When buying or merging with another site, how do you merge databases?

With the talk of other sites merging and acquiring other forums, it reminded me of a question I had awhile back. How do you go about merging another forum with your own? I mean, you want to pull all of the posts and members and all of that, but how do you actually do it?

I was looking into potentially making some offers to some sites, but wanted to know the process of how to pull it off before proceeding.

 

Impex i guess. Can cause some serious problems though.

 

Could you expand on this please? What type of "serious problems" can be caused? Do you have experience merging forums?

I'd also like to know.

 

No experience, just i like to read things. Im forgetting the source, will try to find.

 

I'd like to know the problems it causes as well when merging two sites. I think you have this issue confused with people who want to use ImpEx as a database cleaning tool by importing a single vBulletin site into a new database. It wasn't designed for that purposes and can indeed cause problems. However the problem isn't in the operation of the software or the results. The issue is that it will renumber everything in the database with new IDs. This means that all of your previous linking will be invalid. It would also invalidate read markers. Unless of course you have never deleted any content from your site during its operation.

Impex is actually the recommended method when talking about merging data into a vBulletin site.

 

Yep, if you're talking about vBulletin (or just about any major forum script) they usually have an importer tool available that will let you merge two databases together. Sometimes you may have to go thru an extra step or two like if you have a really old database, that needs merged into a newer one, you'll probably have to upgrade the old database to a newer version of that software.

 

So you buy Database B, and want to merge it into your site with Database A, both are vB DB's, Impex does it all for you?

 

Yes...

 

Nice

 

If you're going to use vB for everything, yes, impex is the best option, though I'm not sure impex will cover 100% of things (nothing will).

If not, it really does depend on the database. You may have to develop an import script, which can take time, or you can have one developed for you.

 

So, now this begs the question, where can I go hunting for vB DB;s to buy? :lol:

 

Look @ digitalpoint, you may have some luck there.

 

Answers are here

http://www.adminaddict.net/forum/ge...te-how-do-you-merge-databases-3951/#post47772

http://www.adminaddict.net/forum/ge...te-how-do-you-merge-databases-3951/#post47771

 

I've imported a few different script into vBulletin, impex has covered them all.
the vBulletin - Documentation has some great info and pictures on using impex

 

Sounds like it's not too difficult. Thank goodness

 

So if I import site B into site A, will the thread IDs from site B stay the same? Or will they be renumbered too? Will links to site B work? Can they be easily redirected to their new location on site A?

What happens if there is a thread ID 1 on site A and a thread ID 1 on site B?

I'm still lost.

 

Very good question!
One would assume that it's done as an auto-increment thing, but then you have the post id's to re-associate as well.

 

The IDs of site B will start at the end of site A's IDs. So all links would also change. However when merging two sites this is less of an issue since you're going to redirect old URLs to the new site domain anyway and will need all links reindexed.

If you really wanted to redirect individual links you would have to redirect them to site_id_b + max(site_id_a). You would get the maximum ID from site A immediately before the merger. Though if you deleted content from site B then eventually the links will be incorrect as IDs are never reused.

 

You always great answers to questions. Your a good webmaster.

 

Wayne is not just good...he's great!

Thanks for being a great 'mentor' Wayne, we really appreciate the direction and assistance that you give to us.