Migrating legacy data from other applications

[lxsameer]

Hi. I have a dump from an old forum application which I like to migrate to discourse. What is the best way to do it ? should I create a plugin for it ? Or use the API to create new posts ? I need the date to be exactly the same as the dump file for each post.

[Dax (Daniela)]

What better chance to take a look at our import scripts from other platforms?

discourse/discourse

[lxsameer]

hell yeah. How can I use them ?

[Dax (Daniela)]

You can start reading this guide:

Migrating to Discourse from another Forum software

This guide serves as a high level overview of the migration process. For specifics on the wide range of forum softwares to import, including Vanilla, phpBB3, SMF2, bbPress, and vBulletin, review our dedicated tutorials. Not all scripts have tutorials, but an exhaustive list of available imports is available under the script/import_scripts folder on GitHub. So you want to migrate your existing forum to Discourse? That’s great! Let’s get started! 1. Set Up a Development Environment We…

[lxsameer]

thanks a lot friend.

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

You don’t mention what software you’ve been using. Every importer migrates the original date of the posts, so that part is easy.

Searching “your forum #howto” will find instructions if there are any, and the link above will get you to all of the importers.

A substantial part of my living is from doing imports. I have an info page here: Discourse Migration – Literate Computing, LLC