Okay, I'm running vB3.03 happily and have been using the product since beta 7. However, one of my goals has always been to come up with a way to capture the users and messages from my Yahoo group and import them into vB3. As a 35 year IT pro, I'm no novice at data conversions... so I have a pretty good idea what I'm faced with here.
I have now found and successfully tested a helpful little utility that will login to my Yahoo group and export the member list there into a tab-delimited Ascii file.
Once the member list is in Ascii, I can easily convert that data into any format and import the users to vBulletin. If I MUST, I can import into MSAccess, download my vBulletin MySQL user table to MSAccess, purge the Yahoo member list of duplicates against my vBulletin user table, port the purged table (via ODBC) directly into the Windows version of MySQL, export a SQL dump from there, upload the dumped file back to linux and import into vB3's database. That's the LONG way around the barn. But I've already done a very similar thing successfully. So, I know it's possible for me to do that.
Therefore, I assume that if I study this for a while I can figure out how to import my existing Yahoo users into vBulletin correctly. The initial password selection and assignment for those account will be a minor issue; but I'm convinced I can solve that one too.
My main question has to do with preserving and importing my Yahoo messages.
I have found two utilities that can download the entire Yahoo Groups Message database and store it on my server in standard linux MAIL format. One utility does this as a single linux MAIL file containing all messages. The other does it as one linux MAIL file PER message. I've tested them and they both seem to work fine. I can even read the messages with a linux MAIL client and they look okay. So far, so good as they say...
My question is once I retrieve those messages from Yahoo and have them in a standard linux MAIL format, will any of the vB3 importers ACCEPT a standard linux MAIL file(s) and import those messages into the vB3 database?
If not, does anyone know if any of the free Forum products that ARE supported for import by vB3 (e.g. ikonboard2 or ikonboard3, etc) CAN accept a Linux Mail file format for message importing? If that's possible, I could always take the Linux Mail file and import the messages into another product then use vB3's importer to move them from there into vBulletin.
Thanks a lot for any help or advice you may be able to offer!
I have now found and successfully tested a helpful little utility that will login to my Yahoo group and export the member list there into a tab-delimited Ascii file.
Once the member list is in Ascii, I can easily convert that data into any format and import the users to vBulletin. If I MUST, I can import into MSAccess, download my vBulletin MySQL user table to MSAccess, purge the Yahoo member list of duplicates against my vBulletin user table, port the purged table (via ODBC) directly into the Windows version of MySQL, export a SQL dump from there, upload the dumped file back to linux and import into vB3's database. That's the LONG way around the barn. But I've already done a very similar thing successfully. So, I know it's possible for me to do that.
Therefore, I assume that if I study this for a while I can figure out how to import my existing Yahoo users into vBulletin correctly. The initial password selection and assignment for those account will be a minor issue; but I'm convinced I can solve that one too.
My main question has to do with preserving and importing my Yahoo messages.
I have found two utilities that can download the entire Yahoo Groups Message database and store it on my server in standard linux MAIL format. One utility does this as a single linux MAIL file containing all messages. The other does it as one linux MAIL file PER message. I've tested them and they both seem to work fine. I can even read the messages with a linux MAIL client and they look okay. So far, so good as they say...
My question is once I retrieve those messages from Yahoo and have them in a standard linux MAIL format, will any of the vB3 importers ACCEPT a standard linux MAIL file(s) and import those messages into the vB3 database?
If not, does anyone know if any of the free Forum products that ARE supported for import by vB3 (e.g. ikonboard2 or ikonboard3, etc) CAN accept a Linux Mail file format for message importing? If that's possible, I could always take the Linux Mail file and import the messages into another product then use vB3's importer to move them from there into vBulletin.
Thanks a lot for any help or advice you may be able to offer!
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