phpbb 3.1 to vBulletin?

[The Armchair Soldier]

Hi all,

I apologise if this question has been asked before. I did try a search but I didn't find any real answers.

I currently own a phpbb 3.1 forum but I would like to make the move to vBulletin. Does a feature exist within vBulletin to allow me to transfer all my users and their posts to vBulletin?

Thanks for reading,

The Armchair Soldier

[BirdOPrey5]

There is Impex which was the official Import system for vBulletin, however the tool is no longer officially supported. It has been moved to the public domain and at least one person is doing their best to keep it working. You can read more about it here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum...re-to-download

We cannot guarantee it will work for your import but I know many people have imported phpbb in the past.

[The Armchair Soldier]

Thanks for the information, Joe.

I'm a bit stuck on what to do. I don't want to pay the money for a vBulletin board only to find that I can't import in my current forum's users and posts. Is there any way I can trial run it before I commit to buying?

[BirdOPrey5]

Hello,

I totally understand your position, it is unfortunately one we are asked about often. I am sorry to remote our free online demo is not able to be used to test Impex imports. I can only suggest seeing if you can find other people who report successful imports from that version, and if so, decide if you want to take the chance.

We will do our best to help you if you get stuck, but we can't rewrite code and can't guarantee it will be successful

[thetgc]

I know this is a thread from 2015 but since I am in the category of someone who has just paid for VB and is having problems importing a phpbb 3.1.10 forum with impex I thought I would share my own experiences. Just in case anyone else is searching this forum for the same info.

First you have to understand that impex was written a long time ago and has not been updated for many years. It WILL work with phpbb 3.1 but not perfectly. Some of the issues you will almost certainly hit are as follows:

Post counts will all be zero
Last Post will show a date rather than a user. Normally 1970 or close to that date.
Attachments may show as coming across in impex but won't actually appear in your VB forum. You will just see the BB code
Permissions will be reset. Moderators and Admins will be set as Junior Members
Avatars again will "appear" to move across but will be missing from your forum.
Smilies will also appear to move but will be missing.

All of those issues I have yet to find solutions to which given how often this must crop up is surprising. I have been searching online all day and only came across two people who had apparently solved some or all of these problems but of course failed to say how they fixed them.

Oh and you need to import into VB 4.22 or earlier. You will have even more issues if you don't do that first.

None of this is a reflection on VB itself by the way. It's a limitation of impex and that is not part of VB. There must be a solution out there and if I come across it I will definitely share it. For now it's back to looking

[BirdOPrey5]

Zachery seems to keep the most up to date version - https://github.com/vBZachery/vbimpex/commits/master - I recently used it to import one VB 3.8.9 database into another. It seems like there was a MyBB update in 2015 on that branch of the software. Impex questions are best directed on vBulletin.org these days in the Impex forum: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=267

[mattash78]

I would move over now if someone could transfer my database from phpbb. Too risky

[thetgc]

I have given up on Impex. it's never going to be updated to support later versions of phpbb so need to make do with what I have.

I did think about first migrating phpbb to another forum supported by Impex and then trying the move to VB from there but it's the same issue with missing post counts, last post and attachments.

Missing Attachments are going to be the biggest issue for my forum members. They have spent a long time over the years adding photos to the forum and to lose all that is not really acceptable. Everything else I think although a big pain in the ass, we could get around.

So it's increasingly looking like I have wasted my money on VB. Just wish someone had been able to tell me that successfully migrating from phpbb 3.1 was not possible before I laid out the cash