Hi, I hope this is the right area, I wasn't able to post in the 3.2.x forum, so I came here.. and I seriously need help.
I have a db that Tapatalk sent to me of a forum that I once ran years ago. They made an exception for me due to the death of the root admin who was my brother.
I originally opted to migrate some of the content, but after having done so, I decided that migrating the entire forum would be the right thing to do, so I contacted Tapatalk a few weeks ago, and after talking back and forth, and informing them of the circumstances, they decided to make an exception for me, and agreed to send me the db (for a small fee for the developer's time) and so, I now have the db for the forum my brother and I ran together for years.
And now, the issue.
Tapatalk, is based on an ancient version of PhpBB 3.2.0 and although I have managed to get the db converted and using PhpBB 3.2.0, once I saw that the data was intact*, I then decided to run the MyBB conversion tool, to convert the content to MyBB.
I did this because I plan on merging our former community into my forum, and then reopening it, so that I can continue the community we once ran together and to preserve his legacy.
However, I wasn't able to log in to my admin account after I imported the Tapatalk db onto the forum after having installed PhpBB 3.2.0. In fact the last time I was able to log in, I had just installed a clean copy of PhpBB 3.2.0. I was told by my host support that I could only import this db onto PhpBB 3.2.0.
The reason I jumped right to using the MyBB tool, was because once I had the Tapatalk db imported on to the clean install, I wasn't able to log in to the forum. Not even with my admin account. Before I got the db, I had Tapatalk make my admin account a root admin account so that I could fully access the ACP.. and I changed the password for my brother's account, just in case, I'd have issues with setting it up on the new forum, but I couldn't log into that account either, and the forum itself doesn't send password reset emails either. Changing the password via PhpMyAdmin didn't work either.
*Note: I have no idea if the topics and posts titles transferred over on to PhpBB, because I wasn't able to log in to the forum, so, for PhpBB, I can only assume that the titles were present.
Anyway, back to MyBB, so after I ran the conversion, the avatars and attachments didn't transfer over, but everything else did, however, after I merged the newly converted content into my forum, I noticed that the titles never transferred over.
After I had closed my beta MyBB forum to reorganize the forum and move the converted posts to the new areas, I merged a few of the same topics as a test, from both places, and then I did a recount of the stats and lost like ~30k or so posts.. on top of this, even though I could see the merged posts, they wouldn't come up in the search, and upon checking an affected topic, I noticed that the titles were all blank, including the post titles that replied to it. Once I renamed the topic in question, on my MyBB beta forum, which has a copy of my last backup of my main forum before merging the dbs, it showed up as having been unapproved, or soft-deleted. (this is a possible clue regarding MyBB, and I am just providing context here, not asking for help..)
Luckily, I was cautious enough to have these installs in 3 separate locations on my server, so that, I could compare, without it affecting my main forum.
I checked the topics on my merged beta forum, and MY topics were fine and still had the titles, so this was a PhpBB issue. If it weren't for the fact that the topics titles were shown on the topic index, I wouldn't have been able to recreate them after editing the first post within the topic itself.
Anyway, I re-ran the conversion, this time retracing my steps and making sure I checked the utf-8 setting for the titles, (I didn't before) and I had to look up how to convert one of the tables from InnoDB to MyISAM, and ran the conversion tool once again, but the topic titles STILL never transferred over.. and I have no idea on how I can make this work.
The Tapatalk db I have has close to 90k posts, and my main forum has about 130k or so.. and when I merged them on my beta forum, I was left with 193k posts after everything was said and done, and I suspect the title issue from the Tapatalk db might be the cause, so I would really like to get the topic and post title issue fixed before I try to merge the 2 dbs once again.
My host support suggested that I post here for help as well, while we work on the issue there as well.
Questions..
What would cause this issue to happen? Titles not appearing in the topics or replies, but being shown on the topic index within the [MyBB] forum after conversion?
Is there any way I can get the titles to convert over from the Tapatalk db?
I've searched this issue and saw something that mentioned that PhpBB shows title info differently, and this might be an issue, but I don't remember where I saw this..
I saw another post somewhere that said that this could happen if the forum has a lot of subforums, which was the case, but I don't remember where I saw this post either.. however, if I am able to login to the forum, then I will make it so there are no sub-forums before I try the conversion again.
Is there a way I can partially import the Tapatalk data onto the clean PhpBB 3.2.0 install? I would only need the tables used by the MyBB merge tool.
I was able to do this no problem with MyBB but with PhpBB it didn't work when I tried to do it the same way.. so I am wondering where I went wrong here.
I would like to know how to get the topic and post titles to transfer over from PhpBB to MyBB in the conversion.
I am wondering if I need to upgrade the version of PhpBB to the latest version, before I try converting it to MyBB again.
I am not looking to go with PhpBB, (I have tried to use it both as an admin and user going all the way back to the original version, and I'd much prefer to be a user than an admin with it, and especially as a theme designer) but I am willing to work with it, if I am able to convert it for use with MyBB.
I had to temporarily close my forum while I do this, because the version of PHP that my main forum runs, is incompatible with PhpBB, and when I reinstalled it to try the import again, after having had to set it to the older version of PhpBB that can run 3.2.0, my main forum was inaccessible. I have no way of changing the PHP version for each install, so for now, I've had to shutter both my main and beta forums, to work this Tapatalk/PhpBB situation out.
Thank you for your time, sorry for the very long read (but I needed to be as detailed as possible here) and I'd truly appreciate any help offered.
