Anyone supporting this plugin – help w/ discussions

Grab my contact details from my web site… And send me a tweet or email ??

Add a .com.au to the end of netweb

Got it. Thanks Stephen will send some data over tomorrow ??

Was there any progress?

I’ve bailed on trying to do the migration due to the client wanting to start anew with BuddyPress. Here’s couple things that may be of interest to y’all:

Contact these folks to fix your malformed JSON files that Ning gives you AND convert them to CSV for posterity. I suggest they create and SEO this page:

https://json-csv.com/custom/migrate-ning-data-to-buddypress.aspx

They’re very helpful. You can try to convert your JSON file(s) in their free web app as well. Costs to convert are very reasonable. Anyway, friendly dudes.

The other thing I wanted to share is… after a bunch of research on my own the other alternative I came up with for my client was to migrate to GROU.PS. They seem to be the only ones that support a full Ning migration (not just members). They’re a paid hosted solution but they were very friendly to deal with at first blush and the entry tier pricing is around $6 USD per month. They will help you migrate during their free trial as well. In addition to all of this they of course have their own export/backup features as well which has GOT to kick out more useful files than our not-so-beloved Ning.

That’s all for now folks.

Thanks for the update and the information Brian! I will check out those options.

My progress is I have sent the data to Stephen to see if he is able to come up with a solution. I am also waiting to hear back from web companies that may be able to sort something out for me.

Does GROU.PS allow you FTP access or do they host the content like NING? NING has really put me off that set-up, they have made me feel I have no control of my content, so I wouldn’t want to start something like that again. ??

Well, I’ve gone from elated to dejected pretty quickly today. I found this plugin and my hopes were rekindled that I could ditch Ning. I have a small forum but it has been up for some time and I know my members consider their previous discussions too valuable to lose, as do I.

I tried to include Xaviote’s tips as I went. Like most others, I can get members and their comments (goes to “Activity”) imported but the plugin dies when it gets to the importing groups/group discussions thing. (I don’t really know what it means by “groups.” I have one forum and that’s the only “group” there is.)

To make matters much worse, it appears that when the plugin imports comments, BuddyPress seems to be sending notifications to each individual in my user base on each comment they’re mentioned.

So, now they’re all logging into the forum to see if we’ve been hacked. It makes me even more cautious about trying anything more because I don’t want to annoy them with a flood of emails on each failed attempt.

Has anyone ever gotten this plugin to work?

Hi Keith, I am sorry to hear you are having the same issues, I completely understand how dejected you feel – this has been a nightmare few months to complete what I thought would be a simple task.

It is a possibility from the reports above that actually the JSON files we are downloading from Ning have errors in them which is preventing the plugin from completing properly.

I have sent another message to tell Ning this and see if they can assist. I think I will also attempt to find the contact of the CEO of Ning because this is ridiculous for the amount of money you pay and the fact that the content is created by us, yet we are unable to get valid copies of our data! So frustrating.

@westyalf, regarding your question above (“Does GROU.PS allow you FTP access or do they host the content like NING?”), GROU.PS is a hosted solution and not open source (just like Ning). The suggestion to migrate to GROU.PS though is for a number of reasons: 1) to get the hell away from Ning but still keep your threads. 2) Use it as a transitional solution until BP is all up and running. 3) And/or (and maybe most importantly) check out their backup/exports after migration and see what can be done with it—the files HAVE to better the crap Ning kicks out. And on that note I want to again suggestion getting all of your JSON files cleaned (affordably) by these peoples: https://json-csv.com/custom/migrate-ning-data-to-buddypress.aspx. Very nice to work with.

@brian Larson–That sounds great and I would be happy get my JSON files cleaned IF the end result is they are perfectly importable into BuddyPress. Do you know if they guarantee that?

Nope. These folks are completely separate from the plugin. Something to consider though is that you’ll have CSVs (human-readable of course) of your data as well which is way better than a bunch of malformed JSON files.

Okay, friends. All I can say is this (sorta, mostly) worked for me; maybe it will work for you. I have now repeated these steps three times from scratch and gotten the same results.

The first time I tried the Ning import (unsuccessfully), I was on my server. This time I did a local install. I think that might make a difference.

1. I went back to the Ning Archiver and did a fresh download.

2. I created a new sql database then did a local install of WordPress 3.7.1 using XAMPP. I put the Ning files in wp-content/ning-files.

3. When I got on the fresh site (using localhost), I went to Install Plugins –> Add New -> Search –> Import from Ning. Installed and activated.

