Merge two forums

[BlackRain44]

Hello,

Last year I had a forum in version 3.4.
Now I have a forum with version 4. I would like to incorporate the database 3.4 in version 4 to make a single forum.
How can I do?

[BlackRain44]

If I upgrade my old forum. How can I do merge forums ?
Thank you !

[Subzero-mb]

I did that in the past, like 3 years ago, I had 17 club cars forums in SMF and I merged all of them in on IPB forum. It took one week for me and it was a nightmare, thousand of tests and headeaches... I will not do it again unless Adriana Lima asks me.

 

Anyway If you want to continue the best idea is upgrade both forum to the latest version of IPB, so they will have the same database structure. Then you will have:

- Forum 1 (we will call it "Base forum")
- Forum 2 (we will call it "Small forum")

 

1. Close both forums, so nobody except you can enter
2. Keep "Base forum" database as it is, this database will not be changed
3. Then you will need to insert the records of the Small forum inside of the tables of the Base forum. The basic logic is:
   1. Write in a paper the last ID you can find in the tables "members", "forums", "topics", "posts", "attachments" etc from the "Base forum"
   2. Prepare a scripts to insert table rows from "Small forum" inside of the tables in "Base forum"
   3. In order to avoid duplicates (two member or two topics with same ID for example) you must add to the IDs from the Small forum the ID you wrote in a papper from "Base forum"

Basically this is the base of all this thing, but then you will need much more work. I remember I had to create scipts for everything... rename attachments directly from the folder (not just in the database), checking for users with same username in both forums, or merge accounts of user who has an account in both forums, or users who has an account in both forums but they used different emails in the registration, different sets of emoticons in each forum so many post need to be rebuild because then you cannot see it... It was 3 years ago so I cannot remember everything but for sure I remember it was not easy at all. Good luck!

 

[AndyF]

The converter tool can merge forums together. They would both need to be the same version to do this (ie both 347 or 348 etc)

Take full backups before doing anything.

I'm not aware of the 4x converter yet however, so if they are both on 3x you can do this.

[BlackRain44]

Hi,

Thank you all for your answers!
Subzero I thought of your system, but I'm afraid of many bugs then when creating a new topic or a new user.
Andy, the converter allows you to merge two forums?
I'll wait for the next version, I hope it will not tarry.

[AndyF]

It will allow you to merge board to board yes (the 3x version of the converter at least) but they must be the same version for it to work properly. If say you had a 323 and a 348 board you'd have to upgrade the 323 to 348 first (so they both matched) then use the converter.

It in effect 'imports' the data from one to the other as the converter is an app so you'd install it one on board (both must be on the same server) and run it and it would pull the data from the other into it.

[BlackRain44]

Perfect Andy !

The trouble is that I have a version 34 and version 40.
I think I'll still have to wait a bit.

[alexch]

Yeah, you will have to wait until the tool supports 4.0 as you can not downgrade (i think).