VanillaPorter 2.3 Help | Porting IP.Board 3.3.0

Echelon · April 2017

Hello everyone, Thanks ahead of time to anyone who can help me out.

I'm trying to port over forums/users from IP.Board 3.3.0, I stuck the Vanilla2export.php in my main IP.Board directory and gave it 0777 permissions to run.

After navigating to host/forums/vanilla2export.php and providing it with the mysql host, ibf_ prefix, login/pass with Export Type "All supported data" with Avatars and Files unchecked, then clicking "Begin Export" I'm getting the following error:

select TagID, '0' as CategoryID, tag_meta_id as DiscussionID, t.tag_added
from ibf_core_tags t
left join z_tag zt on t.tag_text = zt.FullName;Illegal mix of collations (utf8_unicode_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_general_ci,IMPLICIT) for operation '='

Error in forums/vanilla2export.php line 1203: (1024) Illegal mix of collations (utf8_unicode_ci,IMPLICIT) and (utf8_general_ci,IMPLICIT) for operation '='

How can I get past this? I'm not that good with mysql nor do I understand this error fully.

K17 · April 2017

I didn't have experience in IP.B (just moderation) but I will try to help.
First of all, make a backups of your database.
Next, I think that your database contrains table encodés in utf8_unicode_ci and Vanilla need it to utf8_general_ci.
This is what I understand.

Echelon · April 2017

Hey, Thanks. I converted the database to utf8_general_ci and the exporter was able to proceed!

There's one more remaining problem, I get a:
" Error in forums/vanilla2export.php line 8252: (1024) Source avatar folder '' does not exist. Even though there is an avatar folder?

Is there a way to configure or set that folder?

Thanks!

Echelon · April 2017

Hm, Odd. In a lot of posts I am seeing both double usernames and HTML
tags visible as well and not taken into account. is there any way to fix that?

if I make a new post with a line break
, it works fine. But old converted posts just display it in plain text.

K17 · April 2017

Oh. Can you tell us:

Wich editor do you use
With wich Input formatter

Please ^^

JDBArtist · April 2017

@Echelon said:
Hm, Odd. In a lot of posts I am seeing both double usernames and HTML
tags visible as well and not taken into account. is there any way to fix that?

if I make a new post with a line break
, it works fine. But old converted posts just display it in plain text.

I also did a migration from IP Board 3 to Vanilla and am facing the issue with HTML Tags in posts being visible.
Could someone give a solution to this?

JDBArtist · April 2017

I seem to have it fixed for me. I noticed that my private messages where showing up correctly.
In case you experience the same (messed up Posts/Threads, working Private Messages) you might want to try what I did:

Open the Vanilla Database
Check your ConversationMessages Table
The Column you are looking for is Format, since I did an IP Board import mine was set to IPB
Check your Discussions and Comments Table, here my Format was set to BBCode
Run an Update Query on the Discussion and Comments Table updating the Format Fields to IPB and your HTML should be rendered correctly in your existing Posts and Discussions.

This made it work for me, hope it helps you too!

R_J · April 2017

@JDBArtist said:
5. Run an Update Query on the Discussion and Comments Table updating the Format Fields to IPB and your HTML should be rendered correctly in your existing Posts and Discussions.

This made it work for me, hope it helps you too!

It works, but just because "IPB" is not a valid format and so it defaults to Html

Valid possibilities for format are:
BBCode
Html
Wysiwyg
Markdown
Text

So just in case the default may change at one time in the future, I would suggest that you change format to "Html"

JDBArtist · April 2017

Thanks for the Update. I figured since it was automatically assigned after the import, it would be a valid format. I updated it to Html just in case. Thank you

R_J · April 2017

BBCode is valid, but it doesn't "allow" HTML tags, they are just echoed as they are. How has that been in your forum? Did your forum had BBCode mixed with HTML?

Echelon · April 2017

@K17

HeidiSQL Editor
Input Formatter? Unsure

@JDBArtist and @R_J
I ran both:
update GDN_Discussion set Format = 'Html';
and
update GDN_Comment set Format = 'Html';
^^ But this resulted in BB Code being displayed in posts but HTML working fine.

1) It does seem I have mixed HTML and BBCode in posts?

Now I'll see things like: [u][b]Text here![/b][/u] but I won't see
html tags.
If I switch back to BBCode Format, I'll see the html tags again but not BBCode.

I tried using the NBBC plugin, with the format set to Html, but it didn't seem to help.

2) Usernames appear "doubled" at times, where some users names will show twice in posts / threads. Odd.

Thanks for all the help so far!

Echelon · April 2017

Double displayed names like this:

R_J · April 2017

I have seen that "doubled" user names before. I guess it happens when the users avatar cannot be displayed for whatever reason (company firewall?)

