# Date/time warnings in phpBB3 conversion to Discourse

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-time-warnings-in-phpbb3-conversion-to-discourse/393391
**Category:** Migration
**Tags:** phpbb
**Created:** [January 13, 2026, 11:10pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-time-warnings-in-phpbb3-conversion-to-discourse/393391 "2026-01-13T23:10:11Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 4

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### Author: ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [January 14, 2026, 5:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-time-warnings-in-phpbb3-conversion-to-discourse/393391/4 "2026-01-14T17:13:55Z")

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> [@shortmort37](#):
>
> Do you happen to know, for this example, if 18112 is the phpBB post\_id?

it is not.

You can see the post ids in `post.custom_fields['import_id']`. But that’s just a counter of how many posts (or topics?) have been converted.

> [@shortmort37](#):
>
> I wonder why the script flagged them

I’m pretty sure that the post has zero or null in some date field. it’s a warning, not an error, so it did import something. If it had failed to import it, you’d get an error, I’m fairly certain.

If you really care, you can modify the script to print the phpBB ID when it gets such an error, then you can track down which phpBB posts are generating these errors and look at those records to see what’s happening.

> [@shortmort37](#):
>
> It’s been suggested that I replace occurrences like that in the phpbb\_backup.sql file with `1970-01-01` for these dates before import,

That date is zero in utime, so it wouldn’t change anything.

I’ve never thought it was worth my clients’ money to answer this question before. If it is something you’d like to spend money on, please email me.

Perhaps someone else has a better answer.

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