UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads Importer Support Upgrade from UBB.threads 6.3.2 to 7.7.3

Could someone point me to an upgrade path/procedure to upgrade from UBB.threads 6.3.2 to 7.7.3

I never went from ubb threads v6 to v7.
I went from ubb classic to ubb threads 7.2.

So after you purchase member access I would upgrade to ubbthreads 6.5.5 then goto say ubbthreads 7.2
Watch out for the extra global moderator group. ( in my case all regular moderators became global moderators) But it is a easy fix because there never were Global Mod's in your version
After that you should be able to upgrade to the current v7 version.
Just read the upgrade directions in the install folder at each step.
You could take smaller steps in upgrading but it will take longer.

And hopefully you don't have any mods installed.

The importer scripts are designed to be run from the respected final builds of UBB.Classic6 (6.7.x) and UBB.Threads6 (6.5.x).

The global moderator group permission was added in UBB.threads v7.3, so the upgrade path has always been:
Latest v6 build Imported to -> UBB.threads 7.2 -> Latest v7 (it isn't required to do an incremental update to v7.3 as the upgrade utility should do all of those incremental steps for you, but in the past this was a step).

I would recommend running a dry run before spring things down to do a final migration (to ensure everything goes smoothly).

I would also recommend that you run my UBB.threads System Requirements Test script (here) to ensure your web host is compatible.

Thanks for the help. I will be trying to do this later this week.

Hello, resurrecting this post as I am facing a similar problem.

We had a very old UBBThreads forum (6.2.3). I successfully got the forum to 6.5.5 and it looks all good.

I am struggling with importing 6.5.5 to 7.x using the Import Script Version 1.1 provided in the members portal.

Importing to the following versions has failed: 7.0.0, 7.1.0, 7.2.0, 7.3.0, 7.7.4.

7.0.0: Import fails, missing required file 'libs/html.inc.php' (threads_import.php, line 40)
7.1.0: Import fails, missing required file 'libs/html.inc.php'
7.2.0: Import fails, missing required file 'libs/html.inc.php'
7.3.0: Import was successful, and able to log in. But all posts have username = Anonymous. My guess is the username logic (threads_import.php, lines 1059-1067) is not compatible with 7.3.0.
7.7.4: Usernames failed to carry over, unable to log in.

Since the import takes a long time to run, I thought I would ask before trying any other versions.

Is there a known UBBThreads version that is compatible with the UBB.threads Import Script Version 1.1 (March 03, 2007) ?

I am moving from 6.3.2->7.7.4.
Could you share how you got from 6.2.3 to 6.5.5?

Absolutely. I have been documenting my findings along this journey, and plan to write it up once I am complete. As you are experiencing, it was not easy.

I've sent you a PM with my current findings (draft).

When upgrading to the most current UBB.threads version available, be sure you are using the most recent version UBB.threads archive. It is very rare but it does happen, that only the installer/upgrade scripts within archive sometimes get revised to fix rare/fringe install/upgrade issues as they are discovered.

For example, on March 31st 2020, the installer/upgrader scripts within UBBT 7.7.4 received fixes related to UBBT 7.0.0 (2006: cache builder), MySQL 4 (2008: storage "type" vs "engine"), language strings from UBBT 7.0.0 (2006: duplicated entry terms), and a conditional statement correction related to php 7.1+ for disabled styles.

If you you're already running the current version of the forum software, there is nothing within the installer/upgrader that affects you or changes your already installed software.

---

As posted earlier in this thread by Ruben, this is a correct path for upgrading from UBB.threads 6.5.5 (released May 31, 2006):

cegadm.
You probably should run the system test.
The culprit may be that your server software is beyond what those older versions supported to upgrade, you may need to downgrade your php version to php5.3 or php5.4 if you can till ready for UBB7.74 which will run on php5.4 to php7

isaac,
He is correct about one item , in the importer to goto ubb7.X has a include that requires
require ("../libs/mysql.inc.php");
require("../libs/html.inc.php");
require("../libs/bbcode.inc.php");
require ("../libs/ubbthreads.inc.php");

They all do not exist in the archive till ubb 7.3.0

Thank you both for quick replies! I did some further searching and found two threads that suggest UBBThreads 6.5.5 -> 7.5.5 or 7.5.6 is the best approach.

Ruben, you are correct that I had to spin up a very old version of xampp. The earlier versions of 7.x are incompatible with mysql 5.5+. Running this test on xampp 1.5.2 with php 5.1.2 and mysql 5.0.20. (randomly picked this version from sourceforge as its build date was around 2006). I usually run UniserverZ but it doesn't even support mysql that old.

Thread suggesting success with 7.5.6

Thread encouraging direct import to 7.5.5

I am attempting a direct import from 6.5.5 to 7.5.6 currently. It's in the middle of importing topics, and I can say this time that the user_id column in the _posts table is updating correctly.

I will report back when the upgrade finishes later tonight.

As per Ruben's followup directions, upgrade from from 6.5.5 then to 7.3.0 then to 7.7.4 (most current release version today). Do not bother with versions 7.0.0 through 7.2.x

ubbthreads 6.5.5 (released May 31, 2006)
ubbthreads 7.3.0 (released May 7, 2008)
ubbthreads 7.7.4 (released March 7, 2020)

timeline source:
https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/credits.html



EDIT:
upgrade notes from 7.7.4 for the sake of keeping this "6.5.5 import path to 7.7.4" thread helpful to everyone who needs it:
March 1, 2020: the upgrade path is from 7.5.6 to 7.7.4 (most current release version)
https://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/263543/7-7-4-changelog-discussion#Post263543
March 31, 2020: limited 7.0.0 to 7.7.4 testing was done, in an attempt to find and fix installer/upgrader issues outlined here.
Additional notes from gizmo:
iirc, the only bug is the global moderator permissions from 7.2.0 upgrading to 7.3.0

Apologies Isaac, but as mentioned above, I had problems with importing from 6.5.5 -> 7.3.0. I do not recommend that approach using the currently available import script.

