I have a forum running on forumotion and want to get out and come on vBulletin but forumotion doesnt allow me to download the DB backup (infact they dont give db's), I am stucked, I requested to them and they refused, even for a fee too. Is there any utility available which can take out DB entries, or a way to download dbs? Or any scraper which can make a db pattern by browsing forum? Any help will be appriciated. Thanks,
This is simply not possible - there's no way around it without finding a way into Forumotion's servers, which obviously isn't a viable option. You're out of luck, I'm afraid. You aren't the first to make this mistake.
Take a look at: phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=861505 It's a crawler, what it does is literally crawls your forum picking up usernames, topics, posts, forums etc... and builds a makeshift database out of them . Now, as with any crawler it's important to remember that it's not perfect; for example if you wanted it to crawl your private forums you'd need to make them publicly viewable for a short period of time. You may also find that you need to reconfigure forum permissions as well as sort out the categories again. Additionally, it's worth mentioning that you need to have a basic knowledge of setting up phpBB on advanced hosting before attempting to crawl your site - as I think the instructions require you to put in information from the new board. I've not actually crawled a site myself, although some say it's a walk in the park, others say it's not that easy. Either way I'd suggest downloading it and reading instructions.txt, see how it goes. How big is your forum anyway? If there are only a few hundred posts then it might be worth just quitting and starting a fresh. However if there are several thousand or more than as I say, download the crawler...give the instructions a read and let us know how it goes. Best of luck