phpbb to vbulletin converter download phpbb or vBulletin? When I started up my site, I obviously installed a phpBB2 forum, which I then saw as a very powerful solution compared to the other free forums. I was happy with the installation for a good while, installing more MODifications and styles as I went: you wouldn't believe how much time I spent on it. Suddenly, at the beginning of this month, my site saw a pretty big jump in traffic. Forum user count went from 33 to 177 in just 3 weeks! Many of these users acually post frequently, and since I put up some google ads on one of my other sites, I decided to try out vBulletin, thinking it had some better moderation and profile features in excange for speed, style, and easy of use. Well, I finally decided to buy it one day: a perpetual license for $160, and I can say I am a bit more more than very pleased :lol:! The backend is huge, yes, but everything is nicely organized and virtually any aspect of the board can be modified. There are endless options compared to phpBB2, and I am very happy with my switch. vB is also pretty fast and easy to use regardless of the features. So basically, I find vBulletin to be the best forum solution, far better than IPB as well. Also, the conversion went very smoothly, and you can see my wonderful new forum at http://themotec.com/Forum. The phpBB team is currently working on phpBB3, which will be a much more easy-to-use version of, basically, vBulletin, with some of the very detailed features not available, and with a completely different style. At first, I was also very excited about phpBB3, but now the only thing that impresses me is the design. The features will at most only meet those of the paid forums, so there is no other advantage. I'm currently running a phpbb 2.1.2 CVS test forum for testing. so I haven't forgotten about phpBB completely, and I must say that they are doing a great job with this free forum! Phpbb to vbulletin converter download. Did you read the FAQ? Please read the FAQ, also located in the first post of the support topic at phpBB.com. If you still have problems after that, you could try to email me, but I will probably not be able to respond. A problem with your path defines ? Let me try and auto-detect them for you. Complete the form below and press 'submit'. Frequently Asked Questions and Additional Information on the converter. The current version of my converter is: 1.33 Current version of attachment converter is: 1.02. Latest versions known to work: vB 2.3.4, phpBB 2.0.6, mod_attach 2.3.7. Limited Email Support via converter (at) matthijs (dot) net. ----- CONVERTS ---- - Everything but the themes and features not included in phpBB - Attachments seperately supported. ----- KNOWN ISSUES ------version 1.31 : polls with id > 1000 not converted - version 1.32 : wordlist generation incompatible with phpBB 2.0.4 - version 1.33 : none - Unable to convert DCForums via vBulletin, due to makeup of DCForums to vBulletin converter. This is not a bug in my converter. ----- FAQ ----- I want to convert forumA.com/vb/ to forumB.com/phpBB/ , is that a problem? If the files for both domains are on the same server, no. Just make sure the path defines are okay. If you have two different servers, it will not work directly. You'll have to install a clean phpBB on the same server as the vB installation and use it to convert. Move this phpBB intallation to the new server afterwards (see numerous topics and Knowlegde Base for details on how to do this). Edit convert.php and change the following variable: define('PHPBB_PATH', '../phpBB2/'); There are two ways to define this variable: 1) put in the absolute path (e.g. '/var/www/forums/phpbb/') or 2) define it relative to the vBulletin dir, where convert.php will be uploaded (e.g. '../phpbb/'). The second option is the simplest, but for some reason people keep messing this up. Examples: vB: http://forum.yourhost.com/, phpBB: http://forum.yourhost.com/phpbb/ -> define('PHPBB_PATH', 'phpbb/'); vB: http://www.yourhost.com/forums/, phpBB: http://www.yourhost.com/newforum/ -> define('PHPBB_PATH', '../newforum/'); vB: http://www.yourhost.com/forums/, phpBB: http://www.yourhost.com/forums/phpbb/ -> define('PHPBB_PATH', 'phpbb/'); The second variable you have to edit is the URL of your phpBB board as it would be viewed through your browser: define('PHPBB_URI', 'http://www.yourdomain.com/phpBB2/'); Upload the edited convert.php into your vBulletin dir (in the forum root, where forumdisplay.php is) Does the converter overwrite my old vBulletin forum? No. The converter reads from the vBulletin database and writes to the new phpBB database. The vBulletin installation is left totally intact. So if there is a problem converting, no data will be lost and you can safely try again after solving the problem. My vB installation uses subforums, will these get converted? Yes, since phpBB doesn't support subforums, the vB subforums are converted to normal forums. After the conversion, there are no forums on the frontpage Your vB installation did not have categories or there where forums without a category. After adding a new category in the phpBB admin area, the forums will appear and everything will work. I get timeout errors or the script stops in the middle of the process Enable the FORCE_SAFE_MODE define (set it to '1'). Even though you are not running