Copy forums but not posts

slobadog · Post by **slobadog** » Mon Aug 05, 2013 11:30 am

I'd like to copy all forums and sub-forums via phpmyadmin to set up a new board based on the old one. However I don't want all the posts included. I have tried simply backing up from admin the forums table (and importing to the new database), they all appear in admin under "Forums" but they don't appear on the index page. It says ...has no forums.
Any tips?

Thanks!

Post by **KevC** » Mon Aug 05, 2013 11:31 am

You need to move everything and then delete what you don't want.

Transferring Your Board to a New Host or Domain

slobadog · Post by **slobadog** » Mon Aug 05, 2013 11:39 am

Thanks Kevin, I tried that but the sql backup was 75mb, bit large to manage easily. It has 52,500 posts.
I don't want to move the site, I'm starting a new one based on the old one (which is still active).

Post by **KevC** » Mon Aug 05, 2013 11:52 am

75Mb is nothing in terms of databases.
That article explains how to restore large ones. Bigdump does it just fine.

You can't just take certain bits. Lots of tables are interconnected so you have to take it all and then delete the posts afterwards.

DionDesigns · Post by **DionDesigns** » Mon Aug 05, 2013 4:44 pm

slobadog wrote:I have tried simply backing up from admin the forums table (and importing to the new database), they all appear in admin under "Forums" but they don't appear on the index page. It says ...has no forums.

Copying the forums in that manner creates the forums, but there are no permissions associated with the forums, and their topic/post/lastpost data will be incorrect.

Once you create the permissions, the forums will appear as they should. And once you sync the forums, the topic/post/lastpost data will be be correct as well.

slobadog · Post by **slobadog** » Tue Aug 06, 2013 8:13 am

I've spent a day messing with this. It now works for guests but as soon as I log in it throws:
General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

[0]

An SQL error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact the ... Administrator if this problem persists.

I have copied over all the groups tables. I have used support toolkit to clean, sanitize and reset everything. I've synced everything and cleared out the cache. I've registered new users and administrators and tried logging in as them.

Admin is blank (can't log in).

What am I missing?
Ta!

Post by **KevC** » Tue Aug 06, 2013 8:20 am

Copy everything.
Delete what you don't want.

slobadog · Post by **slobadog** » Tue Aug 06, 2013 8:57 am

LOL! You did say that already. Do I really have to go through and delete 52,500 posts or can I just dump the posts table and re-sync?

Post by **KevC** » Tue Aug 06, 2013 9:04 am

You can set the topics per page to be something manageable like 500 and delete whole pages at once. That's 500 topics, which would be more than that in posts. It doesn't take long to delete that many.
You can also use the forum prune option to remove all posts older than 1 day for instance.

You could have done it by now. I've cleaned up a spamridden forum with over 100,000 posts in 4 hours before. It doesn't take that long.

slobadog · Post by **slobadog** » Wed Aug 07, 2013 10:43 am

Did I say 75mb? I should have said 751mb. It took 5.5 hours to upload the backup but thanks to you Kevin, all working now.

I'm having a look at viewtopic.php?f=70&t=2160370 which aims to implement multi forums on the same database, looks like it might work for me...

Thanks for your help, much appreciated!