Hi,
After reading many posts about this and many attempts at trying to migrate my forum, I had some success! I thought I'd post my steps so that maybe it will help someone else.
Please backup backup backup everything before you do anything like this!
Situation: A had a website that was being upgraded to a Joomla site. Within the old site was a subfolder that held my phpBB forum. I wanted to upgrade the site to Joomla and integrate the forum more into the website, which is where Kunena comes in. Previously, the forum and the website had a different look, with drove me crazy!
This is how I did it.
I built the new Joomla site in MAMP and then installed it on the live server but with no forum. As the subfolder with phpBB was still there, people could still access the forum.
On live site, running J3.1.4 (without any Kunena forum yet) install Akeeba Backup and make a backup of the site. Download this backup to your computer.
In MAMP, using Akeeba Kickstart and the backup file downloaded in the previous step, install the site on your local system. You should now have an identical version of your live site on your local system. Lets call this SITE A. Take note of the database table prefix.
We are going to now make a local site that will do the converting/upgrading. So make a new folder in MAMP and install a fresh copy of J2.5 + Kunena 1.7.2 + Kunena importer. Lets call this SITE B. Make the database table prefix the same as Site A.
We are going to make a local version for phpBB so make a new folder in MAMP and install the same version of phpBB that you currently are using on the live site (in my case phpBB 3.0.11). Lets call this SITE C.
You should now be working with 4 sites in total:
A. An identical copy of your live site.
B. A fresh install of J2.5 + Kunena 1.7.2 + Kunena importer.
C. A fresh install of phpBB.
D. Live site on a real web hosting server that will have the new Kunena forum.
E. Live site on a real web hosting server that has your current phpBB forum.
Site E: Backup the DB from the maintenance panel (select all the tables). Take note of the front page stats (admin panel) that tells you total of users, topics, posts etc to compare once imported.
Site C: Go to maintenance tab and restore from file, choosing the file that was downloaded from previous step. Your admin credentials should be carried over during the restore.
Site B: make a menu item and link it to KUNENA Category Index.
Optional: When the Kunena Importer starts the migration, it will trigger the Joomla email function to email all of the users a new password, as the password cannot be migrated across. In my case, I wanted to explain that this is their new password and that the site is still off-line for a few more days to enable testing. To do this you need to replace the 2 Joomla files that control and configure the email that is automatically sent out during the migration.
administrator/language/en-GB/en-GB.plg_user.joomla.ini
plugins/user/joomla/joomla.php
Site B: Setup the mail function in "Global Config" so that the email can be sent. You have 1 shot at this unless you want to build the local sites again. When the importer starts, new passwords will be assigned, if the email is not configured in your MAMP site, the users will not receive the email and they will all have to go through the "Lost my password" once your migration is finished. Not the end of the world, but not really polished.
Site B: Go to components and choose the importer. It should auto detect the phpBB database as it's on the same host. Truncate the data and select "Use existing Joomla users" and "auto create missing users".
I sometimes had to click the Import button twice as the first time just saves the configuration.
Site B: Once completed, go to "Migrate users" and manually link my admin user account from phpBB to my admin account in the J2.5 installation.
Site B: In Kunena, go into the category manager, you should see all of your categories. Change the PRIMARY permissions for each category to PUBLIC.
Site B: It should now be up and running. All users would have been sent a new login password. You should now have at Site B, J2.5 + K1.7.2 and your forum should look OK. If you briefly look at the topics, they should have been assigned to the users who were over in the phpBB site. This is just a spot check that the users were imported and correctly linked to their own posts.
Site B: Upgrade K1.7.2 to K2.0.4 using the "update" feature in Joomla.
Site B: Update K2.0.4 to K3.0.2 using update feature in Joomla.
Site B: Upgrade J2.5.14 to J3.1.5 using "update Joomla" component.
Site B: It should now be J3.1.5 running K3.0.2 on localhost. The localhost version should now be the same version as what will be on the live site.
Now it's time to move the forum from the test site B which was only used for the migration purpose, to the final website (even though it's still on my local system).
Site A: Install "SP Transfer", connect to the origin database which it should pick up easily as they are both on the same localhost. Click on "Core Transfer" and then only import the users. As far as super users go, I did not import the superuser from site B as I didn't want to confuse things. As site A is already setup, it has it's own superuser already.
Site A: Once users imported, go back to SP Transfer and click the database transfer, select to show all the pages and then select all of the kunena tables and import these.
Once done, Check site A carefully. This is the final site that will be up loaded to the real web server.
If everything is OK at Site A, install Akkeeba backup and make a backup.
Go to your web hosting space and delete all the files there. Upload the backed up file from the previous step + Akeeba Kickstart php file. Run the installer.
Akeeba will now restore the site (from site A).
Hopefully it should all be working. Good luck!
Glenn