on safe_mode, this should stop the script timing out. If you still get timeouts, you should also lower the SAFE_MODE_BATCHES define (integer values only!). As a last resort, you can manually edit. to something lower, like 100. This piece of code is located at line 2843 of convert.php. At some step in the process, I ran into an error. It's now fixed, do I have to restart the entire process? No, you can simply resume the process after the last step that was successful. Point your browser to f.i. http://www.yourdomain.com/vb/convert.php?step=wordlist Also, you may resume the wordlist indexing when using FORCE_SAFE_MODE at the last batch, http://www.yourdomain.com/vb/convert.php? step=wordlist&startat=XXXX. I used an earlier version of the converter and I have problems with avatar permissions Run the following query on the database, using a tool like phpMyAdmin UPDATE phpbb_users SET user_allowavatar=1; What about supporting vBulletin 3.0 RC-X/Final? A new converter for vB 3.0 will be written in due time. See my (pre-)development topic here. Step by Step Tutorial on phpBB to vBulletin Migration [Video] If you are an owner or an administrator of a web project, you must know that there are many CMS platforms to choose from. But which one is the best fit for your web site? First of all, to get closer to the answer to this question, one has to know about the peculiarities of each platform. So now we are going to compare phpBB to vBulletin, as they are some of the most popular forum platforms. phpBB. phpBB is an open-source platform with a very long history on the market and a large community of users . Although sometimes it may require some programming skills, it is known for its effective security system and an extensive administration panel. phpBB also offers a number of free MODs, easy to install and effective in use . All in all, it is a great tool for experienced users, who are looking for reliable professional-grade software for their forums. vBulletin. vBulletin , on the other hand, pushes the limits and offers to you a possibility to create and manage not only a forum but also a blog, a website and some other web projects . It has a really user-friendly installer and great compatibility so that you can run your web project on different operating systems. One of the unique features of vBulletin is the possibility to publish message drafts as and when required even if you are not online by simply indicating the time of publishing . However, convenience comes at a price, as vBulletin is a commercial platform and you need to buy a license to use it. Sometimes though the only theoretical comparison may not be enough to decide which tool will be better for your web site and you have to try each of them. If this is the case and you are using phpBB but would like to try vBulletin, we have a solution for you. Now you don’t need to perform the transfer manually, nor do you have to create a new web project from scratch. Our automated migration service CMS2CMS will do everything for you. Simple Steps guide on How to Migrate from phpBB to vBulletin. Step 1. Create an Account. It will take you no more than a minute to register on https://cms2cms.com/ Step 2. Indicate Your Source Target Website. Type in the URLs and specify the platform types of your websites. You will need to gain access to your websites via Connection Bridge. Simply install it to your PC, unzip it and upload to your phpBB website. Read this article or watch the video to see the detailed information. Step 4. Connect to Your vBulletin website. Now it’s time to connect to your vBulletin website. Connect it the same way it was described in the previous step. Step 4. Select Your Extra Options and Try Demo Migration. In addition to migrating all of your categories, posts, topics, users, and polls you can choose the next additional options and migrate: Forum Polls Forum Topic Watchers Forum Friend/Foe List Smiley Images Topic/Post Icons. Demo migration option helps you to check how the service works and moves up to 10 threads/topics from phpBB to vBulletin at no cost at all! Step 5. Proceed to Your Full Migration. After you see the results of your Demo migration, you can start your Full migration right away. It will migrate your whole forum content. You will be able to enjoy the new possibilities of your vBulletin platform in no time. Video Tutorial. Items that can be Migrated. Now you know how to migrate your phpBB to vBulletin now and enjoy your new forum. Make a decision and set up the Free demo migration! vBulletin 5 Database Tools. The vBulletin Database Tools are a series of command line scripts that allow you to quickly make modifications to your database in order to provide performance fixes and update them to UTF8 standards. IMPORTANT- These files must be run via the command line, either if you have local access to the server or ssh access. If you are on shared hosting your access may be limited. You may ask your host for ssh access. If they say it is not available ask if they will run the commands for you. Update VB5 tables to InnoDB and UTF8. Each script is listed under these steps with specific information for that script. Rename vbutil_config.php.new to vbutil_config.php Edit vbutil_config.php with a code editor and enter your database credentials. If unsure of the database credentials they can be found in