Usually, people prefer to keep traditions rather than desperately being absorbed with innovations and alternative practices. And frequently it is right for a wonder. You know what you are up against, you may be sure of its reliability. But, when we speak about the bulletin boards, you know something that is related to the innovative technologies, it would be a comprehensive move to try something modern and more effective.

Coming closer to the target of the essence, there are lots of forum owners, who are willing to switch from their so-called standalone forum platforms to the ones that are built at the CMS core. There’s the same situation with today’s tendency of migrating from phpBB to bbPress on WordPress core. And it’s not for nothing. WordPress with the bbPress forum plugin is a nice combination of out-of-the-box functionality, robust flexibility, together with the ease of use. So, how to make your phpBB to bbPress conversion flawless and as less harmless as possible?

We would like to present you two ways of data transfer for you to choose – using built-in bbPress importer or automated CMS2CMS conversion from phpBB to bbPress. Let’s make an objective comparison of these two ways to proceed with the migration to high fashion and get into action.

Automated Migration vs Built-In Importer: Gain or Pain?

What is the difference between using automated conversion versus a built-in plugin? Initially, let’s look through the list of supported items that may be converted by both methods.

Topics

The topic is the element of the forum where users are able to discuss the issues. This forum component may be dynamic and static. Usually, the last one is called a sticky topic that is fixed to the page.

Built-In phpBB to bbPress Importer:
While considering the sticky topics migration, the built-in importer doesn’t preserve the status of the topics.

Automated Converter:
During the forum migration, the sticky topics are converted with the same status to your bbPress forum. Also, CMS2CMS supports the migration of topic title, content, author, and publishing date.

Forum Posts/Replies

cms2cms-phpbb-to-bbpress-topics-migration

Reply or post is the dynamic content that is attached to the topic by the users. It contains, author, content, subject, publishing data, and also there may be an attachment.

Built-in Importer:
All the data mentioned above may be converted with the importer, however, the migration of attachments is not supported yet.

Automated Migration:
It allows migrating all the data like author, content, publishing data, subject, and attachments.

Forum Categories

To make the forum well-organized, many create the categories in accordance to the discussions. In this way, your forum will look more logical and convenient for your users.

Both bbPress importer and automated CMS2CMS converter support the migration of categories. During the forum conversion from phpBB to bbPress, the hierarchy and the relation between categories are preserved.

Custom phpBB BBCode

Custom BBCodes allow performing various functions to your forum. For instance, with BBCodes you may add YouTube and Google video, edit text alignment, or create spoilers.

Built-in bbPress Importer:
Currently, there’s no option to convert the custom phpBB BBCode to bbPress.

CMS2CMS Migration:
Allows migrating the custom BBCodes to bbPress, preserving the same look as it was on your phpBB forum platform.

Permission Roles

All the forum participants have their own permission roles. bbPress differentiates them like the following: Keymaster, Moderator, Participant. This option allows controlling all the processes on your bulletin board.

phpBB to bbPress Importer:
During the migration, this importer doesn’t support the existing permission roles. And it means that you have to assign them after migration to all users.

CMS2CMS:
Automated migration service preserves the moderators, but other participants should be assigned once again after the migration.

Basically, these are the major diversities of a built-in importer and automated CMS2CMS phpBB to bbPress migration. Now, you may clearly evaluate the outcome of your forum migration using the traditional way of conversion and the innovative one.

7 steps for the automated phpBB to bbPress Conversion

  1. Register CMS2CMS account.
  2. Specify current phpBB forum info.
  3. Set up the connection to it by downloading and installing Connector Bridge.
  4. Indicate new bbPress board details.
  5. Connect to it automatedly via Plugin Connector.
  6. Start Free phpBB to bbPress Demo Conversion.
  7. Check the demo result and set up Full Migration.

Here’s a visual example on how the automated phpBB to bbPress conversion goes.

Hurry up to set Free Demo Migration in motion in order to try phpBB to bbPress conversion by yourself. It saves lots of time, money and efforts, and definitely worth