Migrating from old forums to bbPress 2.2+

So you’ve been using BuddyPress’ built-in group forums since BuddyPress 1.5, but would like to use the new bbPress plugin to power your forums instead.

Gotcha.  You’ll need to migrate your existing group forum content over to bbPress as well.  Don’t worry!  This is what this article is all about.

Let’s get started!

(1) Backup your database

It’s always wise to backup your database, just in case you need to restore your database backup if migration fails.

(2) Install bbPress 2.3 or higher (if you’re using bbPress 2.2, upgrade to 2.3)

Install bbPress and activate it.

Also make sure you’re using at least BuddyPress 1.6.1.

(3) Remove “Forums” page from BuddyPress

• In the the WP admin dashboard navigate to “Settings > BuddyPress“.  Click on the “Pages” tab.
• Under “Discussion Forums“, select “None” and save.

(4) Disable BuddyPress’ Forums Component

• In the WP admin dashboard, navigate to “Settings > BuddyPress“.  Click on the “Components” tab.
• Uncheck “Group Forums (Legacy)” and save.

(5) Import old forums to bbPress 2

• In the WP admin dashboard, navigate to “Tools > Forums“
• (Note: if using Members plugin, you may need to assign forum capabilities to the Administrator Role. Go to Users->Roles.)
• Click on the “Import Forums” tab.
• Under “Select Platform”, make sure “bbPress1” is selected.
• For “Database Name”, “Database User”, “Database Password”, use the values as set in wp-config.php.
• Under “Table Prefix”, type in your bbPress prefix. For most users, this will be “wp_bb_“, however if you used a different table prefix, check your table prefix in bb-config.php and append “bb_” to whatever is listed there.
• Click on the “Start” button.

(6) Repair bbPress 2 forum relationships

• In the WP admin dashboard, navigate to “Tools > Forums“
• Check the first option and hit “Repair“.
• Next, check the second option and hit “Repair“.  Keep doing this until you have completed each option on this page.

(7) Configure bbPress settings for BuddyPress

• In the WP admin dashboard, navigate to “Settings > Forums“
• Make sure “Enable Group Forums” is checked
• Under “Group Forums Parent“, ensure “Group Forums” is selected.

(8) Make “Forums” page a sitewide index (optional)

• In the WP admin dashboard, navigate to “Pages“
• Find your old BuddyPress forums page (usually named “Forums”) and edit that page.
• In the post content, type in `[bbp-topic-index]`
• This will use bbPress’ topic index shortcode to display the most recent topics on our forums page.
• For more on bbPress shortcodes, check out the codex article.