R_J · April 2017

Concerning the BBCode/HTML problem: it looks as if IPB allows a mixture of HTML and BBCode, which is not allowed in Vanilla. That's why you get either one or the other which looks quite poor.

But now you are dealing with Vanilla, you will soon find out that Vanilla is the king of customization! Please create the file /conf/bootstrap.before.php and paste the following lines into that file

<?php

/**
 * Converts posts with BBCode and HTML to HTML for display.
 *
 * Will only work if there is a custom BBCode formatter which allows
 * preserving HTML code.
 */
if (!function_exists('gdn_formatter_IPB')) {
    function gdn_formatter_IPB($mixed) {
        // Get custom BBCode formatter.
        $BBCodeFormatter = Gdn::factory('BBCodeFormatter');
        if (is_object($BBCodeFormatter)) {
            // Tell the formatter not to touch HTML!
            $BBCodeFormatter->nbbc()->setEscapeContent(false);
            // Convert BBCode.
            $mixed = $BBCodeFormatter->format($mixed);
        }
        // Do the normal HTML conversion.
        return Gdn_Format::to($mixed, 'Html');
    }
}

If the file already existed, you can skip the first line.

The last thing to do is to change the Format column to IPB, which is now a known custom format. Isn't that sweet?

Linc · April 2017

Yeah, that's the avatars showing their alt text. Possibly you didn't bring them over / modify their paths. Not all the Porter packages can do that.

R_J · April 2017

@Echelon & @JDBArtist
And would you please be so kind and report back if that solved those BBCode/HTML markup problems?

Echelon · April 2017

Thanks again for everyone's help so far, wanted to say that first before continuing:

@R_J and @Linc

1) [Double names / Avatar Issues]

That's exactly what happened, for some reason when I ported over the DB, in renamed the filenames to peoples avatars for some reason, say for my avatar, it was "av3.jpg" but it inserted a "p" infront like "pav3.jpg" , unsure why the porter did that.

To test, I renamed the actual .jpg from av3.jpg to pav3.jpg, I still saw a double name of my user account.

**Fixed it by going to Edit Profile --> Edit my Thumbnail and defining my thumbnail. This removed the double name so I suppose every user once I fully port over the forums will need to do that, unless somehow I can set a "default" thumbnail for users until they set their own, to prevent double names.

2) [BBCode/HTML Markup issues]

I tried your fix @R_J, It worked great with one issue which I think is my converted DB's fault after using your custom php and defining format to IPB! As far as not showing BBCode OR showing HTML now, it's great! Really neat that Vanilla is so open to customization.

The issue is that a ton of user comments in the forum will look like this:

Hello!<br />
<br />
Wordswordswords<br />
<br />
Foofoofoofoo<br />
<br />

(They'll have double html line breaks for some reason? 2x "br /" tags)

R_J · April 2017

Not sure if I am able to help with that. Could you give an example from out of your database which gets this doubled line breaks? Enclose what you post with three tildes like that so that it doesn't get converted:

~~~
bla bla
~~~

Linc · April 2017

I edited the post to add a code block.

Echelon · April 2017

@Linc @R_J

Here's another example:
(These are forums for a non-profit/free/Independent game. Which is why Vanilla is especially a good option due to having 0 revenue and prior forum solutions costing out of pocket money, Which is also why our IPB Version is so old and vulnerable to many exploits and attacks!
Don't worry I won't post which game as to not advertise etc.)

Hi everyone,<br />
<br />
We&#39;ll be holding a meeting<br />
<br />
Let&#39;s make the meeting Sunday<br />
<br />
We need to provide more feedback on pressing matters like rulesets, etc. and discuss whether we have the resources and time to get X Feature out the door<br />
As well as:<br />
- item 1<br />
- item 2<br />
- item 3<br />
- item 4<br />
- item 5

I looked at a pre-converted forums DB from IPB, and it has the same kind of formatting. (From the same forum and IPB 3.3.0 version)

In the original IPB 3.3.0 forums as displayed by a web browser it looks like the below, which is weird since those line breaks are there in the database even for the items 1-4:

Hi everyone,

We'll be holding a meeting

Let's make the meeting Sunday

We need to provide more feedback on pressing matters like rulesets, etc. and discuss whether we have the resources and time to get X Feature out the door
As well as:

item 1
item 2
item 3
item 4
item 5

Echelon · April 2017

*The items 1-5 on the original forums are not bulleted or spaced like that sorry, they have just a text "-" in front of them. It's more like the below with no space under As well as and item 1:

As well as:
item 1
item 2
item 3
item 4
item 5