the /core/includes/config.php file. Upload the utf8_db_tools directory to your server. They do not need to be in your vBulletin directory. They do need to be accessible from the command line. In forum Admin CP turn off vBulletin under Settings -> Options -> Turn your Forum On/Off Take a full backup of the forum database. Reread step 4. This cannot be skipped. I actually recommend using a full copy of your database for the first run. With command line change the directory to the directory where you placed the files. If you are not using INNODB tables, Run the MyISAM fix script listed below. This is only necessary if your are not using INNODB tables. If you are using English on your site, then you would run the UTF8Tablefix script. If you are not using English, do not use this script. Run the UTF8Convert script listed below. Wait again, this can take a long time, especially the node table. Go to your Admin CP and open Languages & Phrases -> Language Manager Edit the settings of each language. Check the HTML Character Set setting and if it isn't UTF-8 change it to UTF-8. Rebuild your search engine. Check forum, make sure it is working as expected. When you are finished, delete the utf8_db_tools directory from your server. Turn your vBulletin back on in the AdminCP Settings. MyISAMFIX. This tool will convert vBulletin 5 tables to INNODB from MyISAM. This change will generally provide a performance boost to a website. In addition it can help prevent table crashes and improve replication services. Before running this, use your database tool to check if it is needed. If your tables are already INNODB, there is no need to run this. This file will only convert default vBulletin 5 tables. Tables from previous versions or addon products will remain untouched. UTF8TableFix. This script is only useful if you're converting an English Language database to UTF-8. It has no parameters or options. The command is: UTF8Convert. For sites in other encodings or with multiple languages you need UTF8Convert. This script has several parameters. We recommend using UTF8MB4 with MySQL and MariaDB. This will allow you to use multiple languages properly as well as the popular UTF-8 Emoticon standard. This file will attempt to convert your actual data. Required options are --connectionCharset and --charset. e.g. All Options. --connectionCharset=[value] (required): This refers to whatever the previous site used. Commonly older sites will have latin1 and newer sites will have utf8, but it might be something different. This is the value from config.php for $config['Mysqli']['charset'], if specified. If the value is not specified in your /core/includes/config.php file it can be determined by running this query: --charset=[value] (required) : This is the new charset, and should always be 'utf8mb4' --wipeSearch=1 (optional) : If set the utility will truncate all the searchtowords tables before converting. I recommend you always set this, for two reasons. First, there are often words that are NOT duplicates in one encoding but ARE duplicates in a different encoding. By far the easiest way to avoid these problems is to wipe the data. Second, the conversion process is time consuming for anything over a few hundred thousand posts, and setting this makes it quicker. --collateCI=[value] (optional) : This will default to utf8mb4_unicode_ci. This is the recommended collation. -–collatebin=[value] (optional) : This will default to 'bin' added to the charset. Database Compare. This is a database repair tool. It will compare two databases and create a list of queries to help synchronize the structures between them. This script should work with any version of vBulletin. To use it, set the Source values in the vbutil_config.php file to match a clean installation of vBulletin. This installation should match the version you want to compare with. The standard database options in the vbutil_config.php file should point to the database that is currently experiencing issues. You can run the queries by importing them in any tool that allows you to run MySQL Queries. phpBB • Free and Open Source Forum Software. Been searching for a while but cannot find any converters that will convert vbulletin 4.2.2 to phpbb 3.1. Is there any method of doing this ? Re: Convert vbulletin 4.2.2 to phpbb 3.1. Post by KevC » Sat May 02, 2015 7:53 pm. Re: Convert vbulletin 4.2.2 to phpbb 3.1. Post by Jaxo79 » Sat May 02, 2015 8:00 pm. Excellent, Thanks.. This is what I have been looking for.. Will post back with results later. Re: Convert vbulletin 4.2.2 to phpbb 3.1. Post by Jaxo79 » Sat May 02, 2015 8:18 pm. Re: Convert vbulletin 4.2.2 to phpbb 3.1. Post by KevC » Sat May 02, 2015 8:23 pm. Same in phpBB. You shouldn't need to do anything with that folder. Obviously back everything up before you start though. Re: Convert vbulletin 4.2.2 to phpbb 3.1. Post by Jaxo79 » Wed May 06, 2015 7:38 pm. I`ve been at this on and off for a few days.. Had probs with the posts around 120,000 but managed to trace the last one converted to phpbb in phpmydmin and go back to the vbulletin database and delete a few after it.. seemed to cure the problem. My next problem is a php warning message I`m getting during the private message conversion.. I`m getting thousands of these warnings but the script isn`t bugging out, its still refreshing the page and continuing.