I want to migrate the content of my old board, which is NOT phpBB into my new phpBB board.
I cannot find a migrate feature, can anyone help?
Well, that is the main problem other than me not finding the migrate feature on phpBB. My old board is a best Boards provider. But many of the tools on that system stopped working and downloading data was one of them. I have no way of getting the data. So this may be an impossible task.
I did go to the old board and "viewed the source" and then copied that into MS Word files, but I don't know if that will work with phpBB migration features.
I can take a hunch and say you'll need the database of the old forum in order to migrate to phpBB. Even then, phpBB may not have the proper migration tool you need. It's not built into phpBB its self. It's a tool you need to use as far as I know.
But if I can use this tool, then how do I migrate that data to my phpBB board?
there is no official migration/convertor tools for this.
there are some convertors that have been written by people for the more popular board software. however, I have never heard of your particular software so I really doubt there is a convertor already made for it.
you may have to see if you can find someone that can create one.
either way, you MUST have the database of the old board to have any hope of doing this.
all of the posts, members, etc. etc are in the database. the actual files are not needed usually.
I wish you luck with your project.
Thank you Robert, that is just what i was expecting.
No, that tool is not a database tool of any sort. It's just a type of web spider to grab content off webpages. Much like how scrapers work. If you don't know what a scraper is, it's a bot that scans the Internet and collects posts and what have you then reproduces them on their own website's to help increase their own SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
This is one reason why I use a script called CIDRAM. I also block many ASNs (whole IP groups) of cloud/hosting providers in CloudFlare. So what this means is that a lot of your scrapers use a host, and so being that host will just get blocked. This also means many VPNs can't connect to my site, and if I see one do so I'll promptly block it. My site, my rules.
Anyway.... Your database can be downloaded from your cPanel. Your host should have that and you can ask your host how to download a database from cPanel in the phpmyadmin tool or what ever you'd call it. Once the database is downloaded it will be in a SQL format which is basically a giant text document that can be easily opened in Notepad ++. But don't ever monkey with it unless you know full well what you're doing. I've used Notepad ++ to edit my database before since I'm not clear on how to run proper phpmyadmin commands. All I had to do was replace every instance of my old site's URL. So it wasn't that complex and Notepad ++ worked well for that edit. Thus far no issues.
So yeah, a forum is comprised with two parts: A database and a set of files in the FTP. The database is what holds posts and what not.
John, thank you for the detailed reply. Lots of good information. I have a situation with my old boards that is unique and possibly unheard of. The old board's developer and owner has disappeared literally, he lived in England.
None of the admin features work and it has been this way for two years. There is no possibility of downloading the database and no one to ask about anything. All of the support staff was not able to help because their permissions didn't extend to anything like the level of the developer. Now they are all gone too. I'm afraid I just have to live with the fact that all information on these board has been lost. It was not just talk and simple discussions, it was valuable information regarding mining topics. There is 18 years worth of this information. too bad, but I have tried evrything I can to save the info for members.
"Something unforeseen and unknown has happened at Best Boards, which is the provider for our message board software and programming. I have lost any ability to contact the developer of our software and even his staff has not been able to contact him for a year. This problem will eventually result in all message boards on this provider's server failing, ours included.
I am also aware that any new members are not able to log in because no temporary password has been sent to them. This was an automatic function of our software provider that no longer works. I just want folks to know that I am actively working on getting our boards back up and running properly using a new provider."
Can you post a link to your board and ‘Best Boards’ website please, I can’t find ‘Best Boards’ anywhere?
The first one is to my board and the second is to the Best Boards Index.
Their main support admin and I became friends and even she had to tell me that there was nothing she could do because she could not contact the owner and her tools ceased to function.
This may not work, but you can try getting a hold of the owner of that site through the WHOIS Info. The admin email is, noreply@data-protected.net It is a no reply email so you won't get a reply. Also, the domain will expire on April 21 next year.
I'll give that a try John, although I don't think it will work. Hos admin staff and even I, have his personal email addresses, email goes unanswered.
Edited to add: I tried the email addy you supplied. Got an error message that said: "Domain not found."
Unreal, it does look like data-protected.net doesn't exist.