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Importing BP profiles into SP profiles

TO ToySoldiersUnite
ToySoldiersUnite
Member
Member since Nov 2012
31 posts
Jul 11, 2014 · 4:33 am · Edited

So we’re wanting to dump Buddypress altogether at the moment, and just use Simplepress. (Codemonkey made a replacement for groups, which was the only thing we were holding onto).

We’d like to move user profile data (custom fields and such) over to the simplepress profiles. This includes avatars.

I did notice that the SP photo album only takes links to pictures, rather than allowing a user to upload them, which poses a problem.

How would you suggest we go about this import? Is it a matter of copy & pasting, running a cron job, or something more taxing?

4 Answers

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YS Yellow Swordfish
Yellow Swordfish
Member
Member since Nov 2008
16,437 posts
Jul 11, 2014 · 4:38 am

Before we start – you mention avatars and user photos… Are we talking about both or am I misunderstanding?

Perhaps having more detail on what you want to try and bring over would be a good starting place. Along with 0 of you know – the current storage model that BuddyPress uses for them….

TO ToySoldiersUnite
ToySoldiersUnite
Member
Member since Nov 2012
31 posts
Jul 12, 2014 · 5:44 pm

We can ignore the photo albums for the time being, but getting the avatars over would be a good thing.

This got passed along by our codemonkey:

So as to how BuddyPress stores the custom profile data:

Buddypress uses a combination of of 2 tables in order to store and retrieve the information.
Where Simple Press uses one table row in order to store all the custom fields in a json object.
And saves all the custom data in the normal wp_usermeta table.

Writing a conversion script for this isn’t that hard.

The big difference is that BP allows extra validation rules for the input, as well as a description for the custom fields.
(required or not, and what to insert into the fields)
These things would be nice to have in the custom SP fields as well.

Another problem we found with simplepress (but this could be due to local testing) is that the profile tabs link to index.php.
Rather than show the data in the therefore created box underneath them.

MP Mr Papa
Mr Papa
Member
Member since Dec 2006
19,448 posts
Jul 12, 2014 · 5:47 pm

on your local site, you will want to go to forum – toolbox – housekeeping and reset the profile tabs.. this will fix them locally if they are pointing to the live site (where they could not be included from)…

have you used the custom profile fields plugin for sp?  allows you to create any profile custom field…  and then a template tag lets you show it anywhere… or for avatars, you could hook into the avatar display code and return back the custom avatar…

YS Yellow Swordfish
Yellow Swordfish
Member
Member since Nov 2008
16,437 posts
Jul 13, 2014 · 3:57 am

When it came to additional custom profile data. Simple:Press adopted what was and is the WordPress standard of using the usermeta table. It is not a great design – like most of the WordPress schema it was designed before more professional DB analysts came along and before anyone knew WP would be a success! But t works well enough.

It also means that profile data created by any other plugin that has adopted the same standards can easily be displayed within the SP profile panel by using (as Mr papa said above) the custom profile field plugin we have available. If BuddyPress does not use the WordPress standard profile storage then I have to say I am a little surprised. By the way – I do mean this is for extended profile data – not specific Simple:Press user data.