Migrate a bbPress WordPress plugin forum to Discourse

I recently did a bbPress database migration successfully using Discourse’s inbuilt migration script. Now I’m going to share it as a step-by-step tutorial.

Note: This tutorial is for the bbPress plugin, not the legacy standalone version of bbPress.

What data can be imported?

• Users (including anonymous users)
• Categories
• Topics
• Posts
• Private Messages (via BuddyPress)
• Attachments
• Permalinks

Before starting the migration set a development environment on your machine (or inside a virtual machine) and run the import there instead of inside the docker container. When I tried it inside docker container I got peer authentication failed issue. So I strongly recommending you that you use a development machine. See the macOS or Ubuntu / Debian installation guide for development.

Discourse requires Ruby 3.4+. You can check your Ruby version with:

ruby -v

Now we need to install the libmysqlclient-dev dependency in order to be able to use the mysql2 gem.

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev

After the successful installation go to your Discourse development installation path (typically ~/discourse).

cd ~/discourse

Configuring the database connection

The bbPress import script reads all database connection settings from environment variables. You do not need to edit the script file. The following environment variables are supported:

If you are migrating your database from localhost you typically only need to set the database name:

IMPORT=1 bundle && IMPORT=1 BBPRESS_DB="my_bbpress" bundle exec ruby script/import_scripts/bbpress.rb

If you are migrating your database from an external server you’ll also need to set the host, username, and password:

IMPORT=1 bundle && IMPORT=1 BBPRESS_HOST="REMOTE_HOST_NAME" BBPRESS_USER="DB_USERNAME" BBPRESS_PW="MY_SECURE_PASSWORD" BBPRESS_DB="DB_NAME" bundle exec ruby script/import_scripts/bbpress.rb

Congratulations! Your database successfully migrated from bbPress to Discourse

Now take a backup from admin page /admin/backups and import it in your live Discourse website.

After you moved your bbPress forum to Discourse if you are still going to use your WordPress website as primary site and you’d like to connect it with Discourse then install Discourse’s official WordPress plugin.

Last edited by @JammyDodger 2024-05-27T14:54:29Z

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Just wanted to thank you for providing this step-by-step guide. We migrated our site from bbpress to Discourse with minimal headache thanks to you. Since we’re running multisite wordpress there were a few tweaks to make to the importer, but other than that it went very smoothly. Thanks!

If you can share your tweaks then it will be helpful to other multisite owners.

Admittedly I didn’t take very good notes, and have since killed the VM it
was on (sorry!) but the basic gist is that if your bbpress install is not
on the primary site of the Multisite setup you’ll need to a) set the
environmental variable for BBPRESS_PREFIX to include your site’s ID number
(e.g. wp_6_ ) and then edit the migration script to use wp_users rather
than #{BBPRESS_PREFIX} for the Users sql. This is because on Multisite
installations the wp_users table is shared across sites and then each site
has its own tables for posts, postmeta, etc.

thanks for the details

I recently posted on how to import bbpress into discourse

Great job on the tutorial! But it’s confusing to have two different guides on this. Do they serve different purposes? Otherwise we should figure out how to merge them.

That guide is about how to import bbpress inside of a development environment, mine is how to import bbpress using the docker container. It’s just 2 different ways to go. I’d recommend importing via docker container since it doesn’t ask for the additional step of setting up a development environment, which can be cumbersome.

Hello I am stuck trying to import successfully after all users are done importing.

As soon it begins to import anonymous users it cancels with an error of “Invalid Email… and Validation failed: Username can’t be blank (ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid)”.

I added the error below, does anyone encountered this before or have any ideas on what I should do?