I have a db that Tapatalk sent to me of a forum that I once ran years ago. They made an exception for me due to the death of the root admin who was my brother.
I originally opted to migrate some of the content, but after having done so, I decided that migrating the entire forum would be the right thing to do, so I contacted Tapatalk a few weeks ago, and after talking back and forth, and informing them of the circumstances, they decided to make an exception for me, and agreed to send me the db (for a small fee for the developer's time) and so, I now have the db for the forum my brother and I ran together for years.
And now, the issue.
Tapatalk, is based on an ancient version of PhpBB 3.2.0 and although I have managed to get the db converted and using PhpBB 3.2.0, once I saw that the data was intact*, I then decided to run the MyBB conversion tool, to convert the content to MyBB.
I did this because I plan on merging our former community into my forum, and then reopening it, so that I can continue the community we once ran together and to preserve his legacy.
However, I wasn't able to log in to my admin account after I imported the Tapatalk db onto the forum after having installed PhpBB 3.2.0. In fact the last time I was able to log in, I had just installed a clean copy of PhpBB 3.2.0. I was told by my host support that I could only import this db onto PhpBB 3.2.0.
The reason I jumped right to using the MyBB tool, was because once I had the Tapatalk db imported on to the clean install, I wasn't able to log in to the forum. Not even with my admin account. Before I got the db, I had Tapatalk make my admin account a root admin account so that I could fully access the ACP.. and I changed the password for my brother's account, just in case, I'd have issues with setting it up on the new forum, but I couldn't log into that account either, and the forum itself doesn't send password reset emails either. Changing the password via PhpMyAdmin didn't work either.
*Note: I have no idea if the topics and posts titles transferred over on to PhpBB, because I wasn't able to log in to the forum, so, for PhpBB, I can only assume that the titles were present.
Anyway, back to MyBB, so after I ran the conversion, the avatars and attachments didn't transfer over, but everything else did, however, after I merged the newly converted content into my forum, I noticed that the titles never transferred over.
After I had closed my beta MyBB forum to reorganize the forum and move the converted posts to the new areas, I merged a few of the same topics as a test, from both places, and then I did a recount of the stats and lost like ~30k or so posts.. on top of this, even though I could see the merged posts, they wouldn't come up in the search, and upon checking an affected topic, I noticed that the titles were all blank, including the post titles that replied to it. Once I renamed the topic in question, on my MyBB beta forum, which has a copy of my last backup of my main forum before merging the dbs, it showed up as having been unapproved, or soft-deleted. (this is a possible clue regarding MyBB, and I am just providing context here, not asking for help..)
Luckily, I was cautious enough to have these installs in 3 separate locations on my server, so that, I could compare, without it affecting my main forum.
I checked the topics on my merged beta forum, and MY topics were fine and still had the titles, so this was a PhpBB issue. If it weren't for the fact that the topics titles were shown on the topic index, I wouldn't have been able to recreate them after editing the first post within the topic itself.
Anyway, I re-ran the conversion, this time retracing my steps and making sure I checked the utf-8 setting for the titles, (I didn't before) and I had to look up how to convert one of the tables from InnoDB to MyISAM, and ran the conversion tool once again, but the topic titles STILL never transferred over.. and I have no idea on how I can make this work.
The Tapatalk db I have has close to 90k posts, and my main forum has about 130k or so.. and when I merged them on my beta forum, I was left with 193k posts after everything was said and done, and I suspect the title issue from the Tapatalk db might be the cause, so I would really like to get the topic and post title issue fixed before I try to merge the 2 dbs once again.
My host support suggested that I post here for help as well, while we work on the issue there as well.
Questions..
What would cause this issue to happen? Titles not appearing in the topics or replies, but being shown on the topic index within the [MyBB] forum after conversion?
Is there any way I can get the titles to convert over from the Tapatalk db?
I've searched this issue and saw something that mentioned that PhpBB shows title info differently, and this might be an issue, but I don't remember where I saw this..
I saw another post somewhere that said that this could happen if the forum has a lot of subforums, which was the case, but I don't remember where I saw this post either.. however, if I am able to login to the forum, then I will make it so there are no sub-forums before I try the conversion again.
Is there a way I can partially import the Tapatalk data onto the clean PhpBB 3.2.0 install? I would only need the tables used by the MyBB merge tool.
I was able to do this no problem with MyBB but with PhpBB it didn't work when I tried to do it the same way.. so I am wondering where I went wrong here.
I would like to know how to get the topic and post titles to transfer over from PhpBB to MyBB in the conversion.
I am wondering if I need to upgrade the version of PhpBB to the latest version, before I try converting it to MyBB again.
I am not looking to go with PhpBB, (I have tried to use it both as an admin and user going all the way back to the original version, and I'd much prefer to be a user than an admin with it, and especially as a theme designer) but I am willing to work with it, if I am able to convert it for use with MyBB.
I had to temporarily close my forum while I do this, because the version of PHP that my main forum runs, is incompatible with PhpBB, and when I reinstalled it to try the import again, after having had to set it to the older version of PhpBB that can run 3.2.0, my main forum was inaccessible. I have no way of changing the PHP version for each install, so for now, I've had to shutter both my main and beta forums, to work this Tapatalk/PhpBB situation out.
Thank you for your time, sorry for the very long read (but I needed to be as detailed as possible here) and I'd truly appreciate any help offered.
Statistics: Posted by UnoNYC — Tue Jun 03, 2025 1:50 am