Recover deleted topic from old MySQL database

[Igor Kokarev]

Hi,

A topic was deleted more than a month ago (and we don't know how it happened), so we can't simply restore the forum from the backup.

I need your help with recovering of deleted topic from a backup of old MySQL database.

I did same task for phpbb forum 5 years ago using SQL queries and I believe that I can do same for IPB4.

 

[Jim M]

This is not possible or will not be easy due to too many items in the software being related to this in the database.

[Igor Kokarev]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for your reply!

I have another idea. I can start a new topic and post all messages from deleted topic under my admin's account. Then I can try to change ownership of posts and set new date/time for posts. Is it real?

The deleted topic is very important for us, it contains testimonials from real customers (members of the forum).

[Hunter Lyons]

45 minutes ago, Igor Kokarev said:

I have another idea. I can start a new topic and post all messages from deleted topic under my admin's account. Then I can try to change ownership of posts and set new date/time for posts. Is it real?

The deleted topic is very important for us, it contains testimonials from real customers (members of the forum).

You can sign in as other members.

Go to ACP -> Members -> Search and select the member you want -> Click sign in as. This will open a new tab where you are signed in as the user.

Navigate to where you want to re-post, go ahead and do it, then go up to the top and click the username. Simply click sign out and it'll get off of their account.

You can do this for each individual reply to re-build the topic by hand, as long as you have the source material (or can re-write it, etc). It'll appear as if those users posted that info.

As for date/time... I don't know about that. 

[Igor Kokarev]

Thanks, I recovered this topic using Archive.org to find posts in the deleted topic. I decided to use old posts of these members to replace them with their old testimonials. The order of testimonials slightly changed, but it's OK. Then I moved all edited posts to one topic. I didn't use any MySQL queries.

It was really stupid work, but I had no idea how to do it rightly in IPB 4.

[Hunter Lyons]

6 hours ago, Igor Kokarev said:

It was really stupid work, but I had no idea how to do it rightly in IPB 4.

Yeeeah. It's a pain in the butt, but it works!

I manually migrated 1,000+ posts from an Enjin forum I ran a while ago, and moved over 100+ members by creating new accounts with a guest prefix (ie: Lyonharted_guest). Took days, but content is always worth it.