SimplePress Migration  

For almost four years I was using SimplePress years until it was completely unstable. A year ago I turn off it, and installed phpBB with a premium bridge, but still have not activated because it has some big problems with user management, integration with my WordPress theme, etc.

And then, the miracle happened and you have launched this fantastic plugin forums 🙂 I want to get to migration, but I have a couple of questions.

Will it work well with tens of thousands of imported from SimplePress messages? I've seen that sometimes goes a little slower these support forums, especially I want to offer my users speed. 

I have seen that a user had a problem update, we recommended erase everything and reinstall. Do you think I should wait for a more stable serves or advanced version?

I use W3 Total Cache, any special configuration must be performed?

Crossposting be activated in the future as addon? I'm very interested.

Thanks!!! 

Thank you Alias79,

Will it work well with tens of thousands of imported from SimplePress messages? I've seen that sometimes goes a little slower these support forums, especially I want to offer my users speed.

Sure, we don't use wp_post/wp_postmeta saving logic. wpForo can be used for extremely large forum boards. The speed also depends on your WordPress an Server Speed.

Also please don't forget to turn on User caching in wpForo Settings > Features admin page, this will also increase loading speed. Another speed affecter is the gravatar avatars of members. Sometimes Gravatar images are being loaded very slow and it slows down forum. wpForo allows to upload custom avatars, so if people use this more than Gravatar you forum will be very fast.

Just create a test WP website and do a test migration and test it, before considering to change the life forum.

I have seen that a user had a problem update, we recommended erase everything and reinstall. Do you think I should wait for a more stable serves or advanced version?

99% of issues are fixed with 1.0.1. other 1% problems are related to WordPress-es which Home URL and Site URL is different in Dashboard > Settings > General admin page. This kind of WP installations are not many. However we'll add compatibility for this WP websites in next 1.0.2 release. It'll be released within next 24 hours.

I use W3 Total Cache, any special configuration must be performed?

Can't say, but WP Super cahce works well, you just need to disable cache for known users in Advanced Settings. More info: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/problems-with-wp-super-cache-3/

Thanks for the reply!!! 🙂

Finaly, I wonder if you incorporate comments crossposting between blog posts and forum.

No yet, but it's planned as addon, this will not be available as a built in feature. wpForo Blog Crossposter Addon is under development.

I'm testing, and what I see is that the equivalent posts table is very large in wpForo (see attached image). This is normal?

I keep doing tests. I managed to reduce BBDD to 77 MB, but still very large. In addition, the forum is quite slow:

http://www.nextn.es/foro

I lost some posts in the conversion, but it is no problem.

Thank you Alias79.
I'd say, I don't think it's correct to compare posts tables of two totally different database architectures. wpForo posts has titles and other important information in post table so it may be large. SP keeps those data in other tables. Have you compared the total number of SF tables and wpForo? You'll see that wpForo table number is less so the size should be more. And this doesn't have direct relation to forum performance. It can be dozens of times larger but work faster.

As far as I see after clicking on your website URL wpForo is totally crashed and it doesn't work correctly, so it may work slow. The correct way to test/compare speed and performance is using both forums on fresh WP installation. Also you should make sure the database doesn't have incorrect things. Maybe wpForo table indexes are damaged or removed. We don't know how the migration was completed.  And the table and index statuses are also not clear here.

Please don't review forum platform and performance based on migrated database. Forum will always work faster and correct if it inserts all data in regular use, from fresh installation time-point.

Hi Robert!

Not only those tables in the image. The original SimplePress DB is lower in size in comparision with the new migrated DB of wpForo. This may concerned that migration process is not properly done, by the migration system. I do not know, But the result is that.

I don't understand what you mean with "your website URL wpForo is totally crashed and it doesn't work correctly". I'm looking at the error.log, and I see no problem in WordPress or the wpForo plugin. In all the tests I've done, wpForo works. Several members of our staff are tested too, and some readers. The conclusion of all is that it works, but speed is the big problem. 

It would be nice to have some tool to check the DB structure finding issues. My interest is migrate to wpForo. Perhaps adjusting the cache, speed improves. I liked the plugin and I think you have done a good job, and there is much to do, but I must solve these problems, so I appreciate your help.

Maybe it was cache, now it's good on front-end.

As per database size, I can only say all are your data, wpForo only generates as extra data post titles (most forums don't have post titles, only topic titles). So 37k titles for 37k post should increase posts table size. Other tables are very close. And as I've already mentioned above there is no mean to compare two totally different database architectures. wpForo may have 20 fields, SF 10 fields in the same table....

Also if you want to increase forum speed you should use the Simplified layout. Now you use Extended layout, it loads recent topics on forum page and recent posts on topic page. With the extended layout forum looks very busy and active, it invites people to forum. Forum visitors read and join to forum very easy. It's very good for engagement but it's bit slow than the Simplified layout, because you display dozens of times more information on the same page (recent topics and recent posts).

Another option to speed-up forum is decreasing recent topic and posts counts to 2-3. Currently it's set 5.

Hi,

rather than opening a new topic I am adding another question here:

I am currently trying to convert my SimpleMachines SMF forum to WPFORO

via the way to first convert it to SimplePress and then from SimplePress to WPForo.

Now my question is: I have already suceeded in converting SMF to SimplePress

with the sp-importer Plugin from SimplePress, but the attachments do

not show up in SimplePress...

Do I need to order first a few plugins for the attachments to show up or does the

sp-importer Plugin not support any attachments ?

Is there somewhere a good documentation how to do this inclusive attachments ?

2. If I have got the forum to run under SimplePress including attachments

how do I then convert from SimplePress to WPFORO with this Converter Program ?

Need I to install first WPFORO also in my Wordpress to do this and then run the converter

or do I need to run it without installing WPFORO first ?

A bit more FAQs about the converter plugin would be really appreciated.

Many thanks.

Regards, Stefan.

I'm sorry but I can't support attachment problems related to SMF to SimplePress migration.

In any case if you fixed this issue you should first install wpForo before installing Go2wpForo tool and starting migration. Go2wpForo tool migrates SimplePress attachments without any issue.

Posted by: Robert

I'm sorry but I can't support attachment problems related to SMF to SimplePress migration.

In any case if you fixed this issue you should first install wpForo before installing Go2wpForo tool and starting migration. Go2wpForo tool migrates SimplePress attachments without any issue.

Many thanks @robert for this info.

So if I have a SimplePress Forum with working attachments, so e.g. that a posted picture is shown

embeded inside the posting in SimplePress, the Go2wpForo tool will also convert it to WPForo ?

Where are picture attachments stored in WPForo ? In den Wordpress Media Library or in a different path ?

Many thanks. Regards, Stefan

The migrator tool doesn't relocate attachments. All attachments will be stay on the same folder. The source URLs will be the same. The tool only migrate content, but image source URLs will stay the same. Just keep file attachments in the same directory and all will work fine. New attachments will be uploaded in /wp-content/uploads/wpforo/default-atatchments/ folder.

In any case if you got problems after the migration please send admin login details to support[at]gvectors.com email address. We'll login and help you fix that.