Question How to convert HTML to BBCode

I maintain a DNN bulletin board that saves rich text messages in HTML. Now I need to migrate all those messages into Joomla Kunena bulletin board that requires BBCode representation of HTML.

Is there any library to convert HTML to BBCode cleanly. There are bunch of scripts out there for BBCode to HTML but not the other way around.

Thanks...

G'day, gursoy, and welcome to Kunena.

This is an interesting question. Not having any knowledge of the DNN bulletin board structure, I can't say for certain what would work for you. I assume, though, that the DNN bulletin board relies on some kind of database to store the messages. Assuming that you have access to the DNN bulletin board database tables (where the messages are stored) it should not be an impossible task to export that information into a CSV file and, using a text editor, converting all the HTML tags into BBcode tags.

However, many of these HTML-structured forums may use HTML tags that are not supported. For example, there is no <color> tag (there is a <font color-...> tag) which may have been used and so you will need to carefully look through all the messages to see what things can be converted and what things cannot.

Although there may be scripts for converting BBcode to HTML they may not always work (and they certainly won't work the other way around) because not every BBcode-based forum uses the same BBcode. Unlike HTML (for which there are standards) there is no standard BBcode.

There is another option that you might want to consider. Many people spend vast amounts of time worrying about converting their old discussion forums. Many of the discussions in those forums are no longer "topical" or the users who posted into them have moved on to other places. Therefore, there may not be the strong necessity to preserve intact all the messages that may have been written years ago. For this very reason, it may be advisable to quarantine your existing forum, to close it now, and start a new forum with something else (something like Kunena, for example). Converting old forums involves a lot of issues that may be impossible to overcome with technology.

One possibility that you might like to consider is to create a new website (with Kunena, of course ). On your old site, place a signpost to your new site and let your users migrate themselves across to it when they're ready to do so. To encourage your users to make this migration, close your old forum and prevent new messages being posted there but keep the site as an archive.