Convert YABBSE 1.5.4 to vBulletin?

[unknown_user]

Will this process convert the Passwords, Attachments and Private Messages too?

[Steve Machol]

Yes, the current importer will do that. Note that it only imports to vB 2.3.4 right now. The import scripts for 3.0 are under development.

[unknown_user]

Ok thanks!

Will all the members have to update their passwords once its converted, or will this be done automatically?

[Steve Machol]

I don't believe so. At least there is no mention of this in the documents for this script.

[unknown_user]

Can anyone else confirm that the passwords will get converted too, before I make my purchase?

[Zachery]

I'm almost positive, but i cannot say for sure that it would, i see no reason for them not to be converted as well.

The person to ask would be Jerry, but im not sure if he will be around today

[wnorris]

well the problem is that YaBBSE uses their own proprietary one-way algorithm for encrypting passwords. i can't imagine how one would manage to convert them to the plain md5 encryption vB uses. (now why YaBBSE didn't just use standard md5 is a whole 'nother question). I will be converting a YaBBSE forum over to vB in the coming weeks as well, so i'd be interested in hearing a definitive answer on this as well.

[wnorris]

well i'm happy to report a fairly successful, albeit rather lengthy (about 2 hours total), transition from YaBBSE1.5.4 to vB3.0.0rc4.

The Good
All Users, forums, topics, messages, private messages transferred fine.

The Bad
Attachments didn't copy over for me. There are entries in the "attachments" table, but no data for the files. I may not have had permissions right or something, or there may be an error in the script.

Another weird thing was that private messages that were previously deleted reappearred. It actually makes sense why this happens, but I don't feel like going into it... it just means your users will need to delete the messages again.

Passwords did not transfer... i didn't really expect them to. I created a script to have my users update their passwords that'll i'll post when i get a chance to clean it up a bit... it was fairly simple. (and vB doesn't use a standard md5 encryption like I thought... perhaps a topic for separate discussion, but can somebody tell me why that is? is md5 really not that secure enough?)

The Ugly
There appears to be an error somewhere in the import script that does not preserve the table prefix. for example, all my tables were prefixed "mb_", but it continued to look for tables like "topics" instead of "mb_topics". The solution was to go in through phpMyAdmin and copy the "mb_topics" table to a new table named "topics". It's dirty but it works. (Had to do this for about 6-8 tables i believe)

I'll examine the script more closely and see if I can debug any of these problems, or discover what i did wrong to cause them so you can learn from my mistakes. if you don't mind waiting a few days, i'll see what i can come up with, or the vB.com hackers may beat me to it.

[Matthew Gordon]

vB 2.x.x (well, except the earlier versions) does use straight MD5 passwords I belive (of course vB3 "salts" the password and in the cookie, MD5's it with the board's license number). Check out login.php of vB3 to see how it's done.

[unknown_user]

So I guess the answer is no then?