Import speed

[RedWingFan]

Hi Jerry,

I actually did try it on two different servers, and it still would not work. Then, we figured out that according to the documentation, the Webcrossing import would only import the forums, not the posts or the users (although users *did* get imported, albeit with e-mail addresses), and the import seemed to fail when it looked like it was importing posts.

What was frustrating for my client was that they bought vB after seeing a test import from Webcrossing, only to find out now (months later) that it possibly can't import the posts or users anyway.

[Jerry]

The importer does users because they are in the database, the rest is parsed from the SGML file if it is present.

[RedWingFan]

The importer does users because they are in the database, the rest is parsed from the SGML file if it is present.

I know that posts are present in the SGML file--I think the file size is about 60MB+, and having opened it in a text editor, I could see some post content in there.

I just wondered why it wasn't importing...in other words, if the functionality to import the posts and users was built into the ImpEx converter or not. That would save me running around in circles.

[Jerry]

Yes, that importer is designed to get the forums, threads and posts. Though due to the source format (i.e. one big file with some strange formatting) it can be temperamental, as you've likely found out.

I'd raise the PHP memory limit as much as possiable and do it all in one go.

[RedWingFan]

I'd raise the PHP memory limit as much as possible and do it all in one go.

Thanks Jerry. Steve had me do an ini_set to set a memory limit of -1, so that should have fixed the memory limit problem.

It is indeed tempermental. This makes me wonder if there is something in one of the posts that is causing ImpEx to bail out on me. (Might be a character or string that doesn't parse.) It seems like it gets through the posts part way, encounters an error, then starts over on the current page of imports.

For awhile, MySQL was having fits, but I got past that. I tried first on my own server here in the office, then uploaded it to a web server with newer hardware and 4GB of memory. It went much faster there (even with another busy public vB installation running), but the last issue I had was that it would import the users, then quit. A comedy of errors.