Planning migration from Snitz Forums
Printed From: Web Wiz Forums
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=22813
Printed Date: 03 April 2026 at 9:55pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.08 - https://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Planning migration from Snitz Forums
Posted By: highinfidelity
Subject: Planning migration from Snitz Forums
Date Posted: 02 March 2007 at 10:17am
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Good morning to all. As title said, I'm planning to convert from Snitz to WebWiz and would like to discuss some things BEFORE taking the step.
I am moving because my current hoster complains about database corruption causing server shutoff, but on the other hand doesn't offer any database maintenance facility nor a decent remote file manager. I've had enough of this situation. I would then like to know if WebWiz hosting offer decent facilities for database maintenance in remote mode, or even better if DB maintenance is not considered a problem here as the forum software is considered PERFECT and ERRORLESS.
Second thing: the conversion of the database. I found that some fellow users did an amazing job here:
http://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=16577&KW=convert+snitz+webwiz+database&PID=114369#114369 - http://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=16577&KW=convert+snitz+webwiz+database&PID=114369#114369
The fact that this converting software is left to good people's will and has not been supported by the hosting administration is actually a very, very, very bad sign to me. Is there any specific reason why the hosting administration doesn't help new users in converting their previous databases? One (= I, myself) would think that it could be a good commercial move to attract people from competing softwares and hosters, and that the process should be helped.
Moreover, as far as I could understand, the conversion needs to already have a working .asp space here. Is there a way to TRY the conversion here WITHOUT MOVING THE DOMAIN (and perhaps then see that the conversion didn't work and thus moving here was pointless)?
Other eventual well known quirks and knocks out? We're a small/medium community (15 Mb DB), and all I'd like to have is a nice little forum without being always under risk of being shut off because Access sucks.
Thank you very much for your insight. Your help and comments are appreciated.
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Replies:
Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 02 March 2007 at 10:33am
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These types of question would require that you contact the hosting support directly. Use the contact us pages on www.webwiz.net to contact hosting support staff who can answer your questions. ------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting |
Posted By: highinfidelity
Date Posted: 02 March 2007 at 11:40am
Thanks, will certainly do, as I previously did with my current hoster who said it was PERFECTLY FINE to open a forum on their accounts. 
In the meanwhile, as a potential customer who - as you see - is well ahead in documenting himself on how to move here, I would like to read something "less official". I have learned at my expense that direct experience tells much more than figures on contract sheets.
Unless asking these things was against this forum's rules, of course. Which, useless to say, would probably make me turn toward another provider as getting other user's support is EXTREMELY important (see what a gem of software they wrote for DB conversion
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Posted By: MortiOli
Date Posted: 04 March 2007 at 8:41am
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Hi highinfidelity.
I was the user who started the above mentioned topic regarding the forum conversion, and eventually, with the help of a lot of members, managed to convert my Snitz DB (Access) to WebWizForums (SQL).
It's been a long time since I converted my forum, so not sure if I'd be able to do it again without sitting down with a clear head (it was also an upgrade from an old version of Snitz, to version 7 of WWF), but it might be worthwhile asking dj air if he'd be able to help. I know he offers a service to upgrade WWF databases from Access to SQL (for £40), so he might be willing to help convert from Snitz for a small price, which, in my opinion, would be well worth it.
WebWiz Hosts also provide a 30 day money back guarantee, so you can always action the conversion within that time period, then decide whether to stay with them etc.
I agree that if WebWiz was able to create a conversion tool from other forums to WWF, then a lot more people would move over to here. Lets keep our fingers crossed that -boRg- feels the same
 If you're interested, then the finished forum conversion is the one I run at http://www.ckyalliance.co.uk - www.ckyalliance.co.uk
Good luck!
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Posted By: highinfidelity
Date Posted: 05 March 2007 at 3:38pm
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Hello MortiOli, I remember your contribution to that thread. Thanks for the information. The fact that you actually DID the conversion from Access sounds like a very good new. Thanks for the hint about dj air, I'm writing to him as we talk, just to see if he can help in case everything else fails. Somebody else wrote a sort of tutorial after your last post, perhaps with the help of those messages I can manage to work it out. Very interesting forum! We're on black background as well... |
Posted By: MrMellie
Date Posted: 05 March 2007 at 4:27pm
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I've done a trial run of converting my Snitz forum and even with those instructions it took many hours. The script relies on you having a "perfect" Snitz db to start with and it having good integrity. Mine wasn't - the Snitz code had allowed several users to duplicate their ID's!! This of course caused issues when trying to write the duplicate ID's into the WWF db. There were a couple of other problems too that I can't recall now. One I think was that all users came imported as inactive and I had to reset the "active" flag in the table. I know there's still some work for me to do before I'm totally happy with the conversion. Then you have the issue that the script uses a v7 db which subsequently requires upgrading to v8 and then to the db platform of your choice. Here lies another potential problem. I've seen Bruce comment that you can't convert from v7 Access to v8 and then to mySQL. He's not quantified why, but it's a bit of a worry that there could be such incompatabilites. I'll be looking at it again soon to work out a direct route into v8 without having to do the v7 -> v8 jig. I totally agree that WWF are missing a trick here. An official conversion tool could bring many more users over. I've seen many a disgruntled user complaining of lack of progress with certain other forum software who are crying out for a forum with features such as are contained in WWF.  |
Posted By: MortiOli
Date Posted: 05 March 2007 at 8:25pm
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Hopefully after the big jump to v9, WWF might start looking at conversions for all major forums (quite a number of them do it to bring people to theirs).
