Thanks I got it to convert but I lost my status as the administrator and now there is no one who is the administrator to the site. What do I do know?

Hmm, is there a Ranks2.txt file inside of the Prefs directory?  I'm not sure the converters were meant for the newer versions of E-Blah.

Yes, in the forum.

Edit that file and add your user ID (such as 1) to the member = () in the Admin section, ie:

member = (1),

HELP!

As the last step in a process of forum relocation and redesign that has spanned several weeks, I tried to convert a board from phpBB (which itself was converted from ezboard) to Eblah, got a confirmation that the database was converted, and then promptly lost administrative privileges, even though I'm shown as logged in under my username on the welcome message.  I no longer have the administrator button as an option in my menubar.  

I can't make sense of the instructions above to the poster who had a similar problem.  I don't understand what to do with respect to the Ranks file and the administrator number or ID.

On other fronts, board membership is now shown at 505, and this corresponds to the 500+ dat files I saw listed in the Members folder.  Also, the screen names listed in the List2.txt file in that same Members folder match the names that I know were registered to the old forum.

Apparently only the member database was transferred, however.  There are no forums listed or accounted for at all.

Need help ASAP with getting administrative powers back and actual converted forums.  I must finish this conversion before Saturday.

ETA: The contents of my Ranks2.txt file are as follows:

Administrator => {
name = 'Administrators'
members = (2,)
}

I don't understand the parenthetical #, unless it refers to the number of members registered to the forum prior to the conversion.  There was my own administrator's account and a dummy regular account I set up to test double check the look of the forum for non administrators.

This:

members = (2,)

Should be:

members = (1),

There's no comma after it though.

Also, what is your member ID?  When you go to your profile from the board index (at the bottom where it shows members logged in), the URL should be something like:

http://www.eblah.com/forum/v-memberpanel/a-view/u-1850/

Whatever the number after 'u' is is your member ID.  For example, mine here is 15.  Martin's is 1850.

That's the number that should be where the 2 is.

I got the admin powers back after fiddling with a number of files in the Members folder and the Rank2 file.  I think the problem was caused by the fact that I was a poster on the old board under the same screen name, so when all the new member names were added to the database, FlyOnMelfisWall then appeared twice.  The member number for the transferred membership was 2 while there was no number at all -- only the name -- for the FlyOnMelfisWall account I created when I set up the E-Blah software.  I am always hesitant to just start winging it with changing settings, prefernece, and related files.  But in this case it seems to have worked.

Next problem: what about the failure of the forums to convert?  The script converted the membership database but not the actual messages.  I have a blank forum with no boards or messages.

Hmm?  It should have converted the messages fine.  Are there anything in the Messages directory?  If not, what version of phpBB were you using?

Okay, Justin, after further investigation, experimentation, and several re-conversions of the forum, I think I've found the issue . . .

Keep in mind that the forum I'm converting was originally an EZboard forum.  To get to eblah, I followed the recommended advice: converted the ezboard to phpBB, then converted THAT forum to eblah.  The intermediate phpBB forum appeared fine . . . messages in tact, in the proper order, proper associated data, username, etc.  That board is also fully functional.  I can add to or edit the messages and forums I transferred from EZboard as well as start new forums and topics on the phpBB board itself.

Now, the messages originally posted at and moved from EZboard do appear to have all transferred to an eblah database because I can see a lot of them unformatted in a file called "0.txt" (2.49 MB) in the forum/Messages directory.  ALL of the messages in this file were posted at the original EZboard forum, no exceptions.  

Problem is, they will not display on the new eblah board.  They are invisible on the main board index immediately after conversion.  I can solve the category and forum name visibility issue by changing the settings in the admin CP, but the messages themselves never appear and their locations seem to have all globbed up in the very first (top) forum.  That forum shows the post total (4,227) that existed at the phpBB board, but all under one thread . . . which lists 282 pages!  All the other forums show a total of 0 messages in 0 threads.  Furthermore, when I attempt to view the messages in the one glob forum, I can't get anything to appear.  The 282 links do not work to display any messages.  You still just see the same message index after clicking.

In contrast to how the eblah script is handling these EZ-board-originated messages, it  DOES appear to have properly transferred messages originally posted on the phpBB board AFTER the intermediate conversion.  I have no problem seeing the test categories, forums, threads, and replies I posted to the phpBB board.  Nor do I have any problems posting new messages to any of the forums (ez-board-originated or otherwise) at the eblah forum.  The associated message txt files for phpBB or eblah originated threads also carry distinctly different titles, i.e., a very long string of numbers like "1152322465.txt" instead of "0.txt" like the glob file.

Would be very grateful for further help.

If you could e-mail me your phpBB forum URL and login and then the E-Blah converter (and forum) URL, I'll try to see if I can figure anything out.

Hi,

I have managed to get my converted boards to show, but now all of the users just show up as guests and with a number, instead of their old phpbb user names.  Any ideas what I can do?

Thanks

Michael Costello
http://www.inlineplus.tv

Hi,

I hope someone is able to help me with changing over my users usernames, because I have got the forum looking good now, and this is my last barrier to letting people transfer to the better E-Blah system!

My phpbb forum is http://www.inlineplus,tv/forum
My new E-Blah forum is at
http://www.inlineplus.tv/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl

Thanks

Michael Costello

Try upgrading to the latest version, you are running 10.05

If you would prefer me to take a look then pm me the ftp login details to the E-Blah forum.

Hi,

I've done the upgrade, and it didn't fix the problem.  But can I just say how nice it was to do an upgrade and not having to redo the template

Michael Costello