Phpbb conversion

Community Ruby-Forum
1

I’m not looking at converting until 0.2 is out. But, I’m wondering if
anyone knows what would be involved in converting the content from an
existing phpbb installation over to RForum.

Also, it’s fairly important that I somehow keep a similar interface
(alternating colors for each line, same color style sitewide). Can I
get this done with CSS?

Additionally, if I were to add a rails based Wiki, how hard would it be
to have the RForum and Wiki authenticate against the same user table?

2

signal15 wrote:

I’m not looking at converting until 0.2 is out.

You can use the current version from the repository. There won’t be any
incompatible changes in the data structure, the only thing missing for
0.2 is some documentation and cleanup.

But, I’m wondering if
anyone knows what would be involved in converting the content from an
existing phpbb installation over to RForum.

I have written a converter script for my own forum:
http://rforum.andreas-s.net/trac/file/trunk/script/import_mikrocontroller.net.rb
Writing something similar for phpBB should be pretty straightforward.

Also, it’s fairly important that I somehow keep a similar interface
(alternating colors for each line, same color style sitewide). Can I
get this done with CSS?

Alternating line colors are possible with CSS.

Additionally, if I were to add a rails based Wiki, how hard would it be
to have the RForum and Wiki authenticate against the same user table?

That depends on the Wiki, but in general it should not be a big problem.

3

Isn’t the PHPBB structure completely different than the RForum
structure?

I corruped my database awhile back and had to fix it, and I had nothing
but problems because literally everything is “intertwined.” PHPBB has
fields in tables that tell posts what other data they are linked to, so
not only will I just have to move data, but I think I will have to
modify it also. Let me know if you think I’m wrong, I frequently am.
:slight_smile:

As far as RForum vs. PHPBB goes, can you think of any major features
that are missing besides Private messaging?

I will try intalling it this weekend on a test machine and see if I can
get things converted. I’m primarily sick of PHPBB because of all of the
security problems I have to patch against. The code looks like
spaghetti, and it’s nearly impossible to figure out what’s going on in
it when I want to make changes.

4

signal15 wrote:

Isn’t the PHPBB structure completely different than the RForum
structure?

Yes. Converting “in place” won’t work, but that’s completely
unnecessary. You just have to write a script that iterates over all
forums, topics and posts in the phpBB database and inserts them in the
RForum database. Really no big deal, even if phpBB has ugly table
structures.

As far as RForum vs. PHPBB goes, can you think of any major features
that are missing besides Private messaging?

A lot of small gimmicks that phpBB has are missing in RForum, but I
can’t think of any major features. Post markup formatting maybe, but
that is trivial to implement (one-liner).

I will try intalling it this weekend on a test machine and see if I can
get things converted. I’m primarily sick of PHPBB because of all of the
security problems I have to patch against. The code looks like
spaghetti, and it’s nearly impossible to figure out what’s going on in
it when I want to make changes.

That’s the problem with most forum softwares I tried. But phpBB is
probably the worst.