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If you are converting from other forum software such as vBulletin 4.x.x, phpBB 3, XenForo, etc., this guide is for you. The conversion guide on Invision Power Service's website is not very detailed and doesn't explain a whole lot, so I've decided to create this guide. What you need: [*]Invision Power Board (You will need to choose which version you want) Link: http://webflake.sx/files/category/2-releases/ [*]IPS Converters 3.4 (Build 1.2.6) Webflake Link: [*]A brain. Converting to IP.Board v3.4.4: First off, you'll need a fresh copy of Invision Power Board, which is availiable in the Releases section. You'll also need the IPS Converters application, which is also availiable on WebFlake. Links are posted above. For this tutorial, I'm going to be converting from vBulletin v4.2.0. The conversion process does not vary a lot for different forum software though, so you should be fine. 1. Make a backup of your current forum software (not IPB). This is critical. If you mess something up, you may need these files. You may even need some of these files for the conversion process as well, so save them. Trust me, you'll regret it if you don't. 2. Turn your community offline. vBulletin offers this, not sure about other software. You do not absolutely have to do this step, but it's a good idea to so that nobody adds new content while the board is being converted. 3. Delete all of the current forum software files from your web server, however, you MUST keep all your MySQL data! 4. Once all of the old forum software has been removed from your web server, install IPB as you normally would. If you are not sure how to install IP.Board, Phun has made a nice guide 5. Go to your site URL and follow the IPS Community setup instructions. VERY IMPORTANT: Do NOT use the same username or email address that you are already using. Use a different username and email address, otherwise, IPB will automatically remove your old account since it thinks it's a duplicate member. 6. Install the IPS Converters application. In order to install it, you must navigate (in FTP) to /public_html/admin/applications_addon/ips and upload the "converter" folder. Upload all the other folders and their contents to the appropriate directories as well. 7. Login to your AdminCP (on your site) and go to System > Applications and Modules. On the right side, you should see a bar called "Applications Not Installed". Click on the install button for IPS Converters and let it do its thing. 8. Once the IPS Converters application has completed installation, navigate to Other Apps > IPS Converters > Converters > Start New Conversion in your AdminCP. 9. Select the forum software that you are converting from. 10. Fill out the database details that it asks you for. Note that the MySQL database details have to be the same as the database details for your old forum software. 11. Hit the "Convert" buttons for each individual setting/statistic in the converters panel. Some of them will say that you cannot convert them yet. This is because you need to convert the ones before it before you can convert them. The best way to convert the data is to just go in order down the list. It's a lot more efficient than skipping around. 12. Once you've converted everything you've wanted to be converted, hit the "Finalize Conversion" button. From there, post counts, users, etc. will be rebuilt and recached. 13. You're done! If you are able to see all the board members, post total, etc. but you cannot see the forum categories or posts, navigate to Members > Member Groups > Manage Member Permissions in your ACP and edit the permissions for each set. This should fix the issue. You can NOT go into each individual forum or category and change the permissions there though. It will NOT work. If you have any questions or feedback for this tutorial, feel free to make a post below. I'll be updating this guide with every new IP.Board release, so please don't beg me to update it or anything, chances are that I'm already working on updating it Note: If enough people want it, I will post a screenshot tutorial for this too. Converting Old Links to New Links: After converting your community, you may notice that a lot of your old links no longer work. This will decrease your search engine rank greatly and can have some really bad effects. In order to fix these links so that they point to your new IPB forum, follow these steps: 1. In the converters application that you downloaded to your computer, open it up and find the "Tools" directory. 2. Once inside this directory, choose the appropriate folder for the software you converted from. For example, if I were converting from vBulletin 4.2.0, I would choose the Links - vBulletin 4.0 file. 3. You will see one or more files in this directory. Choose the config.php file and open it with your text editing tool (I highly reccomend Notepad++) 4. Edit the lines that it tells you to. If you are unsure what to put in these lines, an explanation is below. Self explanatory, but this is where your website URL goes. If you website name was somewebsitehere.com, you would replace the localhost value with that. DO NOT ADD A TRAILING SLASH OR INDEX.PHP! The path to where IP.Board is located on your web server. If my site was located in public_html, I would define the path as /public_html. DO NOT ADD TRAILING SLASHES! The conversion ID. If you do not know where to find this, go to your ACP > Other Apps > IPS Converters > Converters > Manage Converters. On this page, you will most likely see 2 conversion IDs. One that says convert_forumsoftwarehere and convert_vbulletin_201305225034 (No, yours will not say that exact name. That's just what mine was) The string of numbers is the date that you performed the conversion on. Take this conversion ID and use it for the CONV_ID value in the PHP file. Self explanatory. Don't touch this. ----- Enjoy your new IP.Board community If you have questions, feel free to ask This tutorial was made by OpFor. You may copy this and use it on other websites, but please, give me credit for it.