Guide for migrating articles ONLY

[rand486]

Let's make this clear. I offer zero warranty on anything here. I am simply trying to help out those who aren't technical. Don't turn the migration rage on me if it doesn't work for you.

The following steps worked perfectly for me.

EDIT: As discussed below, I should point out: This does NOT add the new features of Joomla 1.6 automatically into your articles. This is a dump of your old site articles into a fresh install of Joomla 1.6. To set the new features up on the imported articles, you'll need to edit the global parameters or individually set them on each article.

1) BACK UP! Make a full back up of your site. This should always, always, always be the first thing you do any time you migrate, upgrade, install or uninstall anything.

2) Access phpmyadmin (usually at yourdomain.com/phpmyadmin - if it's not there, contact your hosting provider)

3) Click on the database that your Joomla 1.5 website is saved in. For this practice, we'll call it "j15"

4) Click Export (up at the top, towards the right)

5) In the Export box, you'll see all the jos_ tables selected. Find jos_content and select ONLY jos_content (in blue).

6) Go to the bottom, check the checkbox that says "Save as File"

7) Name your file in the text box below the checkbox labelled: "File name template1"

8 ) In the bottom right is a button that says "Go". Click that.

9) A prompt will come up, asking you to save the file. Do so, and remember where you saved it and what you named it.

10) Go to your freshly installed Joomla 1.6 site's database. (We're still in phpmyadmin here)

11) Click import

12) In the box that says: File to import, find the button that says "Browse"

13) Find your file from the export steps.

14) In the bottom right, click Go. (There is a special case here if you have a very large site, see below)

15) All should be good. Log into the backend of your 1.6 install, click Article Manager, and they should all be there. Done!

** Special Case **
If your exported .sql file is over 2 MB, you might not be able to import it. In my case, I have full control over my web server, so I went to my php.ini file and increased the line "post_max_size = 2M" to be 8M instead. After importing, I set it back to 2M. Your mileage may vary here, depending on the size of your .sql file, and the level of access you have to your web server.

[rand486]

I'm working on menus next, they take more work, but I'll repost here once I get em working.

[Tarun]

Does this also preserve article aliases as well?

[rand486]

Does this also preserve article aliases as well?

Yup. It's a field in the jos_content table, so it also gets preserved.

[Tarun]

Nice work.

I hope this can hold true for menus, modules and a few other items.

[rand486]

So far, it isn't. But I'm keeping a list of what I have to do to migrate menus and modules, and working on it as we speak.

[Tarun]

Kudos for your efforts. Would be more than happy to give you some positive reputation on the forums if any such thing existed.

I wonder if this information may be worth sharing with the jUpgrade team? (Some of their menu upgrading has improved I've noticed, but article aliases are not retained, modules still not retained fully, etc).

[deleted user]

While a dump of the old _content table will work, just importing it into a 1.6 database will cause issues as you'll be missing critical fields to make the software function.

Take a look at the diff_15_to_16.sql file that's shipped in the installation/sql/mysql directory. Under the #__content section you'll see the fields that need to be added to make use of the new ACL, multi-language features, and refactored "featured" articles.

[rand486]

Agreed, mbabker.

I should've been clear that this is an sql dump of the old data into the new.

There are indeed new fields, but those can then be set in the article manager. This will introduce the new features to each article as you access them in the manager.

This is NOT the best solution, but it's a start for those that simply can't wait for the migrator. I just thought it would be useful for the subset of Joomla users that keep crying that the migrator hasn't arrived yet.

[deleted user]

Indeed, it will be very helpful to those who have a need for it. I'm not 100% certain whether or not your method is creating a new table or adding the data into the 1.6 content table; if the latter, then there shouldn't be an issue at all.

[rand486]

The latter

I said import it into a new install, and phpmyadmin doesn't write the .sql backups to replace the table unless you specifically tell it to. It's an extra option not included in my steps (on purpose)

[diavolo32]

Agreed, mbabker.

I should've been clear that this is an sql dump of the old data into the new.

There are indeed new fields, but those can then be set in the article manager. This will introduce the new features to each article as you access them in the manager.

This is NOT the best solution, but it's a start for those that simply can't wait for the migrator. I just thought it would be useful for the subset of Joomla users that keep crying that the migrator hasn't arrived yet.

Oh, thank you for a partial solution, but maybe you must advise in your first post that it has a partial solution and sure there must be some more things to do. A newbie user or people with no experiencie in Joomla can have a bad day. But, anyway, thank you for your guide, i'll wait until the migration process works with low risks.