Hey Giovanna,

It makes sense to me to combine the two, and he is right not seeing an issue with having users on your blog, and yes the login is through WP or a WP plugin so no problems there.

If you are currently just considering it then it’s probably worth starting by taking a quick look at the Codex entry on How to Move SP to a new Server or Domain. It’s a light read, a pretty straightforward process and something many people have done with no problems.

And of course we are here to help 😉

Ike, I only had a very quick look. I intend to do this first toward a test-blog, which is not online, so to check everything and any implication I cannot think of.

What I cannot understand is the users: how do I (and can I) move the current forum users from one site to the other? Thanks!

To break it down to the basics, all the forum information is moved / exported from within the database specifically the tables with the sf prefix (although these will have your own prefix i.e xxx_sfposts).

You also need to include the WordPress users and usermeta tables, so all user information is included and forum activity like posts all tie up to the correct users.

ok! I was not sure that to recreate the users under the other blog it was sufficient just to transfer some tables! In any case I only have a few users now, that’s why I am thinking, before I go live with the forum, to perform this change. If something were to go very wrong it would be little damage 😉

Thanks!

Even better! It definitely sounds low risk.. I’ve never done it myself but as far as I can work out there’s no reason you’d have to take your current forum down, just set up the new one and import the relevant information.

Best of luck if you decide to go ahead, shout if you have any further questions of course.

Great, thanks!! 🙂

We will be here if you any more questions

Hello!
Finally I get to do the test of moving my forum onto my test-blog. I have 2 questions:

1. On the receiving test blog I have installed SP and so far only the Reboot theme. Then I stopped and decided to ask you if I am doing the right thing: do I have to install SP, themes and SP plugins before moving the tables?

2. Also: when the users’ tables are copied… what happens to the users in the receiving blog?

I will not do the table copy myself as on the blog I will not be given access to the phpadmin. The blog support people will do it for me. If there is anything else you can think useful which is not described in the FAQ please let me know. Thanks!

On the first point then yes – I think it is a good idea to have the software in place and ready.

On the second question then this can become very complicated indeed. if you have active users and DIFFERENT active users on both sites then there will be problems because their IDs will not match up. Simple:Press uses, as you know, the WordPress users and usermeta tables and therefore the user_ID used throughout WordPress. And there can bot be 2 users with the same ID of course. There is no simple answer to this…

ok, so as regards point 1 I will install and configure the receiving blog exactly the same as the current forum

For the second: on the receiving blog I have only the administrator user of the blog which is automatically admin of the forum, and no one else. Does this help?

Also: I don’t have many users and could ask them to make their user again or I could make them myself. But I would mind to lose all the posts…

if you are okay with losing all the posts, what are you trying to move?  if you could lose all the content, wouldnt it be easier? or do you still want the groups and forums?  how many are there? sorry, cant view site on this computer (company blocking)…

If you need some data (ie groups forums), I would just move the data and then use the prune database plugin to remove all the topics/posts…

Hi Mr Papa,

I said “I would mind to lose all the posts”, quite the opposite…: is the content I don’t want to lose or I would think of “moving”. I think there is some misunderstanding.

So far I have 1 group and about 30 between forums and subforums, so I don’t mind to recreate the users manually, or ask the users to recreate their logins. But then, after moving only the Simple Press tables (not the users’) is there a way to associate the users’ ids manually? Sorry I don’t know neither the WP db nor the SP one too well…

Let’s concentrate on the target database.

You say it only has the one user – the site admin. Is this the same site admin as on the source (forum) site and do they have the same user ID?

If they DO then when you import the users and usermeta tables from the source database do NOT import that particular users records – leaving that users data already in the target database. SO in iother words ONKY import all the other users.

If the ID is NOT the same then come on back and we will think again.

Oh ok, you see I don’t know anything about the database itself and didn’t know that it’s possible to exclude some ids when copying the tables!

My guess is that the ids will not be the same, as it would be such a coincidence! I can only check the id on the current forum, but for the receiving end I need to check with the support people as I cannot access phpadmin there. I will do that.

But let me ask another thing. First I set some names so we can talk about this issue without being too verbose.

Lets call the current website with the forum SOURCE and the receving blog TARGET 😀

In SOURCE I have currently one administrator of the website which is also the admin of the SP forum. All other users are members, currently there about 10 active and the rest can be left behind.

In TARGET as said earlier, I only have the admin of the blog which is now also the admin of the SP forum.

If the admins ids on both SOURCE and TARGET are different what is the problem? I will surely end up with 2 admins on the TARGET right? Then I can use WordPress to change the user’s right.

Hope I explained myself…