phpBB Upgrade from 2.x to 3.x

General Web Coding PHP and MySQL
1

Hi. I want to upgrade from v2 to v3, but this is more complicated than just uploading the new files.

They say to install a new database and then convert it. But I have no access to the phpBB database, and am at a loss as to how to proceed.

Actually I’d like to move the whole thing to a different website, so I can install v3 there, but how do I transfer everything?

Also, can I just do a install without using the phpBB options in the control panel, ie can I do it just like a regular mySQL database?

Any tips on how to convert this DB would be appreciated…Thx, z

2

Search “phpbb2 to phpbb3” on google and you can find quite a few posts about it.

Yes, just create a new MySQL DB, upload phpbb3 files on new domain and go ahead with the install.

3

@zardiw - I did an upgrade for a client a month or so ago. The process was fairly simple. The docs give info about how to upgrade. Basically, you create a new install of phpBB and then import the data from the old version.

The biggest problem I had was the enormous number of users, mostly bots and spammers, in the client’s database. The upgrade script kept timing out. You can restart it and it seemed to pick up where it left off quite cleanly.

I think my process was roughly:

  1. Backup the old forum’s DB and files
  2. Create a new DB using your control panel
  3. Create a new directory for phpBB3 (e.g. /newforums)
  4. Install phpBB3 there
  5. Run the upgrade script, which you point to your old install
  6. After it’s done, you can rename the old directory to something like /oldforums just to keep them around and the new one to /forums or whatever you want. Before you use FTP or Webshell to rename the directories, update phpBB in its admin screens (even though for a few minutes it won’t be able to find its files)
  7. Configure phpBB3’s new anti-bot and anti-spam features, clean out deadwood users, etc.

Tim