the usergroups table and then reinstall to integrate with xenforo.

4. I have never heard anything about this so without seeing a physical url I can not comment.

[rklug]

Sorry to be coming back around on this, but I have completed all the steps you listed (including clearing out the usergroups, reinstalling, running the userfix script, etc.), and I still have 4 issues:

(1) Logging into/out of either XenForo or PhotoPost does not log me into/out of the other. I have entered the XenForo Globalsalt # into the appropriate PhotoPost config field, but that has had no effect. In fact, I can log into PhotoPost with one account, and XenForo with another account at the same time! Is there something more I need to do here?

(2) When I used to log into PhotoPost on any page besides the index, it would log me in and keep me on that same page. Now, it kicks me to a misc.php page which then sends me to the index when it logs me in. This makes it painful and almost pointless to try sharing direct links to a particular page with others who need to log in to see them.

(3) During the time I ran PhotoPost with vBulletin, I got used to being able to prevent a certain user type from seeing a PhotoPost category even exists by unchecking their view permissions to images in the category. With my new PhotoPost/XenForo install, unchecking their view permissions prevents them form viewing full sized images, but still allows them to view and browse the category and its thumbnails. I prefer to have the category simply not appear to exist at all. Could the change in Forum integration have anything to do with this? What is the expected behavior when you uncheck view access to images in a category? Is there any way for me to hide the category altogether?

(4) Not as important, but the absence of cell padding around the category thumbs in the forum view (among other elements, but this is where it "hurts" the look the most) is still something I am wondering if there a fix for. I assume it has something do with the XenForo CSS, and thus may be outside of your jurisdiction, but this problem appears on your demo site also.

Can I please send you access info for my website, so you can take a look at my issues? If so, please let me know how I should send the info. (Even the home page itself is password protected.)

Again, sorry to be a pest. In spite of these last few hurdles, I am really loving seeing PhotoPost and XenForo come together on my website.

Thanks!
-Ryan

[Chuck S]

1. You would need to check your cookies here.

2. the photopost login page is misc.php so sorry not an issue you cant compare that to a vb integration

3. I highly suggest you make sure when you installed you correctly deleted all usergroups before reinstalling to integrate with xenforo as I would suspect your group permissions are not correct.

4. There is no fix the way its coded is how its released

A community photo gallery - My Photo Gallery

This is my little test site works fine with xenforo logging in either way. You only have two real issues posted above thats your usergroup permissions and being cookied in. Both issues can be explained by not following the exact full steps above posted about switching integrations.

Just my opinion but I really cant say more without physically seeing your install.

[rklug]

Allright, Chuck, I managed to fix the issue of all users (regardless of type, registered or not) being able to see and browse thumbnails in all categories (regardless of category permissions) by replacing my pp-inc.php file with the new 7.1 version. I was using a version that dates back to whichever upgrade last stated the need to replace it (which the announcement for 7.1 does not - that file should probably be added to the list). After that change, and that change alone, permissions are now working perfectly.

As a side note, the 7.1 php-inc.php produces a lot more boxes around individual elements in the XenForo style than the previous php-inc did. I cleaned that up by commenting out the 4 lines referring to the XenForo template path and letting my header.htm (tweaked from your demo header.htm) handle that.

As for my cookie problem, that appears to have been caused by my not having "xf_" in my forum cookie prefix field. XenForo now successfully logs PhotoPost in and out... but... PhotoPost still can't seem to do the same for XenForo. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Ryan

[Chuck S]

If PhotoPost is reading the forum cookie then we should be able to create the same cookie both forum and photopost need to be set the same

I can not say without looking at the site. You can clearly post on my test site and see it works.

[Octavius]

bookmarked for future use.

[Chuck S]

Yep this should help you.