MyBB Community Forums

Hi everyone,

So here is my situation - I just signed up for a hosting account (through godaddy) & installed MyBB 1.4 the other day, so the board is all set up right now. However, I'm wondering how to restore a backup onto this forum, if it's even possible. I followed the instructions to use phpmyadmin, but I couldn't see any changes.

This website used to be with another owner as of a week ago - it was on a different server/hosting account, but the URLs have been transferred over to me. The board was then hosted on vBulletin (3.6 or 3.7, I can't remember at the moment). Before the site went down, I did a backup through the admin panel there - it's an .sql file that's roughly 14mb. That's what I tried to import through phpmyadmin, & the import seemed to go through successfully, but I'm not sure if anything has gone through or if the old posts are just supposed to suddenly appear when I hit refresh on the website (which they haven't, of course!).

So of course, I realize one issue might be that because it came from vBulletin, it's simply not compatible, but I wasn't sure. If you're wondering why I haven't used the Merge process yet, it's because I'm not sure if I'll be able to get the previous database information for the forum.

I hope this all makes sense - I'm basically wondering if it's possible to restore a backup from a forum that was on vBulletin, & if so, what have I been doing wrong/what's the correct process to go about doing so?

Thank you!

This is Merge System Support /moving.

I think (might not be right in saying this) that you should be able to just import the backup into a new database then run the merge system using that database onto a clean mybb.

Steps:
Import vBulletin DB (New Database) --> Install Clean MyBB (New Database - Different one to vBulletin backup) --> Upload and run Merge System (using the vBulletin database).

If it goes horribly wrong then let us know

(2009-11-10, 07:36 PM)Polarbear541 Wrote: [ -> ]This is Merge System Support /moving.

I think (might not be right in saying this) that you should be able to just import the backup into a new database then run the merge system using that database onto a clean mybb.

Steps:
Import vBulletin DB (New Database) --> Install Clean MyBB (New Database - Different one to vBulletin backup) --> Upload and run Merge System (using the vBulletin database).

If it goes horribly wrong then let us know

Ooh, very clever idea! I didn't even think about that. I'll let you know how it works either way. Thanks for the suggestion!

---

Ok! So, it seems semi-successful. There were no errors during the merge process, & it seems like everything was uploaded. However, the main forum is missing, along with all the posts. What's odd is, I can lookup a user & see their post history, & it's attributed to "Main Board" (which was a name of a forum, but now appears to be the name of a section). When I click on the post, it says "Invalid forum."

You'll also notice the "DIY UMass" section at the bottom - it's hidden to non-registered members, but when I log in & look, many of the posts are missing - in fact, the only posts that are there are the ones that had been stickied/pinned at the top of the forum.

This is my board: amherstpunk.com
Try searching the posts for one of the moderators listed, Matt or Michael, & click on a post as an example.

Any ideas of what could have gone wrong? I might try to do a fresh installation again.

Oh - another possible issue is with the private messages. I had a friend log in & he could see that he had a bunch of private messages (ie, it would have read something like "Private Messages (Unread 0, Total 150)" but when he goes to his inbox, he can't see any private messages. There's also the error that comes up when you click on "Sent," but I see there's a way to fix that so I'll give it a shot later.

EDIT:
I fixed the "Main Board" & "DIY UMass" problem! What was happening was when I did the merge, "Main Board" became a category, rather than the forum it's supposed to be. When looking at peoples' posts, you could see they were linked to the category "Main Board," which means you couldn't see them. So all I had to do was change "Main Board" into a forum & put it into a category, & all the posts appeared. Same problem with "DIY UMass" - although if you go there now, you won't be able to see the forum since it's hidden to non-registered users.

However, I'm still having the same problem with private messages. When I log into my account, at the top it'll say

Quote:Private Messages (Unread 0, Total 184)

However, there are no messages in my inbox - except for one that someone sent me through the new board. But I'm almost positive that they are in the database linked to the message board - when I go into phpmyadmin, I can see the private messages.

Anyone have any idea what might be the problem?

The only other thing that I can think of that didn't make it over are smilies & avatars. But that's really not a big deal, & I'm not even sure if those are technically supposed to transfer over during the merge. Either way, it's a very easy thing to just add smilies & have people set up their avatars again (I think most were probably linked off-site, so maybe that's why they didn't transfer over). Even if I can't get private messages back, I suppose it's not too bad - it's just awesome that we have all the members & posts that transferred over!

Thanks so much for the help so far!