Hello,
My name's Isabel and I am pretty new to myBB. Previously I had been just testing it out solo without much help but after about a week of testing I began to like it and I feel it might be better tested by moving my community to it and seeing how my users feel about this forum software.
So here's my problem.
Currently, my main forum runs out of the "forum" directory on my server which is where I want to keep it.
I currently have three forums installed on my server.
1. Official forum (SMF)
2. Test forum (SMF)
3. Test forum (myBB)
I want to basically merge my SMF official forum to a new "mybb official" forum but I want to keep the /forum directory.
So do I install myBB into a fourth slot, merge that with #1. Delete #1, install a fresh myBB into #1, and then merge #4 with #1?
Does that even make sense?
Or perhaps it would be easier to rename #1 as #4, install myBB into #1, and then merge #4 with #1?
Would this procedure hurt my database?
Can a myBB 1.6 forum be merged with another myBB 1.6 forum? What happens if a user has the same name on both databases?
I would suggest, installing a clean copy in #3, merge #1 into #3 (close the forum in #1 so users don't keep posting and changing the database)
After merging make sure #3 is working fine and everything ported over fine. Once everything is fine, rename #1 to something like forum_old and rename #3 to forum. You will have to update the settings in mybb to reflect the folder change (probably same in smf??)
This way you will still have a backup of the original forum in forum_old and mybb will become forum and your users can start using it.
Thanks geek, I'm going to give it a try. Pray I don't break something!
If you take database backups of everything first, you'll be safe should anything go wrong
Well... I already started! SMF backs it up automatically (thankfully) cause I forgot! Oh man, I don't know why I'm nervous right now.
Currently uploading the Convert files... dumm dee dumm
Ah crap. I think I lost everything. The merge stopped at the Importing posts part, I read that I had to clear the utf-8 or something like that. When I tried pressing back, it just kept refreshing the same page so I may have accidentally clicked on "Clean up" which then finished the merge without actually merging the rest of it.
Well from the looks of it the users are still there. I'll have to see what other damage I did later on.
Ok new update. I reinstalled mybb and did everything over again and this time I had no issues with the installation. However, none of the posts merged even though it said it did and there does appear to be a problem with the graphics and icons.
See all of the site icons that aren't displayed right? Or that weird blue undisplayed image at the top left. Any ideas what happened?
Blah, actually it does appear as though the posts were transferred just not fully. Some topics appear to be missing a lot of text or get cut off.
Also the post/thread counter never actually updates. Well at least everything is there. Can I assume the images that aren't displaying is because they are attempting to point to the SMF directory?
If you need help with this I could help you do the merge. PM me temporary ftp/phpmyadmin details and I can see what I can do.
Looks like you had a corrupted download or you are using a different language pack and some images seem to be missing
for the post counts run the rebuild and recount feature in acp
and yes you can merge 2 mybb forums together to answer your earlier question. when you merge 2 mybbs not sure if you will get dupicates or it just copies the missing users and such when you merge one mybb forum might be better to have the other mybb database empty just my thoughts.
It's going to be a pain in the lime to try to fix every image and every post that was ruined during this merge. Since my forum is small, new, and we don't have many members, I'm beginning to think of a complete restart as the easiest solution.
Now if I had a bigger forum with multiple members and thousands of posts... I'd be pissed. But the truth is I'd rather restart 10 times with 5 members than restart one time with 500.
(2010-11-16, 10:43 PM)- G33K - Wrote: [ -> ]If you need help with this I could help you do the merge. PM me temporary ftp/phpmyadmin details and I can see what I can do.
Maybe we should make dinner arrangements first before we talk about you getting into my ftp files.
(2010-11-17, 03:33 AM)Isabel Wrote: [ -> ] (2010-11-16, 10:43 PM)- G33K - Wrote: [ -> ]If you need help with this I could help you do the merge. PM me temporary ftp/phpmyadmin details and I can see what I can do.
Maybe we should make dinner arrangements first before we talk about you getting into my ftp files.
Lol! Why not
Just want you to know that we're here to help. You can always PM if you need help with the merge, I can walk you through it and try to help you out with any problems that may come up.
I no longer require any sort of merge. Thank you though, you've all been exceptionally kind and helpful.
I'm going to be starting it all over from scratch.