I agree that it isn't a fail safe solution, and took me many hours to complete the conversion for my forum (mostly due to creating the script with dj air as we went along). Saying that, I can see that someone with the right skills in ASP, could make a conversion tool which irons out the niggles as it goes along.
Best thing I can suggest is create a backup of your forum, and take it offline whilst you try and convert - that way, you won't end up converting a backup, only to find users have posted new topics etc on your live forum. Obviously do some test runs beforehand, so you know what to expect - if there's going to be any problems, it'll be with user IDs and topics / posts. Once they're sorted and you know how to rectify them, you'll be able to convert the live forum with ease.
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Posted By: MrMellie
Date Posted: 06 March 2007 at 9:32am
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MortiOli wrote:Posted By: highinfidelity
Date Posted: 06 March 2007 at 10:50am
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Hello and thanks to all for the interesting posts.
I already had in mind to try the conversion process on a "duplicate" board and check it with help of moderators, than only AFTER having worked it out, to lock the board, convert it and upload it to the new forum.
Back to general question, the main problem lately with Access was compacting and optimizing the database. As the provider offered no active service to perform this task, we had to download the DB, run the Microsoft utility and then upload the DB back. As the DB increases, this is lately getting extremely hard to do in an undeveloped country like Italy, where major areas of the country are still served only with 56K dial up connections. I would like then to understand if this operation can be skipped (being unnecessary) with SQL databases, or if there is some active utility to perform the task in remote mode here. Thank you.
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Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 06 March 2007 at 11:08am
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The Access version of Web Wiz Forums has an Compact and Repair Database tool which you can use from the online admin control panel. mySQL and SQL Server don't need to be compact and repaired so you don't have this function available. mySQL and SQL Server are database servers and are real databases, Access on the other hand isn't a real database and is simply a flat desktop file, which is why it needs to be compact and repaired. As a flat file Access isn't really up to the task of handling all the reads and writes required by a forum, so unless you only have a handful of users you should always avoid using Access as the backend for any forum system. With mySQL and SQL Server you don't have a single physical flat file like with Access, instead you connect to the database server, which is often remotely hosted, and manage your database using client tools, such as Microsofts SQL Server Management Studio. ------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting |
Posted By: MortiOli
Date Posted: 06 March 2007 at 12:25pm
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If I remember rightly, as part of the conversion the database needs to be compacted / repaired to 'reload' the autonumber sequence. Now I'm sure Snitz is able to compact / repair through the Admin panel, and as Borg said, so can WWF. However, I'm not sure if you'd be able to access the DB by either forum midway through the conversion.
It might be worthwhile finding a script on the net to compact / repair the DB whilst it's on your hosts server, to save you downloading it.
Sorry if I misread your post, and the above doesn't apply.
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Posted By: highinfidelity
Date Posted: 06 March 2007 at 1:27pm
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Hello again MortiOli. These kind of active operations are locked by my current host, as well as many others. Keep in mind that the company even keeps a list of "forbidden" .asp applications, granting to theirselves the right to shut down your webspace if you upload one of those. The reason is that these applications are supposed to cause server's failures and reboot for all hosted accounts in sharing. Not even to mention, WebWiz Forum is in this "black list" of forbidden applications.
As this situation is getting more and more intolerable, I'm looking around to find a new host at decent prices, and this host - which supports a dedicated Forum software - seems quite ideal.
@ Borg: fellow dj air wrote back saying that he would eventually perform the conversion at an uffordable price in case I fail, but that he usually suggest converting to MSSQL instead of mySQL, expecially if the board is going to get busy. As I don't know the difference, is MSSQL supported as well? Which of the two would you suggest?
