Joomla! Discussion Forums

Can it be done?

I have a rather moderate sized site, with 2200 members, 32 articles, 87 links, 466 images in a gallery, 23 FAQs, and 415 downloads.

The problem may be the downloads section, it's not straight forward.

The downloads section is a modified version of the e107 download section, it has a thumbnail, a link to a live preview, the zip file to download, and then thee text areas - description, instructions, and code. The code needs to show as text, and not be executed. So far I have not seen a mambo component that covers this, although it may be possible to edit an existing one. I am not capable of editing that myself however.

Does anyone have any suggestions, or avenues I could try?

If at all possible, I'd really like to be able to change the site over.

Hi,

You would need to write some extended sql scripts to get all your existing data exported/imported to the mambo database. If you know how to do this, it should not be a problem. Done a few small imports myself...

It's good to know that it would be physically possible then. I completely lack the ability to do that myself, so I'll start looking for someone who  may have the skills to this.

Hi,

You should be able to find some good tools as well;

html>content http://forum.opensourcematters.org/index.php/topic,982.0.html
user import http://www.pronique.com/content/view/15/34

Just a few I came across today...

That's brilliant, thanks very much. Your time is much appreciated.

I am a designer and do not know PHP or SQL at all, but I can follow instructions, and am usually game to try it a few times! So we'll see.

The download part of the site is the main concern, as I have not seen a mambo component or module that works in either a similar way, or appears to be flexible enough. I think I may need to sweet talk a real programmer for that one.

Hi,

Yes, if you can not find a download add-on, you have two options;

#1, get a programmer to either change an existing add-on or program a new one
#2, use the wrapper feature in mambo, this wraps external pages/web applications. backend of those applications of course not integrated into mambo, but frontend is.

Depends on your needs/whishes what option to go for.

That's a great idea for the interim period! Thanks again.

now I think I'll look for a programmer who wants some design work done!

Hi,

About the programmer, you could post a question in: 3rd Party custom development  http://forum.opensourcematters.org/index.php/board,47.0.html

Or also have a look at http://www.mambolance.com/ , lots of mambo freelancers on that site. Good luck !

Thanks again for your help, I will go and browse! I am finding more and more things to bookmark and research.

I've yet to find anything that will do a conversion.

The biggest worry one of my clients has had in wanting to switch to Mambo over the last year is losing years worth of forum posts in the conversion.

Pink, if you find anything, please let me know.
I'm hoping that Joomla! will come out with a forum for the CMS in it's next release.

I have a friend who is at university, who is not really familiar with either per say, but is sure he can come up with something. He's going to experiment and see what he can do. If he's successful, then I will certainly ask him to share the results.

That's terrific.  I know my client would looooove to be moved over if he can keep is hundreds of users and thousands of forum posts. 

Simpleboard already works natively with Mambo/Joomla!. phpBB, vBulletin and SMF all have bridges that hook the user tables together with Mambo/Joomla!

But they don't port e107 forums, last I checked. 
SMF would be optimal.  But there isn't an e107 to SMF conversion.  So the switch to Mambo/Joomla! ceases to be an option.

hi there.

i needed to convert from e107 to mambo/joomla, so i've wrote a java program to do the conversion. it converts chatbox messages, links, news, and content (articles, reviews, ...).
the limitations are:
- it doesn't convert e107 forum
- all news/articles/reviews will appear to be written by a single person (you must supply it's id when running the program)
- all chatbox messages / comments will appear to be written be unregistred users (the table will contain only the username of the user, and not its id)
for chatbox, you'll need to have shoutit module installed
for comments, you'll need the com_moscom0p585 component
i've tested it on my own database, and it works fine. if anyone is interesed about it, leave me a reply.

Rats... it's the forum and news that are most important.

Can't do one without the other. 

[me=supern00b]is still looking.[/me]

I'm interested.

actually, i've converted my java program to php, so it can be runned on the server side... i'll be back soon with details

I'd definitely be interested too. 

the conversion scripts were written for a specific e107 installation, so the is no guarantee that this will work in all the cases
before running this on a live site installation, i'll suggest to run the scripts on a test database, to see if anything works fine.

for any questions... i'll be here

SORRY ABOUT MY ENGLISH, this is not my native language


INSTRUCTIONS:
first of all, read the comment in the header of each php file

when converting from java to php, i've skipped the chatbox conversion
if anyone wants to migrate chatbox from e107 to shoutit in joomla, i'll send him the java program to do this

when migrating, the content of the items will be parsed to remove invalid characters
(the valid characters are defined in utils.php)

category update count array:
in joomla, the category items are held into a table, and has a field which specified
how many items exists for this category
when an item is added to a category, this field is incremented by 1
when importing from e107 to joomla, you can specify if this field should be incremented
for each item inserted:
- in case of news, the $catUpdateCountArray should contain all the category news in joomla specified in $catIdArray(in the values list, not in the keys list)
- same for content

in e107 news table, a news item has two fields: body and extended.
when extended field for a news item is void, then the script does the following:
extended = body
body = first 512 chars of the body

in this case, when the news will be displayed in joomla, the first 512 chars of
the body will appear to be repeating once. to resolve the problem, you'll have
to go to the admin section, to the detail of the news item, and set the
show intro = false (in the right side of the screen)


for migrating content items:
the php script selects the content items from e107, one by one
for each one, it searches for the user in e107 that have written that item
then, the script searches in joomla users list the user with the same email address as the one before (from e107)
if the script doesn't find such as a corresponding user, then the item in joomla will appear to be written
by the user with $authorId (i've set here the adminId )

can the scripts be downloaded from somewhere?

take a look at my post above... there is an attached archive containing all the scripts

oh my Goodness, I am obviously blind as a bat!  I kept looking up and down your post for it and didn't see it at all! Thanks!

Many thanks alexalecu  pink, You must be logged in to download this file.

I am pretty sure I was logged in - it was user error! 

It seems to work fine, anyway running content.php i get:



and:



in news.php

What i'm doing wrong?

Thanks in advance

PS: alexalecu, do you know how to import "links" from postnuke?

I could use some extra help here, where do the parameters for the databases go? This is a standalone script and i shouldn't install it on either platforms or should I?

If I could just import all news items i'd be more than happy (are images taken along with the articles themselves?)

All feedback is very much appreciated!

The php files are standalone scripts; the parameters for databases (e107 db and joomla db) must be set in every php file (the are 2 arrays: db1Params and db2Params).
As I remember, the script don't import any file... just entries from one db to another.

Hi!

Is the utils.php right file to get the users from e107 to Joomla?

Thank you in advance,
Henri

I don't remember how did I migrated the users from e107 to joomla, but looking at the utils.php file, there is a method named getUsers that maps e107 users to joomla users (based on the email address), and i guess that i've used it to assign each joomla item (news, content, etc) to the same user as in e107.