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Importing Member Data from another board

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Category: Web Wiz Web App Support Forums
Forum Name: Web Wiz Forums
Forum Description: Support forum for Web Wiz Forums application.
URL: https://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=22442
Printed Date: 08 April 2026 at 6:53am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.08 - https://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Importing Member Data from another board

Posted By: JasonHombre
Subject: Importing Member Data from another board
Date Posted: 18 January 2007 at 7:17pm

Hi All - I'm just setting up Web Wiz forum V. 8.0 on a site that used to have another board running on it. The old board is called Boardless and is very old. Thing is we've got about 400 members on the old board that I'd like to import in to Web Wiz; plus around 300 topics and 4000 messages.

I think I'm happy porting the topics and messages but the members...

Has anyone ever batch-imported members? I can see the main issue being setting an encrypted password for each of them that when they log in again they'll still be able to use their old logins.

Any ideas?

Replies:

Posted By: dj air
Date Posted: 18 January 2007 at 8:31pm

if the passwords are not encrypted then you can encrypt the same passwords

the bigger issue is the forum content, but that depends on the set up within the database. it can be done if two tables and use a loop to sort the import and the primary keys.

Posted By: Melkor
Date Posted: 18 January 2007 at 9:13pm

I just did a batch import of 80,000 members and it went pretty well. I made an announcement on the forums 2 weeks letting members know they would have to request a new password when the switch was made through the "forgotten password" link.

I think out of 80,000 members, only 20 or so had a problem and that was easy to manually fix.

Just make sure they have current email addresses in their profiles.

Posted By: JasonHombre
Date Posted: 19 January 2007 at 9:48am

dj air wrote:

if the passwords are not encrypted then you can encrypt the same passwords

the bigger issue is the forum content, but that depends on the set up within the database. it can be done if two tables and use a loop to sort the import and the primary keys.

thanks for this - very useful. Just a couple of questions back:

- when you say about encrypting the same passwords - how would you do that in a batch? Like, does Web Wiz use a common encryption method?

- for the existing content - both my topics and messages have and AutoNumber field named 'ID' as primary keys - could you possibly just go in to how you would write a loop to bring them across? I'm not a VB scripter you see.

Posted By: JasonHombre
Date Posted: 19 January 2007 at 9:50am

Melkor wrote:

I just did a batch import of 80,000 members and it went pretty well. I made an announcement on the forums 2 weeks letting members know they would have to request a new password when the switch was made through the "forgotten password" link.

I think out of 80,000 members, only 20 or so had a problem and that was easy to manually fix.

Just make sure they have current email addresses in their profiles.

Again, thanks so much for this - so to manage these users, you simply directed them straight to the forgotten password page yeah? Like, did you hide any of the other web wiz functionality during the conversion period or just open the board up straight away?

Posted By: Melkor
Date Posted: 19 January 2007 at 5:36pm

Sort of, I had told them all what to do and where to go to get their new passwords and let them find it themselves. It worked flawlessly for the most part, but there are always those who choose not to read despite the instructions being post in +1 in every forum on the site.