UBB.Developers Forums General Discussion Suggestions and Feedback conversion

I'm currently running a UBB. Switching is a major hassle, and I may never. They have a good product, but I do really love the threading options here. But one major roadblock: I have a large board. I sure can't afford to lose ALL of it. Is there any conversion capability?

Unfortunately there is no conversion script available. At one time Alex Krohn had written one, but as WWWThreads changed and the UBB changed the script became unusable. I have never looked at the UBB and how it stores data so I haven't been able to write one, and if I did take the time to write one it would probably be outdated when either of the programs made any major changes.

I wish there was an easy way around this problem, but so far I haven't been able to come up with anything.

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Scream
http://www.screamingweb.com

I could think of several ways.

For all postings: {

Read one posting on the old board
post it onto the new board
}

The second part, posting on the new board, would be an addon to your board.

The first part, if the storage method is simple (like each message is one delimited file) you write it.
if it is not so simple, you hack into the software that runs the board and use their routines to extract one message after another.

What is ubb anyway?

:

Well, unfortunately, that is a deal killer. Whatever advantages your software might have, my members would be up in arms at the likelihood of losing all prior posts, and having to re-register. I can't afford to lose 7000 posts (which is about where I am)>

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I had a quick look at UBB users ,and I quickly converted all my 834 users to the WWWThreads format :

UBB uses a single file with *.cgi extension to store data each field separated by '|'

so you can 'cat *.cgi >>oldusers,
create a 'oldusers' table on your db with 12 fields then using 'mysqlimport' you can import oldusers in the new table You created

the ubb scheme is like this more or less :

username | pwd (in clear !!!!) | email | url | unknown | occupation | location | unknown (posts ?) | membership | quote | (email address viewable ?) | signature

so you can with a little sql skill import the important fields to WWWThreads.Users table

It worked for me

maybe I'll post something about importing posts when I'll have a look at that.

Excuse my poor English

Thanks CIC. I'm sure it can be done, but my personal skill level is real low here. But once we figure out how to do it, I'm sure someone will.

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Mario, UBB is a competing product http://ultimatebb.htm

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At this point, Scream, I would seriously be considering your fantastic product were it not for the conversion and installation issues. There are a couple of other issues, and I have concern as to how tech support will be handled, but I assume that can be worked out. I have read some of your other posts and appreciate the manner in which you have become overwhelmed with suddenly having a real company on your hands. OTOH, although I am quite good with certain types of software and html design, I know very little about scripts, CGI, MySQL, etc. I just would want someone to convert and install, for a fee of course. I.e., make it work, let me do the fun part. Do you have any recommendations as to whom I might contact inthat regard?

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