Merged How to move, copy or merge my old Kunena forums from one site to another

In my case, I would be most happy to simply keep the posts. There is no way the users would match up, plus, they aren't even the same users.

Does not matter to me if the users are properly associated with their posts, so long as folks can continue threads from the last post.

Is that at all possible?

karaokeamerica wrote: If the users are migrated already (keeping the same ID's) ...

Well, it depends on whether the users in one site are same as the users in the target site. Again, it all comes back to the definition of what you mean by "migrate". If migrate means move from A to B then there's no issue involved here about keeping user IDs the same, because they will be the same. But it migrate means merge whatever is in A with whatever is in B then it's a whole new ball-game.

You can't merge the users from A to B and keep the same IDs they were originally using before the merger took place; it's just not going to work. Likewise, if you ignore who owns which messages posted in forum A when you merge the messages into forum B then I don't know how you go about sorting out the mess.

Basically, you need to change all these ids (user ids, topic ids and post ids (and possible category ids, too) before you undertake the merger. This is not for the faint-of-heart or novice SQL player.

mlewis wrote: Does not matter to me if the users are properly associated with their posts, so long as folks can continue threads from the last post. Is that at all possible?

I haven't tried it; I don't know but I doubt that this would work. You could take the approach that introducing a pile of unsorted confetti posts into your target forum might be retrievable somehow and they may not overwrite or ruin what you already have ... but I wouldn't be taking that risk without having a good, reliable backup and recovery plan before I attempted to do it.

What's more likely to happen is that posts from forum A will go into forum B in the wrong categories with the wrong users owning them. You could have a situation where in forum A, user X says "I think black is white" and in forum B, user Y is now attributed as the owner of the "black is white" posting. But, as I said, I haven't tried this for myself so I don't know the outcome.

sozzled wrote:

karaokeamerica wrote: If the users are migrated already (keeping the same ID's) ...

Well, it depends on whether the users in one site are same as the users in the target site. Again, it all comes back to the definition of what you mean by "migrate". If migrate means move from A to B then there's no issue involved here about keeping user IDs the same, because they will be the same. But it migrate means merge whatever is in A with whatever is in B then it's a whole new ball-game.

You can't merge the users from A to B and keep the same IDs they were originally using before the merger took place; it's just not going to work. Likewise, if you ignore who owns which messages posted in forum A when you merge the messages into forum B then I don't know how you go about sorting out the mess.

Basically, you need to change all these ids (user ids, topic ids and post ids (and possible category ids, too) before you undertake the merger. This is not for the faint-of-heart or novice SQL player.

Sorry if I wasn't clear. What I meant by that statement was that I migrated them using ARRA user migration component and they should have the same ID's they had on the old site. therefore, I'm thinking that the posts would still work as long as the Kunena stuff was self-contained if that makes sense?

I'm not familiar with ARRA user migration component, how it works or what it does and therefore I am unable to comment on what may do (or, more likely, what it is unable to do) with Kunena. Kunena "stuff" (as you describe it) is tightly coupled to the original Joomla user tables. If you modify the Joomla user tables, you need to modify the Kunena message tables. As I keep trying to say, this is a non-trivial exercise.

Understood. Hopefully an industrious and skilled coder will make a migration component of some kind....

FYI: this is the ARRA component:

extensions.joomla.org/extensions/migrati...mport-a-export/12607

It's free for Joomla v1.5x. There is a commercial one that will migrate to Joomla v1.6 and likely v1.7 by now, but I haven't tried that one.

That component is, in my opinion, unhelpful in this situation.

Let me summarise the problem that you have to deal with.

You have two sites - we'll call them A and B - with two separate user tables and you have that following four possible scenarios

	xxx	Site A	xxx	Site B	xxx	Merge action B
1.		User record exists with id X		No user match		Add user with unique id Y Modify all forum A messages owned by X so that they are now owned by Y. Rename all attachment folders relating to X so they are now referred to as Y.
2.		User exists with id X		The same user (the same person) exists with id X		No expected complications as far as Kunena database tables are concerned. Possible password issues may arise.
3.		User exists with id X		The same user exists with id Y		Modify all forum A messages owned by X so that they are now owned by Y. Rename all attachment folders relating to X so they are now referred to as Y.
4.		No user record exists		-		Nothing to move

The basic problem is not about the export and import of tables, nor is it about creating a "uniqueness" so that your merged forum doesn't end up resembling a pile of confetti. The issue is about data mapping; mapping users from site A to site B and mapping categories, topics, posts, attachments likewise.

What I haven't discussed is how to preserve the separation between the topics and posts contributed by site A when they're merged into site B. Users need to be married between the two sites and to their messages. Messages, on the other hand, need to remain divorced from one another (if that makes sense). :dry:

I helped the ARRA author and he found it pretty much impossible to do a good job of migrating users mostly because of the user ID that Joomla uses. He ended up moving on to other things saying he wasn't going to spend any more time on that component. Maybe he's changed his mind, haven't touched bases with him in months.

Anyhow, maybe I should go back to my own thread, even though I was referred to this one because it's getting confusing. I don't care who posted what, I just don't want to lose the posts and have to start my forums all over again.

In my case, I've installed kunena on the new site and there is nothing to lose in the new forums. The old forums could overwrite anything they want and all I would need is to add new ones. All I want to do is basically move all of the posts from one site to another.

Should I stay in this thread or move back to my own?

@mlewis: There are clearly two different cases here. There's the case of moving from point A to point B. That's your case. That's easy (relatively-speaking). You pick up the database tables, move them over, copy a few attachment files ... job done.

Then there's the case of merging from point A at point B. That's what this topic is about. That's really difficult. In this case, you have to pick up the database tables, decide how you're trying to map things, do the mapping, modify the data, insert the data ... and hope for the best. :pinch:

Oh I can clearly see the difference and am happy that for once, my task doesn't look as complicated. I started another thread but was sent here. I think I'll continue the other because we are talking about two different things.

Thanks.