forum help needed help please

hardwoodhero

I run a website called www.streetballireland.com and i have it hosted on a server.

I dont know much about forums so i used a free forum to set it up and host it for me. Invision power Board ( www.streetball.ipbfree.org)

The forum is now popular and has 270 members but the free forum is unrelaible and can crash and be offline.

Is it possible to set up a forum on my server and import all my data from my old one into it?

How do i do this?

Many thanks.

seamus

hardwoodhero wrote:

Is it possible to set up a forum on my server

It should be. Check with your web host, what languages they support and what kind of databases they provide. phpBB is one of the most popular and will support multiple databases. It runs on PHP.

and import all my data from my old one into it?

Possibly. You'll need to check ipbfree.com and ask around there.

hardwoodhero

My host will allow phpbb so how do i set up a new board?

thanks a mil.

seamus

Does your host arrange an automatic setup of phpBB for you?

Edit: Actually, I'm assuming you're hosting with Hosting 365. They provide an automated phpBB setup. Read the help/FAQ on hosting365.ie about settign yourself up.

hardwoodhero

My host is a college IT society. I went to my admin control panel and they have disabled the export database function ( prob so ya cant export your data and have to pay to upgrade to their premium service).

seamus

hardwoodhero wrote:

My host is a college IT society. I went to my admin control panel and they have disabled the export database function ( prob so ya cant export your data and have to pay to upgrade to their premium service).

Sounds likely.

To install phpBB go to www.phpbb.com

sean_or99

Never thought exporting data could be regarded as a premium level service!

Installing phpmyadmin will make things easier for you to copy over your old forum data to phpbb. It will also allow you to do all exporting you want.

Best also to make the folder you install it into password protected, or activate the security settings to your specifications in phpmyadmin, I think they are off by default.

hardwoodhero

ok im at the install stage but i need to know how to set up a sql database and whats the DSN ( dayabase server hostname)? I was on the the support of my forum and requested they complete a backup and provide me with the files.

seamus

Your host will give you details of the Database Server hostname, database login, and database name.

clearz

If the two forums are different it will take quite a bit of work on your part to move over the data from the old database to the new one. For a start the tables will most likely be different. Take for instance the username might be called username in one table and just user in the other or the real name of the user might be spread over two or more fields in one table (first name, last name) and only take one field in the other (Name). These are just some of the differences you will have to deal with when moving data from one table to another. If you have some programming knowlege you can automate most of this by writing simple helper programs or if you output the table as a list of sql statements you can edit this file by hand before importing it to the new database.
That is just two examples in one table and a forum can be made up of 20-30 tables each with multiple fields. It will not be an easy job and will be very monotonous.

seamus

There are scripts at http://www.phpbb.com/downloads.php to allow you to convert from Invision board to phpBB, but afaik, that's only if you have a live invision board on your site, not just the database data.

I'm sure you're not the first person to do this. It's just a matter of finding someone else who's done it.

[Edit; Actually that's a lie. The converter on the above page allows you to do a convert from backups of Invision board data.