vBulletin import script is incompatible with vBulletin5

feature
1

Hi there,

I was trying to use the vbulletin.rb script to import a vBulletin5 database, and I noticed that the table names referenced in the import script are not the same as the ones in the vB5 database.

For instance, the script queries a table called “posts”. There is no such table in the vBulletin5 database.

Also, the vB5 database has a tooon of tables in it. So I doubt it would be all that easy to slightly modify the import script to account for the different names or anything like that.

Is the import script for older versions of vBulletin only? It seems that vB5 is known to be quite different from previous versions, and I’m guessing the new table names are a part of that.

Actually, it doesn’t look like migrating vB5 to anything else is a very common practice at all. Google couldn’t find me many people who have done it successfully, apart from a few sketchy things claiming to offer paid migration services.

Can anyone who has successfully migrated a vBulletin forum to Discourse comment on this?

2

Just checked and the vBulletin import script was done for vBulletin 3.8.7.

3

Interesting, that must be it, then. Thanks! I wonder if downgrading vBulletin5 is possible.

From what I’ve read, one method is to import vB5 into a third intermediary piece of forum software that understands it, and then import that into Discourse. Not sure if it’s worth the effort at this point, but I might give it a whirl.

4

Or build your own importer. It takes time but really isn’t that hard :wink:

5

A bad suggestion but you may be able to use an importer script for another forum that there is an importer for to make it work. Just saw the end of your last post - I need to learn to read.

7

Yeah, I’m just a little intimidated by the seemingly high complexity of the vb5 schema. But if I ever have time for it as a side project, could be interesting!

8

I was wondering if anybody knows what this table is responsible for?

It does not exist in my installation of vBulletin 4 and I was wondering if it was a vBulletin 3 specific table or if I’m reading the code wrong and it’s not a table at all?

It currently breaks my script after importing pretty much my entire forum so need to figure out if I need it or not. Thanks

9

That’s a Discourse-side table… What’s the error?

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10

Ahh that would be why. I have a prefix on all my tables in vbulletin, so I had to add some code to the script to take this into account.

I added the prefix to this table thinking it was selecting something from vbulletin.

I’ll fix that and give it another go tonight. Thanks

11

Has anybody gotten anywhere on the VB5 import issue?

Are there any worthwhile VB5 -> some other format -> Discourse paths?

Thanks for any input.

12

I don’t think we have had a business or above hosted customer approach us with this particular conversion scenario quite yet, (it is usually older vBulletin versions) but if they do, we will certainly write the importer and open source it.

13

We had two customers for VB5 in the last month, so we’ve written the importer and open sourced it (pull request is waiting for you :slight_smile: )

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/4271

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