I have good news. Importing from 6.5.5 -> 7.5.6 went well. Forum views are good, post counts are there, usernames are there, PMs are linked to accounts. The only bug I can find is that carriage returns on signatures did not import (not worth fixing). View permissions need to be reset manually. My admin account sees all forums, but my nonadmin test account sees none.

In short, this will be my journey.
Original Version: 6.2.3
First upgrade to: 6.4.5
Then upgrade to: 6.5.5
Then install and import to: 7.5.6 <-- I am here
Then upgrade to: 7.7.4

cegadm, no worries. I've just been summarizing (via quote) what Ruben has written through the thread.

Your work on this has been much appreciated, and will assist to review that 15 year old code and make corrections for directly moving from 6.5 to 7.7.4 or whatever the most current version of UBBT is... so no one else would need to go down this path again.

Both RUben and Gizmo are experts and provide services to upgrade UBBT Classic to the current version of UBB.threads. So both of these guys have a long history of the work you've been documenting here.

Again, thank you very much for the time you've spent and the work you've produced with your research.

Well this jogged some memories for me.
The last classic upgrade I did was about 2 years ago.
For threads it looks to be even older than that.
I sill had a backup on my nas.
It appears that I had similar issues because I used ubb 7.5.4.2 as the first step from threads.
I recall looking for the old importers prior to 2007 with no luck.
Same goes for classic because the importers were revamped by Rick in 2007.

The hardest part in classic is due to mods.
I would have to reinstall classic to get rid of them so the importer would run.

I am currently attempting to upgrade direct from 7.5.6 to 7.7.4.

I am encountering the same issue as seen in this topic - missing js/css files.

screenshot of errors

That poster mentioned that an incremental upgrade to 7.6.0 worked for them. I will give that a try later and report back.

Comment those files out of the install/upgrade_changes.txt file.

This sometimes occurs when files are added in one version, then removed in another, during various upgrades; and the updates which affect those files aren't fully removed from the changes file (which can lead to this issue)

Woohoo! Success!

Removing those files from upgrade_changes.txt did the trick. The upgrade script continued on its way.

I then encountered this problem with image libraries. Using Ruben's advice there, I updated each image setting in the Control Panel / Styles section.

Running happy as a clam on PHP 7.3.

I still have to update the forum view settings for non-admin users. Then it's off to push from my test machine to the live site.

Thanks all again for the help!

jjjjj, I hope you have similar success and I apologize for taking this thread over.

I was able to move from 6.3.2 to 7.5.6 php5.3 system with help from here and a lot of trial and error. I backed up the files and database and tried to move over to a php7.3 based system. It did not like that. I tried to install 7.5.6 from scratch, hoping I could just install the database, it did not like that. The installer hung "connecting to the database"
Any ideas? I can install 7.7.4 on the same platform???

UBB.threads does not support PHP7 until UBB.threads 7.7+.

In PHP7 the mysql_ connectors were dropped in favor of the mysqli_ connectors; this required a major rewrite to fully support PHP7 (as some connectors were completely dropped due to similar functionality in other connectors).

Once you are on any version of UBBT 7.x, you can run the upgrader contained within the UBBT 7.7.4 archive with PHP 7, and it will upgrade your database and files to version 7.7.4.

This thread suggests that you make the leap from UBBT 6.5.x (php4/5) -> 7.2.0 (php5) -> 7.7.4 (php5/7)

EDIT:
My memory is a bit fuzzy with the MySQL supported versions of UBBT 6. I want to say its only supported to MySQL 5.1 and earlier, but we're talking about 15 year old software that really should not still be running. Mozilla was still on FF 2.6, IE was on version 4.0.1, and people were excited about Windows Vista :/

Could someone point me to the directions to move from 7.5.6 php5.3 based system to 7.7.4 php7 based system?

Follow any recent upgrade guide (within the v7 series, such as this or this) and follow the upgrade utility steps. UBB.threads 7.7 will still work under PHP5 (PHP5.6 recommended).

Nice update at the wiki Gizmo.

I was able to get everything moved to 7.7.4. The users all lost there forum group mapping, and a few other things fell between the cracks, but all the users, passwords, posts, images, etc came over. Thank you everyone for the help.

Since the current importer doesn't function for anything lower than v7.5.6 (the original importer worked for v7.2) users migrating from UBB.Threads6 or UBB.Classic may see problems with their groups; imported content using the UBB.threads importers can assign your users v7.0 Group Numbers vs v7.2 Group Numbers:


v7.0 Groups:
1 - Administrator
2 - Moderator
3 - Users
4 - Guests


v7.2+ Groups:
1 - Administrator
2 - Global Moderator
3 - Moderator
4 - Users
5 - Guests


As the users are not assigned any forums to "moderate" there isn't really any concern, we just need to place them in their proper groups. You'll need to migrate the Moderator and User group indications to a higher id. As the Global Moderator group doesn't exist from the imported UBB products, we don't have to account for it.

Here we are moving group #3 (old users) to group #4, and group #2 (old moderators) to group #3 (in this order)


If you are using a different database prefix (other than ubbt_) you'll need to account for it in the queries. I would execute both queries separately, but in the exact order that they are presented (if you run the second first you'll have to re-assign your moderators, and may have to remove duplicate entries in the user group for them).