Thanks,

importing anonymous users...
Invalid email '' for ''. Using '6be92499a6f885cb271d94bffd5e667b@email.invalid'
Error on record: {:id=>"", :email=>"", :name=>"", :website=>nil}
Traceback (most recent call last):
	23: from script/import_scripts/bbpress.rb:512:in `<main>'
	22: from /home/lutechi/discourse/script/import_scripts/base.rb:49:in `perform'
	21: from script/import_scripts/bbpress.rb:31:in `execute'
	20: from script/import_scripts/bbpress.rb:153:in `import_anonymous_users'
	19: from /home/lutechi/discourse/script/import_scripts/base.rb:249:in `create_users'
	18: from /home/lutechi/discourse/script/import_scripts/base.rb:249:in `each'
	17: from /home/lutechi/discourse/script/import_scripts/base.rb:261:in `block in create_users'
	16: from /home/lutechi/discourse/script/import_scripts/base.rb:337:in `create_user'
	15: from /home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/activerecord-5.2.3/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:212:in `transaction'
	14: from /home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/activerecord-5.2.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:267:in `transaction'
	13: from /home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/activerecord-5.2.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/transaction.rb:236:in `within_new_transaction'
	12: from /home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/2.6.0/monitor.rb:230:in `mon_synchronize'
	11: from /home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/activerecord-5.2.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/transaction.rb:239:in `block in within_new_transaction'
	10: from /home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/activerecord-5.2.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:267:in `block in transaction'
	 9: from /home/lutechi/discourse/script/import_scripts/base.rb:338:in `block in create_user'
	 8: from /home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/activerecord-5.2.3/lib/active_record/suppressor.rb:48:in `save!'
	 7: from /home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/activerecord-5.2.3/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:315:in `save!'
	 6: from /home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/activerecord-5.2.3/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:385:in `with_transaction_returning_status'
	 5: from /home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/activerecord-5.2.3/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:212:in `transaction'
	 4: from /home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/activerecord-5.2.3/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/database_statements.rb:265:in `transaction'
	 3: from /home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/activerecord-5.2.3/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:387:in `block in with_transaction_returning_status'
	 2: from /home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/activerecord-5.2.3/lib/active_record/transactions.rb:315:in `block in save!'
	 1: from /home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/activerecord-5.2.3/lib/active_record/validations.rb:52:in `save!'
/home/lutechi/.rbenv/versions/2.6.2/lib/ruby/gems/2.6.0/gems/activerecord-5.2.3/lib/active_record/validations.rb:80:in `raise_validation_error': Validation failed: Username can't be blank (ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid)

Thanks for this useful tutorial - worked for me although I have a couple of small issues:

1. The install process seemed to install postgres 11 and Discourse hosted version support postgres 10, so that’s giving them a bit of a headache!

2. My imported users don’t seem to be able to log into Discourse with their WordPress credentials - I tried it with my own user account, both with the username and the email address, but neither work. I can log into WordPress fine and the user account is present in Discourse, with the associated forum threads. Something changed with passwords/auth maybe?

Are you using SSO from WordPress?

This requires the migrate password plugin. Did you install that?

Hi Michael,

No, that is the first reference I’ve found to the plugin, so thank you for highlighting it - maybe I missed a step somewhere! Thanks for sharing I will take a closer look tomorrow when my eyes aren’t quite so tired!

Ruth

Hi

Can user uploaded pictures also be migrated?
The plugin for the user uploads was GD bbPress Attachments

Cheers

The script appears to import attachments.

You need to set a BB_PRESS_ATTACHMENTS_DIR ENV variable with the path to the attachments.

The uploads of the bbPress plugin appear to be stored in the /uploads folder of the WordPress installation. The GD bbPress Attachments was used for this. Im not sure which kind of path I should put in the BB_PRESS_ATTACHMENTS_DIR variable. Could you help me here a bit? Should I put the full URL path to the uploads e.g. http://www.example.com/httpdocs/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/picture.png or what else?

I saw that the import script didn’t finish successfully since the import_private_messages step failed. Private messages were not activated in the forum. I removed that step form the script and it fails with the message: table wp_bb_attachments doesn't exist which is true. I can’t find any table for attachments in the database tho. How could that attachments have worked in the first place?

The attachments need to be in a directory on the server where you run the import.

If you don’t see the attachment table that the script is looking for It may be that you have used some different means of handling attachments than the script expects. My guess is that they are either in a different table that you haven’t found or that the relative filename is in the posts themselves.

It sounds like you need to another function to import them. If you have a budget I can help. Discourse Migration — Literate Computing, LLC has information about imports. You don’t need full service, it seems, so your cost would be less than suggested there.

Since Discourse always runs in a docker container should this directory be linked into the import container?

Correct. If you’re running the import from a container then you need to put those images somewhere that the can be seen from the container and use that path.

One last question. Since you mentioned your import service I checked the site and did some more digging into my database and found where the attachments are stored. One sentence on your page made me worry a bit:

For example, some forums can attach files to a post without mentioning them in the body of the message, the import script identifies attachments by replacing references to them in the message body; when this happens, those un-linked attachments are omitted.

I found that my attachments where stored in the wp_postsmeta table as _wp_attached_file. The post itself which had this attachment linked however does not have a mention of this in the post body. It seems the only link here is the post_id and its meta_id. Does this mean that this is an “un-linked attachment” and will be omitted?