Move Threads/Users/Posts from one forum to another and keep db id's

[j0rd]

Here's my issue. I've got a 4 year old vbul 3.1 version installed. It's a mess. After 4 years you get a pretty disgusting database with old unused mods.

We've developed a new version of our forum on 3.6 and we'd like to import all the old forums, threads, posts, pms, avatars and all that jazz into the new clean install.

As far as i know there are two ways of doing this. Niether of which will work for us.

Impex :
- Problems: Doesn't keep threadid's, userid's and all that stuff. That will not work for us.

Database Import:
- Problems: This will not work since the DB structures are different.

How can i do about importing all my data, but keeping the proper IDs for everything? I would assume this is a common task, but i'm not able to find any information on it.

PS. We have a really large board. Impex took over 12 hours the first time we tried. Not fun.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

You can not keep the id's as this would most likely create duplicates.

ImpEx however does add acolumn that stores the original id's

[j0rd]

that doesn't help much with people linking to thier userid's in our forums, or our Search indexed pages though.


IMHO, this is a big issue with vbulletin import system.

I spent 12 hours doing it manually table by table yesterday...and everything seems to be working.

I wrote i nice script to automate it. Maybe if you guys are lucky, i'll release it into the community.,


It's perl though .

PM me or reply if you want it...put some fire to my feet.

Originally Posted by Marco van Herwaarden

You can not keep the id's as this would most likely create duplicates.

My new forum is blank....so there would be no duplicates.

The reason i created a new one was to get my database or a more normal state. It was a mess after 7 years of mods, plugins, hacks.