I have been trying for some time to convert a website of mine into WordPress, and the one major holdup has been the forum. When I originally built the site, Simple Machine Forums (SMF) was the best option. In fact, it’s still working swimmingly. But I want the power of WordPress behind my site, and so began the quest to get all my users, topics, and posts into WP.
Option 1: Bridge
I first investigated the possibility of a bridge or a way to integrate my current forum directly with WP. Unfortunately, all the solutions that I found were outdated, buggy, or unsupported. There was just no good solution to be found for simple integration.
Option 2: Convert
The only other option was to convert to a completely new forum. I wasn’t fond of researching all the WP forums out there, and had to try out many before finally settling on bbPress. It’s a simple, well-integrated forum plugin for WP and would suit my needs well…but of course, there was no way to convert.
After much Googling, I found a hint of a solution and dubiously tried it out. And it worked! So without further ado, here’s the answer for anyone in the same boat as myself.
(I do not make any claims that this will work for everyone, but it did work for me. This has only been tested with a fresh install of bbPress, on a fresh WP install.)
- Back up your SMF database.
- Install phpBB on the same server as your SMF install, but in a different directory.
- Follow the directions on the phpBB site to convert your SMF into phpBB. Make sure after doing this that you are able to see all your topics, posts, and users. (Note: the admin after conversion might be your SMF admin, not whatever admin you just created for phpBB)
- Install the bbPress plugin on your WordPress site.
- Use the bbPress plugin’s import tool to get the data from your newly created phpBB forum.
And that’s it!
Paulo Werdana says
Any luck? Just wanted to add that came across http://prezi.com/cltrloluuyhz/all-the-way-guide-of-smf-to-bbpress-migration/
Have a look – sounds great.