Luckily the open source community had my back and after a lot of research I was able to find and get working several conversion scripts that I found online, these scripts with a little love will help you get out of that musty old perl-based UBB classic forum, once and for all.

The code (UBB.x_Convertor_0.1.1) that I found will work with all flavors of UBB forums, UBB.classic, UBB.threads and UBB.x, it will allow you to convert to phpBB 2.0.x, I used 2.0.23 and have included phpBB 2.0.23 for your convenience, I have also attached all of the other referenced documents for you as well.

Convert UBB Classic 6.7.2 to phpBB 2.0.x
This is where the magic of the script that I found really shines, it reads the data from the UBB forum and flawlessly converts that data into phpBB and stores it in the MySQL database that phpBB is using, previously as most of you are aware, UBB uses flat files to store the forum data, finally getting that information into a database is exciting! I have also included some other converter code originally developed by Genfect Media, which was the converter code that Graham Eames used to develop the working version (UBB.x Convertor 0.1.1) that I used.

Convert phpBB 2.0.x to phpBB 3.0.x
Once you have converted your forum to phpBB 2.0.x, you are going to need to perform an upgrade to phpBB 3.0.x. This should be fairly simple and straightforward, just follow any phpBB upgrade documentation on their website to accomplish this conversion to a 3.0.x forum, here is a copy of phpBB 3.0.6 for you to download and use.

Convert UBB phpBB 3.0.x to Kunena 1.5.6
Once the forum has been upgraded to phpBB 3.0.x, you are now ready to convert it over to Kunena 1.5.6. Now this script was originally created to convert the phpBB data to a Fireboard forum, but since Kunena was developed from Fireboard, most of the infrastructure framework is the same still and I was able to successfully convert over to Kunena.

The important thing to note is that this script may require a little hacking to make it work for your specific environment, one thing I specifically remember having to adjust were the memory settings in my php.ini. This all depends on the amount of forum data that you’re working with though, make sure to also adjust the runtime of PHP scripts, as it could also take a while to run.

During my research I also came across this other conversion code, this may be helpful to you if you are having trouble with the converting the data. There is also good news if you’re wanting to go with a vBulletin solution in the long run instead of Kunena as the guys over at vBulletin have included their own conversion script for migrating directly from UBB to vBulletin.

< ?php

// Hande form upload
if(isset($_POST['import'])) {

$mysql_host = trim($_POST['mysql_host']);
$mysql_user = trim($_POST['mysql_username']);
$mysql_password = trim($_POST['mysql_password']);
$mysql_schema = trim($_POST['mysql_schema']);

$table_prefix = trim($_POST['table_prefix']);

if(!mysql_connect($mysql_host, $mysql_user, $mysql_password) || !mysql_select_db($mysql_schema)) {
echo ‘Supplied MySQL details were incorrect - aborting’;
return;
}

// Get the joomla groups
$sql = sprintf(‘
SELECT  `id`, `value`
FROM    `%score_acl_aro_groups`
‘,
$table_prefix
);
$rs = mysql_query($sql);
$groups = array();
while($group = mysql_fetch_object($rs)) {
$groups[$group->value] = $group->id;
}

$fp = fopen($_FILES['csv']['tmp_name'], ‘r’);
while($user = fgetcsv($fp)) {

printf(‘Importing ”%s” … ’, $user[0]);

// Lookup and verify user group
if(!isset($groups[$user[4]])) {
printf(‘error: Invalid group (%s) for %s. Defaulting to Registered%s’, $user[4], $user[0], PHP_EOL);
$user[4] = ‘Registered’;
}

// Insert record into wsers
$sql = sprintf(‘
INSERT INTO `%susers`
SET
`name`            = ”%s”,
`username`        = ”%s”,
`email`           = ”%s”,
`password`        = ”%s”,
`usertype`        = ”%s”,
`block`           = ”%s”,
`sendEmail`       = ”%s”,
`gid`             = ”%s”,
`registerDate`    = NOW(),
`lastvisitDate`   = ”0000-00-00 00:00:00″,
`activation`      = ”",
`params`          = ”"
‘,
$table_prefix,
sql_prep($user[0]),
sql_prep($user[1]),
sql_prep($user[2]),
isset($_POST['md5_passwords']) ? md5($user[3]) : sql_prep($user[3]),
sql_prep($user[4]),
sql_prep($user[5]),
sql_prep($user[6]),
$groups[$user[4]]
);
mysql_query($sql);
// Get back ther user’s ID
list($user_id) = mysql_fetch_row(mysql_query(‘SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID()’));

// Insert record into core_acl_aro
$sql = sprintf(‘
INSERT INTO `%score_acl_aro`
SET
`section_value`   = ”users”,
`value`           = %d,
`name`            = ”%s”
‘,
$table_prefix,
$user_id,
sql_prep($user[0])
);
mysql_query($sql);

// Insert record into core_acl_groups_aro_map
$sql = sprintf(‘
INSERT INTO `%score_acl_groups_aro_map`
SET
`group_id`        = %d,
`aro_id`          = LAST_INSERT_ID()
‘,
$table_prefix,
$groups[$user[4]]
);
mysql_query($sql);

echo ‘done.’;
flush();
}

echo ‘

Done’;

} else {
// show upload form
?>

Import Users to Joomla


Use this script to do a bulk import of users into Joomla 1.5.
Upload a CSV file with the following format:

name, username, email, password, usertype, block, send_email

Wrap details with commas in them in quotes.






CSV File: 




MD5 Hash Passwords: 

*Check this option if the passwords in your CSV are in plain text


Joomla Table Prefix: 




Joomla Database Name: 




MySQL Host: 




MySQL Username: 




MySQL Password: 












< ?php
}

function sql_prep($var) {
return mysql_real_escape_string($var);
}
?>