4. I went to Plugins –> Add New -> Upload -> BuddyPress 1.6.1. That’s right. I had previously downloaded an old version of BuddyPress and I installed and activated that.

5. After BuddyPress was activated, a message about the BuddyPress Installation Wizard Link appeared at the top of the page. I clicked in.

6. Walking through the Wizard page now…The first page is Components. No changes there, I clicked Save & Next.

7. Pages. I made sure the “create automatically” buttons were selected. Save & Next.

8. Permalinks. I like my Permalinks based on post name, but you won’t see that here. I jumped out of the Wizard by going to Settings -> Permalinks and selected those, then I went back to the Wizard. The Wizard always starts from the beginning so I had to Save & Next through the first three pages of that again, ensuring again that my pages would be (or were) automatically created.

9. Still in the Wizard–the fourth page is for selecting a theme. I used BuddyPress Default.

10. I finished the Wizard and Activated BuddyPress.

11. At this point I began getting “Warning: Missing argument 2 for wpdb::prepare()” messages. I ignored them.

12. This error message also appeared. “The following active BuddyPress Components do not have associated WordPress Pages: Activity Streams, User Groups, Members”. You have an option to click Repair, which I did.

13. That took me to BuddyPress -> Pages, which actually shows a total of 6 components (including the three mentioned above) with no associated pages. I opened Pages in a separate tab and created the following pages for each component: Activity Streams, Discussion Forums, User Groups, Members, Register, and Activate. I refreshed BuddyPress -> Pages (to load the drop down menus), associated the appropriate pages, and hit Save All.

14. Then I went to BuddyPress -> Forums. I hit the Install Group Forums button and then hit Complete. I ignored the other option, to install BBPress (for now).

15. Now I was ready to start Ning Import. I let it do its thing, hitting Continue after each step. I got “Warning: Missing argument 2 for wpdb::prepare()” errors all the way through, sometimes a flood of them, especially during discussions. But I just didn’t care. As long as there wasn’t a fatal error, I kept hitting continue!

16. I had a fatal error at Events import, but didn’t care about that or any data after that. I already had what I wanted.

17. Then I went back to Plugins and finally let BuddyPress update itself to the latest version. The “Warning: Missing argument 2 for wpdb::prepare()” errors disappeared for good! I could visit my site at that point and see the results. Things looked OK.

18. It was only then that I installed BBPress and followed the codex for migrating BuddyPress forums to BBPress. The migration worked with no problem. BuddyPress installed. BBPress installed. Ning data imported. It’s all good.

I’ll keep playing with my site to see if there are any gotchas. One unfortunate thing I’ve noticed already is the Ning blog posts didn’t seem to import, even though the importer said they did. I’ve been going through the sql database and haven’t found them so I don’t think they made it.

I only have 13 of those, so if need be I copy and paste. I was happy to get the members, their information, and their discussions.

I sincerely hope others have success with this. It’s messy but for me it was a big step in the right direction!

@keithadv

That’s awesome, I have tried twice today with BuddyPress 1.5.7 & 1.6 and couldn’t get any discussions to import as it kept telling me that the ‘Group Forums’ were not setup correctly.

I can confirm that the plugin works quite well with the latest WordPress 3.8 and Buddypresss 1.9.

I tested with a vanilla installation. I might write a step-by-step guide, but generally one needs to install wordpress and buddypress, activate it and enable the ‘retired’ group forums in buddypress. Then install/activate import-from-ning, do the import. After that you can install the latest bbpress and move the imported discussions from the old Buddypress group forums into the new bbpress forums. Only importing events doesn’t work because the ‘events manager’ plugin is not supported on the latest wordpress.

Hi Rossen,

I am glad to hear you were successful with your installation, that gives me some hope that it can be done!

It would be so helpful if you could write a step by step guide.

I am starting to panic now as even the web developer companies I have contacted, can not do it… They say they would have to rewrite the code and not use buddypress but that would be extremely expensive! ??

If it’s any help at all my client was ready to say screw this, we’re ready to start clean slate with BuddyPress. Not sure if that’s even a remote option in your situation. Or maybe it’s your own project. At any rate, best of luck and I’ll continue to keep an eye on this thread.

Out of curiosity, Rossen, did you have to clean up the jacked up JSON files that Ning kicks out with their archive app before having a successful import or were you able to roll with them untouched? If I remember correctly NONE of them validate and mine wouldn’t validate after even just the simple fixes.