Hi all I have taken over a big well established phhBB forum with over 13k registered users www.lancer-evo.net . The forum has 40 plus mods, many of which do not work due to hacking by some former disgruntled members. I need to do something very soon, i.e. new site, update the phhBB version, make the site a blog etc.??? My main point is I do not want to lose the 13k users in the process nor the huge amount of posts & data. In the new version i still want to be able to display: 'Our users have posted a total of 235326 articles We have 13668 registered users' In other words i do not want to have to start off with 'brand new forum'. I would really appreciate any help so please post or PM your suggestions, I have no techie skills at all so iam looking for somebody to do the work for me. That person really needs to be very experienced with forums as I have wasted so much money & time with ‘webmasters’ who said they could do the job. Each one has left it worse than they found it. I don’t have a huge budget for this, so I need real sensible prices. Cheers Billy
Download phpBB3.0 here http://www.phpbb.com/downloads/olympus.php?sid=2f5732f6132fdd578a9d8de45b2d35f9 Before upgrading, do a full website backup and download it or move it to a secure place. Then, upgrade your forum to phpBB3.0, reading the upgrade docs in the download package before.
Ya Just Update it. Obviously making it a Blog would loose your Customers. You may Bridge the Forums with a Blog. That would retain your Users and Posts, but obviously you'll loose activity as people turn more to Forums than Blogs in General.
There are also php2 converters that allow you to go to other forum software packages. As the others ahve asaid, make sure you are taking regular full backups, particularly if you already have attracted the wrath of disgruntled former members.
to tell you the absolute truth. I would convert to V-bulletin, and start making some profit with that site. ---my opinion---
Hi Contact me if you like. I wrote a fully modded phpbb forum and have vast experiencs in php, mysql etc etc. Simply upgrading will not solve your problems. Regards
Hi all thanks very much to you all for taking the time to replys. Two things though one is i really do not want to do anything techie at all,iam useless at that type of thing, even when i try and use ftp i end up deleting stuff. so i really need to someone to do any work for me. the other is that i asked before about upgrading & was told that i will loose to much data etc ?? thanks billy
If you can't handle ftp, then you need to hire a competent person to do the migration for you. You can either migrate to the new version of phpBB, or go to vBulletin. vBulletin has an optional integrated blog script that might be just what you want. Note that vBulletin is commercial software and not free though.
Why not install phpBB3, which ever software you want, on a seperate directory. Then apply all the modifications, and make the custom changes. Apply your DB backup to this new forum, and fix any problems. Once done just simply move this new one to the main directory (of you current forum) and change the setting URLs e.g. with SMF you can download repair_settings.php that sorts everything out
hi sean thanks for input, how do you think i could start making some profit ? and how easy is it to convert to vbulletin. anybody else any ideas or could the whole job for me ? thanks billy
I would back it up and make a conversion to vbulletin (which is not free but excellent) or SMF which is free.