So I tried the import again sinces removing BBPress and activated the Buddypress forum and I was unsuccessful.
Discussion groups
It looks like you’ve either disabled group forums, or you haven’t set them up correctly. If you don’t plan to use forums, click Continue. Otherwise, ensure that your forum setup is complete, and then return to this page.
How can I install an earlier version of the buddypress forum, to see if that will?
Sorry to hear westyalf. It’s a little confusing but links to download older versions of BP is on the Developers tab on the repository page (http://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress/developers/).
I did try the older version route with no success but you should give it a shot too. Let me know how it goes!
Any luck on your end @rockethead2?
Anybody have any other ideas of what other open source forum software Ning data could be imported to? I tried phpBB (script here) and again could get the member data in but NOT the forums. I’m starting to wonder if my JSON file is corrupt.
ATTN ALL: There’s a related thread here and I’m thinking moving forward we should keep everything here on this thread. Agreed? If so, I’ll put a final link to hear in the other one. Thoughts?
I think its a good idea to continue this discussion all in this thread.
Thanks for the link to the older version – I will try that next and see if I have any luck and let you know.
It could quite easily be something that happened during the ning archiver download of the json files. I know my download was not straight forward 🙁
I can not help with other ideas for import as I just do not have the knowledge but I am waiting for response from programmers to see if they can assist, I will let you know as and when I hear.
That was a bit of a disaster lol!
I deleted the 1.8 version of buddypress and installed the 1.5 buddypress plugin and it just broke the site so I could not test the import.
I had to delete the buddypress file from the server and then I just reinstalled the latest version of buddypress to get things working again.
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Will have a look through the actual JSON files now and see if I can spot error – I may even re-download from Ning Archiver
Sorry to hear about the disaster!
I tried re-downloading the archives and the updated JSON files are still hosed. Well, malformed is a better word. Seems to be tons of syntax errors to the point where I’m not sure how to fix even with a JSON validator like this one. Totally at wits end with this. Seems evil and weird that Ning’s archiver would output highly invalid JSON files. BuddyPress aside I don’t even know what to do with the client’s forum data at all! At this point at bare minimum they just need it to be human-readable and searchable. As I may have mentioned I tried getting it into phpBB but again the members were imported but not the discussions/forum(s). I’m even at a point of trying to just get the dang data in a spreadsheet for the client but again it’s all malformed (went to http://json-csv.com). I emailed them about paying them to fix the JSON file and convert it to CSV but haven’t heard back yet. Excuse me while I go punch something repeatedly.
Completely agree with you about NING, I don’t think they could have made it more difficult if they tried! Its a ridiculous and unacceptable service, I have asked them before about allowing an export in another format but they just said they offer JSON, I will bring it up again on their forum.
I never had an issue using Ning before – but they changed some of the features and the one my website uses will no longer be supported hence why I needed to move. Since this whole nightmare trying to get the content moved I will never use ning for any further web developments at all because you have no real control of your own content.
I hope you hear back about converting the JSON file to CSV. I will ask the same on NING forums and let you know if I get a response.
I have never done this myself, nor have a JSON Ning export to test with.
After a quick read I would suggest trying with BuddyPress 1.6.x from the d/l links above. Do NOT download and install the bbPress plugin, use the built in version of bbPress that shipped with BuddyPress 1.6.x.
With some luck this might just help with the compatibility issues you are having.
Hi Stephen, thank you for your help.
I have downloaded buddypress 1.6.1.zip and I will install today and try the import again. Fingers crossed… I will let you know the outcome.
So one improvement… I didn’t break the site! But unfortunately still no luck with discussion import. I get no errors though, it just does not seem to complete the task:
Discussion groups
Import from Ning is now importing your Ning groups. If you’ve got a lot of groups, you might have to refresh the page in order to get them all. If so, you will see a message near the bottom of the screen.
Once you’ve finished importing groups, click Continue at the bottom of the page to move on to the next step.
Start…
End…
and
Discussions
Import from Ning is now importing your Ning groups.
All of your discussions have been imported! Hit Continue to continue to the next step.
Ning will not let me download my content in any other format than JSON… Their reponse to my begging lol…
Unfortunately the Ning Network Archiver can only export network content in .json format. These .json files can’t be used to restore data to a Ning Network, but rather they are meant to be a hard copy of the content. You can view the content by using a text editor such as Wordpad or Notepad. To learn more about this file format, check out this Help Center article: (http://www.ning.com/help/?p=5215).
Let us know if we can provide additional assistance.
Good to hear you didn’t break the site! Sorry to hear you’re still having import issues too. I think I’m going to abandon ship and migrate the client’s data to GROU.PS which is still a hosted solution but much more affordable (starting at ~$7 USD per month). They have some export and backup services as well. Then their members still have a place that’s NOT Ning to use while they start anew and transition over to a fresh BuddyPress and bbPress site. I can’t believe how big of a nightmare this has been! I’ll still be participating in this thread and testing out new ideas if it’s something I feel I haven’t tried. Thanks for jumping here too Stephen!
Thanks Brian.
I think that is a good idea to migrate away from ning and start a new transition. I am hoping the professionals can help finish off my migration… I will let you know when (hopefully) we complete the move!
Sounds good! I hope all goes well. I’ll report back on whether or not they go with GROU.PS or they just say goodbye to all 4,200 threads. My client pays Ning like $500 per year and they can’t even get a single reply from customer service apparently. Neat.
Could one of you familiar with Ning create a sample JSON export file?
(It would need a couple of examples of each data type, users, forum, topic, replies etc)
I can’t guarantee I’ll get it to work but more than happy to take a stab at it. I might also be able to update the plugin to support the latest versions of BuddyPress/bbPress.
That would be great Stephen!!
Is there a way you can send me a private message with your email address and I will get some data over to you.
Thanks fellas! I look forward to seeing how it goes. Happy to test stuff on my end if it’s helpful.
