WebBBS to vBulletin 2.2.x Conversion Script

Hello all!

After much painstaking oogling at php code, I've created a conversion script to convert WebBBS messages to vBulletin. I created this a bit ago, but feel that it might be of use to someone out there so I thought I'd share it.

This was written to convert from a very old version of WebBBS (circa 1998), but has since been modified to work with 5.0. It should be a good start for anyone out there wanting to do this.

All of the instructions are included in the file as comments. Read them carefully! When finished, don't forget to update counters and the search table.

Anticipating vB3 like you wouldn't believe,
Paul

Update:

• Now corrects for GMT offset for older WebBBS versions (the newest versions use unix timestamps, so this isn't needed)
• Situation where extra carriage returns were being added should now be resolved.
• Link URLs and Images are now processed. URLs/Images in the actual message body (assuming you had HTML enabled on WebBBS) are not processed. Anyone willing to add this functionality, let me know.
• Situation where certain date strings would offset the timestamp incorrectly has now been corrected.
• Connection to the database is now handled much more efficiently.

NOTE: By downloading this, you agree that you will not send me countless PMs/e-mails asking for help with it. If you have a question, post it on this thread. I am by no means an expert. This is my first script in php. It was written to fill my need and may or may not fill yours. I do not have the time nor resources to provide support for it.

Also, as with all hacks on this site, this script is for registered vBulletin users ONLY. You are not permitted to distribute this script to anyone, under any circumstances.

[The Doctor]

The function processquotes does not seem to be working for me. The routine is changing my WebBBS quote symbol into the tempsymbol okay, but the conversion of lines preceded by the tempsymbol into vBulletin quoted text just isn't happening. I'm getting the tempsymbol appearing in my posts.

I've not changed processquotes at all, but I'm afraid my PHP isn't good enough to check how it works. My initial thought was that I'd maybe copies the WebBBS files into the conversion directory as binary files (I can tell that processquotes needs the tempsymbol to start the line), but, after I carefully recopied the files, I was able to rule that out.

Any other suggestions?

[Later]:

I added

PHP Code:

 global $tempsymbol; 


to the function, and this solved the problem. I imagine that I'm going to have to make $last_indent global as well, though I haven't investgated this yet. I'm just glad to have got this one mysterious bug out of the way.

It's gone two in the morning and it's waaaay past my bedtime.

[Added in the morning]:

Of course $last_indent doesn't need to be global. It's only used to communicate between the processing of lines of a single message.

[Smitty]

Is this for WebBBS by Darryl Burgdorf?

[tgmorris]

Originally Posted by Smitty

Is this for WebBBS by Darryl Burgdorf?

Yes.

[Smitty]

Originally Posted by tgmorris

Yes.

Thanks for the reply. I though so but I looked for something like this a couple of years ago and didn't find anything so I gave up. I'll have to test this. If it works, I've got several thousand posts in a webbbs forum I had up between 1997 and 1998 which I wouldn't mind importing for 'history'.

[garymill]

I am still looking for someone to import 3 old web bbs forums for me into Vbulletin. I will pay $85.00 for this work.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

If you can provide enough data, Jelsoft might want to add webbbs support to the official ImpEx utility. Try asking at vbulletin.com

Would be the best way to go.

[garymill]

I appreciate your suggestion.

Someone has created a conversion script posted here, and I have read o various success stories in using it, but I was not able to get it to work myself, so was hopeful that someone that was familar with working with it could do the import for me.

Gary

[aacircle]

In the conversion file posted by tgmorris in Dec 2003, the following appears:

**** IMPORTANT ****
In order for this script to keep track of messages and to later serve as a reference
point for old bookmarked messages, you will need to make a change to your vBulletin
mySQL database. You will need to insert rows into the "post" table of the
vBulletin database. THIS SCRIPT WON'T WORK WITHOUT THE ADDITION OF THESE ROWS!

i.e. ALTER TABLE post ADD COLUMN originalid int(5);
ALTER TABLE post ADD COLUMN previousid int(5);

Is this really required? After reading the above commented lines, I assume this is for when users have bookmarked posts found in WebBBS and so they can find the same posts when searching in vBulletin. I wonder will the script work fine if I don't amend the 'post' tables in vBulletin...

[Paul]

Originally Posted by mycolumbus

In the conversion file posted by tgmorris in Dec 2003, the following appears:

**** IMPORTANT ****
In order for this script to keep track of messages and to later serve as a reference
point for old bookmarked messages, you will need to make a change to your vBulletin
mySQL database. You will need to insert rows into the "post" table of the
vBulletin database. THIS SCRIPT WON'T WORK WITHOUT THE ADDITION OF THESE ROWS!

i.e. ALTER TABLE post ADD COLUMN originalid int(5);
ALTER TABLE post ADD COLUMN previousid int(5);

Is this really required? After reading the above commented lines, I assume this is for when users have bookmarked posts found in WebBBS and so they can find the same posts when searching in vBulletin. I wonder will the script work fine if I don't amend the 'post' tables in vBulletin...

Yes, it is required to determine where the posts will be inserted. Old bookmarks will not work without altering showthread.php and using something like mod_rewrite or a custom perl script to point to the proper vbulletin page.

[daveconz]

Hey just wanted to say huge Thanks! I used the modified script for vB3 and it seems to have worked like a charm. It's only a small forum (a few hundred messages) but it means a lot to the site owner. Awesome