Entity Forum Importer migrates existing forum content into Entity Forum, forums, topics, replies, attachments and member avatars, landing it all as native Entity Forum entities.

It is disposable by design: enable it, run your migration, then uninstall it. It leaves the imported content (and its idempotency map) behind and takes only its own settings with it.

WordPress bbPress is the implemented source today, via the Acuity WP Migration Centre dashboard. The importer is built multi-source, each source lives in its own include - with Backdrop Forum, Forum NG and comments converters planned.

The bbPress source will later be split into its own sub-module - at which point only that sub-module, not the importer itself, will depend on the WP Migration Centre. Until then, Entity Forum Importer requires it. (The planned Backdrop Forum and Forum NG converters read Backdrop's own database and won't need it.)

Entity Forum ships primitives, not policy, and knows nothing about where your old content came from. The importer keeps all of that source-specific knowledge, WordPress table layouts, the bbPress attachments plugin, avatar plugins, out of the forum module, so Entity Forum stays clean of any one migration's quirks and you remove the migration code the moment it has done its job.

It is also idempotent. Every imported record is recorded in Entity Forum's migrate map, so a run can be repeated safely: re-running imports only what is new or was previously missed, never a duplicate.

• Full bbPress import: forums (order and privacy preserved), topics, replies, and threaded reply relationships, in one batched run.
• Attachments import into your fields, not a bespoke store. bbPress attachments are copied to managed files and appended to the image or file field you nominate on the topic type (and its replies), so imported attachments arrive with a widget, and members can manage them like any other upload. Files a private forum owns land in private://.
• Routing by allowed extensions, not mime. Each attachment goes to whichever of your fields accepts its extension (image field wins ties); anything neither field accepts is reported for action and skipped before any copy, so nothing is orphaned on disk. Widen the field, re-run, and only the missed files are copied.
• Inline images handled correctly. Images embedded in post text are copied local and their URLs rewritten to site-relative paths, kept distinct from field attachments (their URLs are part of the content and must not move).
• A persistent Missing-files report. Source files that could not be found - attachments and inline images alike, are collected into a durable "Missing files" tab (with a download-as-text link), each inline entry carrying the new post's URL so you can find and fix it. It survives the one-shot batch results page and is rebuilt on every run.
• Full author attribution. Author accounts are matched from a prior user migration; a member's forum posting name is seeded from their WordPress display name; posts whose author no longer exists are attributed as "No longer a member" rather than orphaned.
• Member avatars from the Basic User Avatars plugin are imported as Entity Forum forum pictures (never overwriting a member's own choice).
• Idempotent and re-runnable via Entity Forum's migrate map.

• Backdrop CMS 1.x
• PHP 8.0+
• Entity Forum
• Acuity WP Migration Centre (acuity_wpmc), provides the source-database connection and the migration dashboard the bbPress source registers on.
• Acuity WP User Migration (acuity_wpuser), recommended for the bbPress source: run it first so forum posts can be matched to their imported authors.

Install this module using the official Backdrop CMS instructions at https://docs.backdropcms.org/documentation/extend-with-modules

Enable the module, then clear your system caches. The importer dashboard appears under the Acuity WP Migration Centre at admin/config/acuity-wpmc/bbforum.

The importer is run from a dashboard, not left running, there is a setup order to follow.

Before you import:

1. Install and configure Entity Forum, and point the Acuity WP Migration Centre at your source (WordPress) database.
2. Build your attachment fields first. Entity Forum owns no attachment mechanism, attachments are ordinary fields. Add an image field and/or a file field to the topic type and its Replies tab, then name them on the importer settings form. If you skip this, the attachment step reports the problem and skips rather than guessing.
3. Run the user migration first (acuity_wpuser), so forum posts can be attributed to their authors. The import form warns if it has not been run.

Settings (admin/config/acuity-wpmc/bbforum):

• Table prefix - the source WordPress prefix (wp_ by default).
• Batch size - records processed per batch step.
• Default author - the account WP-orphaned posts fall back to (0 = "No longer a member"; consider a dedicated "Archived member" account).
• Text format - the format imported post bodies are stored with.
• Uploads directory - the source site's uploads folder, for copying attachment and avatar files.
• Old base URL - the source site's address, used to recognise and rewrite inline image URLs.
• Image field / File field - the fields imported attachments are appended to (only fields present on both the topic type and its replies are offered).

The run processes, in order: forums → topics → replies → reply threading → attachments → avatars → inline-URL rewrite → topic statistics. Spam and trash are skipped; pending posts import as unpublished. When it finishes it reports anything that needs your attention, skipped extensions to add, the largest file size to allow, and any missing source files, with links to act on each.

This is a Beta release for deployment testing.

One source forum per site. The importer migrates from one forum system; you cannot combine two different forums into a single Entity Forum. (This is such a fringe case it was decided against, raise an issue if you need it.)

Attachment fields must exist first. Because Entity Forum's attachments are your own fields, the importer cannot create them for you, you build and name them before the attachment step runs (see Configuration).

Inline images stay public. Images embedded in post text are part of the content, so, as with Entity Forum itself, their URLs cannot be gated by forum privacy. Only field attachments are gated.

Some source files are unrecoverable. Many "missing" inline files on a bbPress source are the attachments plugin's temporary staging paths (hm_bbpui/temp/…), ephemeral previews that never had permanent storage and were already dead links in the original posts. The report distinguishes these from real misses worth locating.

• Entity Forum (required) - the forum system this importer fills. It provides the migrate map that makes imports idempotent.
• Acuity WP Migration Centre (acuity_wpmc, required), WordPress source database connection and the migration dashboard.
• Acuity WP User Migration (acuity_wpuser, recommended), imports the WordPress users this importer attributes forum posts to.

• Split into a generic parent module plus one submodule per source, so a site enables only the converter it needs.
• Backdrop Forum importer (the contrib forum module)
• Forum NG importer
• Comments importer

Each planned converter includes a post-import "clean up source data" step, so the source content can be removed cleanly once migrated.

Bugs and feature requests should be reported in the Issue Queue: https://github.com/backdrop-contrib/entity_forum_importer/issues

• Steve Moorhouse (albanycomputers) (https://github.com/albanycomputers)
• Additional maintainers and contributors welcome.

• Steve Moorhouse - Zulip (DrAlbany)

• Assisted by AI.

• Current development is sponsored by Albany Computer Services, providers of computer support, web design, and web hosting.

This project is GPL v2 or later software. See the LICENSE.txt file in this directory for complete text.