In the last year though I have become dissatisfied and wanted to look elsewhere for something newer and that would at some point blend in easily with this blog. I don’t know if you have ever looked at the code behind SMF or the way themes are handled but after working with WordPress it is a painful experience.

The additional thing that had to be dealt with was the migration of data that had accumulated over the years on the existing SMF forums. This was issue was further hampered by the fact that I was running a beta; followed by the Release Candidate, of their version 2.0.

While there might have been importers that could handle importing the 1.x version tree at the time I first started looking around it was a different story when it came to 2.0. Granted this was to be expected and it resulted in me postponing any further thought of changing software.

Then a couple of months ago I decided that there was no more postponing – the time had come to find an alternative. The prime concern was that it had to be compatible with WordPress and that there be some kind of roadmap going forward that would allow for building a real community oriented destination point.

After looking at the alternatives I decided to go forward with bbPress even though at the time I began working with it there was some question as to its future. After spending some time in both the bbPress forums and the IRC channel I felt confident that there was a future for the software and it was heading in a direction that suited my own future plans.

The big question now was what I was going to do about the existing forum data. There was no easy path for converting from SMF to bbPress but after much testing and dry runs I did find a method that works. It is that method that I will start documenting in a series of future posts.

It isn’t an easy process and it definitely isn’t for n00bs (sorry but it isn’t). However I will provide all the working files that I used to convert from an SMF 2.0 RC1 set of forums to a bbPress 1.0.2 forums.

I will be opening up a dedicated forum for those looking at going through this painful process so I can offer assistance and we can help each other.

It ain’t a pretty process but it works – as you can see.

Converting SMF forums to bbPress – the process is a post from: winextra
Follow us on Twitter: @WinExtra | Don't forget we're on Facebook as well: WinExtra Fans

Related posts:

1. [SMF to bbPress] The conversion is done now for the real hard work
2. The agony of web forums and the road to conversion
3. Adding Clicky Web Analytics to your web forums
4. PJ’s Forum Round-Up 26.10.08

It took some time but I finally settled on using bbPress as the replacement for SMF but there was one big problem that I had to beat before that could happen.

How to keep the existing years worth of data from the SMF powered forums and convert it to a format bbPress could use. At first I was really disheartened as there is not one-to-one conversion available. It was only after doing a lot of searching on Bing that a solution presented itself – it wasn’t pretty nor was it easy but there was a solution.

It involved converting SMF 2.0 RC 1 to phpBB 3 and then converting that over to bbPress. There was still a lot of fancy footwork to do as nothing is ever simple or easy but I managed to do it.

I will be pulling all my notes and screen shots together over the next few days and posting about the whole process. In the meantime here are some before and after shots.

Before: SMF version of the WinExtra Community Forums

After: The new bbPress powered WinExtra Community Forums

[SMF to bbPress] The conversion is done now for the real hard work is a post from: winextra
Follow us on Twitter: @WinExtra | Don't forget we're on Facebook as well: WinExtra Fans

Related posts:

1. The agony of web forums and the road to conversion
2. PJ’s Forum Round-up 7.10.08
3. PJ’s Forum Round-Up 2.11.08
4. PJ’s Forum Round-up 28.9.08

Currently the forums are being powered by a forums package developed by Simple Machine Forums (SMF) and have for the most part served the purpose. However I have lately become very dissatisfied with SMF and started looking for alternatives.

This is one of the things that has been keeping me exceedingly busy and not posting as much here. That will be changing as soon as I finish up with this conversion project.

After being so immersed in WordPress for the blogging software I use I have come to really appreciate the ease of use, extensibility and many other benefits that come with it. In contrast SMF, and to a large percentage, has become old feeling and incredibly hard to work with. Not to mention the fact that SMF itself has been in v2.0 development for going on 2 years with no final release in sight.

With all this I figured it was time to look around to see what I could replace it with and possibly bring a more Web 2.0 look and feel to the forums; but without alienating our current members (who honestly aren’t the biggest fans of all this Web 2.0 crap for which I love ‘em – it helps keep me real).

However there is a really big problem when it comes to switching forum software – your data. People talk about things like Facebook and other social media networks being a walled garden of user data – well forums have exactly the same problem, you will grow gray hair trying to convert data between forum packages.

It is further compounded by two additional problems. The first being that the v2.0 of SMF I am running is still in beta (or release candidate as they call the most recent release) which makes finding any converters almost impossible. The second problem is that the forum package I settled on, bbPress 1.0, has no direct conversion path from SMF.

There is good news though. I have managed – in testing – to make that conversion and so far everything is testing out great. I plan on pulling all the pieces together in a series of posts about the experience along with a full in depth how-to for those people looking to go down the same road.

All said and done though the gray hairs gained through all this will be worth it and I’m really excited on what the future will bring to the WinExtra Community Forums once the change is completed – here’s hoping you will be as well.

The agony of web forums and the road to conversion is a post from: winextra
Follow us on Twitter: @WinExtra | Don't forget we're on Facebook as well: WinExtra Fans

Related posts:

1. Adding Clicky Web Analytics to your web forums
2. Starting the road back
3. PJ’s Forum Round-up 28.9.08
4. PJ’s Forum Round-up 7.10.08