Merging Forums Together.

[Rey619]

i am in the process of merging with another forum. They are on PHBPP. is there a way to merge it onto mine?

[warmweer]

i am in the process of merging with another forum. They are on PHBPP. is there a way to merge it onto mine?

Everything is possible ... but there's no automatic merge (well? not that I know).
It's a task that would require a lot of investigation and manipulation of data to avoid conflicts.(almost all tables have fields that have unique values so you can't just merge those tables)

Probably easier to copy the posts from one board to another.
or better even: forget about the idea.

Added: I just had a look at your board
your board : Total posts 520 • Total topics 176 • Total members 11 •

What's the url of the other board: post it here or send me a PM with the url so that I can have a look to see if it's feasible.

[thecoalman]

Moved to custom coding, I'm not aware of any out of the box solutions.

To fully merge you are going to need new user ids, new topic id's, new post id's, new blah,blah,blah id's and change all the references for them in multiple tables. Then there is the issue of links in posts to topics, posts and attachments and conflicts with usernames.There is script here from 2019 but that is probably going to need some updating but it should work for starting point.

viewtopic.php?p=15314916#p15314916


If you are looking for minimalist approach. look at posts table and there is column for post_username which is going to be blank if it was registered user that posted it. That's used for usernames of guest posters.

You should be able to set the post_username to the registered username, set the poster_id to 1 and increase the post_id's to number higher than your current forum. Repeat for topics and attachment table. Lastly you'll want to increase the ID for posts, topics and attachments referenced in posts.

This would also give you path to restore the posts to original poster once they signed up on your forum as long as they used same username.

Just throwing out some ideas that might work. You'll have to fill in the details yourself.Test, test and test.

[thecoalman]

Added: I just had a look at your board
your board : Total posts 520 • Total topics 176 • Total members 11 •

If other forum is just as small I wouldn't bother with script and just manually add them

[KevC]

Don't take this the wrong way because it's not intended to be but in your wanted topic you're struggling to upload a single folder to install an extension. Merging 2 boards is like going from level 1 to level 100 in terms of knowledge and understanding of what's needed.

I'd agree with Coalman and just tell everyone on one of the sites to sign up to the other one and then recruit a few people to help copy/paste any important topics and then leave the rest and shut it down.

[Rey619]

i am in the process of merging with another forum. They are on PHBPP. is there a way to merge it onto mine?

Everything is possible ... but there's no automatic merge (well? not that I know).
It's a task that would require a lot of investigation and manipulation of data to avoid conflicts.(almost all tables have fields that have unique values so you can't just merge those tables)

Probably easier to copy the posts from one board to another.
or better even: forget about the idea.

Added: I just had a look at your board
your board : Total posts 520 • Total topics 176 • Total members 11 •

What's the url of the other board: post it here or send me a PM with the url so that I can have a look to see if it's feasible.

i sent u a message with the link.

[Rey619]

Don't take this the wrong way because it's not intended to be but in your wanted topic you're struggling to upload a single folder to install an extension. Merging 2 boards is like going from level 1 to level 100 in terms of knowledge and understanding of what's needed.

I'd agree with Coalman and just tell everyone on one of the sites to sign up to the other one and then recruit a few people to help copy/paste any important topics and then leave the rest and shut it down.

Yeah i understand its a learning process ill get everything eventually i was on pbs for years but i like this and want learn it just need hands on training watching someone do it and then ill be able to u know what i mean like a screen share session.

[Steve]

You can practice phpBB for free and located on your pc.
You need : https://www.apachefriends.org/

I suggest getting to grips with phpBB locally.

[Kailey]

Rey619,

You do not need to full quote every post. It makes it hard to read your topic, especially when you are only posting a few words to another user. Please only quote when necessary.

Also, unless you have new information pertinent to your request, we ask that you please wait six hours before bumping your topic. All team members and community members here are volunteers.

[warmweer]

To add to Kailey's post.

Since your post wasn't replied to, you could easily edit your post to add or request more information.

As to merging the other forum into yours, don't do that ... do it the other way, add the data from your board to the older one, it will involve a lot less work and once it's done, then you can change the name and description of the board, even move it to your host (replace your board with the merged one and use the url of your original board: see the Knowledge Base: there's an article about moving aboard/changing url)