Migrating from Invision Power Board to Discourse

Product Support

AI-generated summary

Users discuss migrating from Invision Power Board (IPB) to Discourse, focusing on the availability and development of import scripts. FedUpInvisionUser initiates the conversation, asking about conversion costs, with purldator suggesting the Marketplace for paid options. codinghorror notes that a year-long business plan covers conversions. pfaffman reveals he has developed an IPB importer, initially planned for January 2017, and offers private assistance. He details the importer’s capabilities, including user, topic, and post migration, and discusses challenges with URL formatting and testing. STORMS and others express interest in the tool. pfaffman eventually shares his script, which is later noted to be included in core Discourse [26]. Users like Nikolay and pinder99 seek help with specific IPB versions (4 and 2.3.6), encountering issues with database structure and missing fields like forum_id. pfaffman advises examining the database schema and offers paid support for those with a budget, while pinder99 requests technical guidance rather than service offers. The discussion highlights the need for custom script modifications and the availability of professional migration services.

1

Im fed up with Invision. I’m interested in a self install.

my board has
Total Members 57651
Total Topics 4552
Total Posts 42326
nearly 10k attachments mostly pics

how much for a convert?

2

How much? That sounds like a question for the Marketplace category.

It also depends if you are self-hosting or using the IPS SaaS hosting service.

3

For our hosting, a year commitment on the business plan covers conversions – https://discourse.org/buy

4

A bit steep for me.
How much just for a conversion?

5

Same here… however, I would just need the conversion. We’re already on dedicated and we’re on XF.

6

Jeff noted the method to get an import script written by the core Discourse team (purchase a year-long business plan). If that won’t work for you @FedUpInvisionUser, you might want to post in marketplace instead of support.

To see what importers are already out there, see:

For example, there appears to be a XenForo option @STORMS (I’m assuming that it was XF stands for).

I’ve never run any of the import scripts myself, but there is some basic information about how to run an importer script here:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/vbulletin-import-script-group-forum-mappings/19879

7

FWIW, I’ve mostly finished an IPB importer. I’ll submit a PR for it when I can, but it will likely be in January of 2017.

8

That’s great to hear. I was getting ready just to shut the website down at
the end of the month

9

I’m also very interested in this. I wasn’t looking forward to the conversion game (IPB to phpbb to something else to something else and then finally Discourse).

10

Any news on the IPB importer?

11

If you want me to run it for you, I’ll do it today.

If you want to run it yourself, it’ll be another week or two.

The site has 280K users, 5.2 million topics, 2.8 million posts. What I hope is the penultimate import is running right now.
I’m pretty happy with how I managed to map IPB topic/post URLs/citations into proper Discourse references, but I’d like to make sure that this code works with another forum to make sure that I pull out features specific to that forum.

It handles:

  • users, topics (with pinning), posts, categories, avatars,
  • Permalinks for users, categories, topics.
  • importing users and topics created after a particular date (useful for testing)
  • optionally adding links to the IPB forum (useful for checking formatting issues)

In particular, there are multiple ways that IPB generates URLs, which affects how 301 redirects/Permalinks work. I’d really like to test it with another import and see that it works with the two URL formats that I know about before I submit the code for others to use.

Also, the forum that I used to write the importer was a software discussion site in Polish; I’d like to make sure that the formatting is correct for another type of forum in a language that I can read.

If I don’t get another paid import soon, I’ll try to clean the code up and submit it in the next week or two.

12

@pfaffman Any update on this? Is it ready for user to try?

13

Well, those “two weeks” came and went, didn’t they?

PM me and perhaps I can send you the code privately. I’m pretty sure that it won’t work for you without modification.

14

Hi,

I also plan to migrate. Can you let me know if you are available to do this or is there an import sql that I could get and modify please?

15

I’d be happy to help. I’ll send a pm.

16

I’m also interested.
Have 3000k posts, 3000 members in IPB 3.something

Would be very very keen on seeing your script.

17

I have an IPB 2.3.6 installation with >20.000 users and >70.000 posts and would love to try your script on it. Would this be possible?

Kind regards
– Florian

18

I’m still working on it. I hope to have it submitted if a couple weeks.

19

Hey @pfaffman
Do you still need a beta tester for your plugin? We’d be happy to try :smiley:
Thanks!

20

If you send me a database and your avatars, I’ll do an import and make sure my code works with your database.

I also need the URL where your uploads live (the current version will link to your uploads on the current site rather than upload them into Discourse. You can then configure discourse to download them locally).