I'm BaaaaAAAAaccck!

[Bob Schroeck]

From what I understand, it was a tedious, but simple process.  I think it was Labster that wrote up the script that converted the raw forum-rip data into something acceptable to  MyBB database.  Bob only had to do a relatively few himself afterwards.  And then from there, it's just a matter of associating your new account with the placeholder names in the database.

The beginning was a bit more complex and I actually did a lot more work than that. 

Labster did write the code that ripped the Crapatalk forums, which turned them into a SQLite database -- a table of threads, a table of posts and a table of users. And other than some advice when I needed it, that's where his part of the process ended. 

Ultimately I had to move that data into MySQL here on my site while preserving all the relationships between threads, forums and posts. However, because of a feature lacking in SQLite, that meant I had to export it all and then imported it back into Microsoft SQL Server first. 

Then I wrote MSSQL scripts that went through each forum, read each thread, and wrote out a MySQL script that would recreate that thread.  I ran all that in large batches, one forum at a time, debugging things when the scripts crashed, and actually changing a few things about how the MyBB database was set up so that some of our larger messages would be recreated properly. Overall, that took me about a month of programming, testing, and moving content, although I was able to speed up the process quite a bit toward the end. As I moved them, I locked the individual forums on the old board and sent people here. When everything was moved and the old boards locked down complete, I had to run Labster's tool one final time to get everything that had been added to the old forums between his scrape and me completing the transfer, and transfer that in as well.

I didn't do much with the user data until recently, when I figured out how to carry over the original registration dates.  But it was easy enough to associate old posts with new accounts, which I was doing right from the start -- three one-line scripts that I just plug in the username and the new id, and I can give anyone their old posts back.  I also have a variant for when the user changed their name between the old board and the new board.  They sit in a script file I keep in two or three places just for backups and anytime someone from the old board registers, it takes me all of ten seconds to give them their post history back.

My next db project is fixing a date/time shift that crept in when I moved the dates in UNIX era format -- it seems to have ignored the offset from UTC for my time zone and set everything a few hours off.

And that was probably far more than you cared to know about the process.