My friends set up THREE phpBB forums. However, we want to close down two and move the contents of the two closedowns to the one that will remain. All posts, users, PMs, settings, etc. will be transferred and viewable to one forum.
Any way to do this?
Merging three forums
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bicostp
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Not easily. The problem stems from the fundamental way databases work.
Each installation has its own set of ID numbers for its members and posts, among other things. These numbers will conflict if you simply merge the databases, making the most recent change (not necessarily the newest content) the permanent change.
Your friend would have to close down all the forums and export the database contents, and manually edit them so they seamlessly converge. (That is, no gaps in the ID numbers). Even then, you'll have all the old inside links that will be messed up, and you'll more than likely get redundant copies of members, if they signed up on more than one.
The best thing to do is completely lock the two least used of the forums and tell everyone to go to the 'main' forum.
Each installation has its own set of ID numbers for its members and posts, among other things. These numbers will conflict if you simply merge the databases, making the most recent change (not necessarily the newest content) the permanent change.
Your friend would have to close down all the forums and export the database contents, and manually edit them so they seamlessly converge. (That is, no gaps in the ID numbers). Even then, you'll have all the old inside links that will be messed up, and you'll more than likely get redundant copies of members, if they signed up on more than one.
The best thing to do is completely lock the two least used of the forums and tell everyone to go to the 'main' forum.
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I don't know phpBB, so someone with more experience with that would be able to elaborate more. I'm database guy (Oracle, all day baby!) and do stuff like this to no end.
It's hard to explain, but what you can do is put the data from the different forums in different ranges. Let's call the remaining forum the "target" and the others as "sources". If in a specific table the target database has IDs from 1 - 9000, then when you move the data from the first source increase it's IDs by 10000 (just to be safe). This will prevent overlaps. Repeat for the second source.
This assumes that they use synthetic (numerical, incrementing, unique) IDs for their primary keys. If not, it gets quite a bit more complicated.
It's hard to explain, but what you can do is put the data from the different forums in different ranges. Let's call the remaining forum the "target" and the others as "sources". If in a specific table the target database has IDs from 1 - 9000, then when you move the data from the first source increase it's IDs by 10000 (just to be safe). This will prevent overlaps. Repeat for the second source.
This assumes that they use synthetic (numerical, incrementing, unique) IDs for their primary keys. If not, it gets quite a bit more complicated.