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Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 06 March 2007 at 2:56pm
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Our hosting service offers the mySQL server version of Web Wiz Forums which works fine. The differences between mySQL and SQL Server wouldn't make much difference when using a forum application. ------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting |
Posted By: User123
Date Posted: 13 March 2007 at 5:19am
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I migrated our Snitz 3.x forum (installed in 2002) to Web Wiz 8.05 this last Friday night. We have over 63,000 posts in 5,000+ topics. Total conversion time, start to finish, was about 16 hours: 15 hours of developing the conversion script and about an hour for the final complete conversion to take place. There have been
several hours of minor adjustments afterwards and I'm slowly modifying
the new forums to match some of the previous features we had. You can see the finished product at http://www.qoda.net/forum - http://www.qoda.net/forum . As a token of my appreciation for Web Wiz having a no cost option for a very nice piece of software I wanted to give back to the community (and no sense in this hard work being wasted). Here is my script which anyone migrating from Snitz to Web Wiz is free to use: http://www.qoda.net/forum/database/snitz_convert.txt - http://www.qoda.net/forum/database/snitz_convert.txt I think you'll find it quite comprehensive as it migrates user accounts, forums, topics, threads, polls, and even converts most Snitz message formatting to raw HTML required by Web Wiz. There are still a few items I wasn't able to account for (the most notable was inline URLs which did not have the - tags around them). Hope it help. As stated in the script header this is provided "as-is" - no warranties or guarantees. You may have mods, different versions, or other factors which cause the script to fail. Good luck! ----------------------------------------- EZ-Frag[QODA] http://www.qoda.net |
Posted By: MortiOli
Date Posted: 13 March 2007 at 12:46pm
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Thanks for sharing your script with us! I have an old Snitz forum that I keep meaning to convert, so will give it a go at the weekend. Thanks again!
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Posted By: MrMellie
Date Posted: 13 March 2007 at 7:00pm
Nice bit of T-SQL there. 
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Posted By: User123
Date Posted: 14 March 2007 at 8:19am
Thanks MrMellie, it was quite..uh...fun to write  WARNING: I was just reviewing the file and noticed that in my post-conversion semi-catatonic state I reverse my search and replaces. Basically I switched the names of the Snitz and WebWiz database  Anyway I've fixed it so all but the "USE" statement now reference "SNITZ_DB". I also found and cleaned out a few lingering test statements and uncommented the "set nocount on".Be sure to click the link above and get the latest version. If you find any other issues just post and I'll try to help - time permitting. |
Posted By: measlick
Date Posted: 29 May 2007 at 4:54am
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I would like to migrate but I am having trouble doing so.
First I am running Snitz with Access
Second I am running this on GoDaddy and can't figure out how to migrate the access DB to my 1 MySQL DB available.
Is there an easy way to do this Snitz (Access) -> WWF (Access) -> WWF (SQL) ??
I have done a migration in the past with 7 but that was a looonnggg time ago with a host that allowed me to actually connect to my SQL server. (I used up sizing in Access)...
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!
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Posted By: MrMellie
Date Posted: 29 May 2007 at 9:49am
| I'd be tempted to say, convert the Snitz table to SQL and then use User123's T-SQL script above to convert into WWF SQL. There were a couple of hiccups I came across but it was much easier than the painful route of going via WWF v7 Access. |
Posted By: measlick
Date Posted: 29 May 2007 at 2:48pm
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I don't think I have access to the SQL server from home. Maybe I was hoping his script could be used for Snitz (access) to WWF (access) :( |
Posted By: User123
Date Posted: 29 May 2007 at 4:07pm
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Hi measlick, The script would take a fair amount of modification to work with Access databases. I've never used the Access version of either forum so it's possible there are other issues due to minor variations in the database structure itself. Sorry I can't be of more help. |
Posted By: MrMellie
Date Posted: 29 May 2007 at 7:56pm
| If you want to do it Access to Access, then Mortoli's script would be the best option, then migrate from v7 to v8 and upsize to SQL. |
Posted By: measlick
Date Posted: 30 May 2007 at 3:54am
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I think I will just switch hosts and update to SQL first, then use the most current script. To bad too, GoDaddy was cheap :) |
Posted By: alltp
Date Posted: 20 July 2007 at 5:34pm
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I am looking for someone to convert my Snitz database ( http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com - www.tabletpcbuzz.com ) to WWF Ver. 8 or 9 as soon as possible. I have everything setup on a test server and am using SQL and Snitz Ver. 3.4.03.
This is not something I could do and am happy to compensate the right person for their time, especially if this can occur in a timely manner.
Please feel free to contact me.
John Hill
john at alltp dot com
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Posted By: measlick
Date Posted: 09 November 2007 at 1:18pm
| If I sing up for hosting through this site, it says they will install WWF for me, but what if I need to still convert from Snitz. Has anything gotten easier or harder? |