Importing users and content from Joomla!

[Beluga]

Has anyone converted a Joomla!-site to PW? Is it possible without resetting the user passwords? I'm not afraid of experimenting with SQL commands, but thought I'd ask first.

[MatthewSchenker]

Greetings,

Hey Beluga! First, welcome, and glad to see you here. I seem to recall many Joomla/Seblod conversations with you in the Seblod forums.

Now, to your question...

How much data are you talking about here? If it's a "reasonable" amount, it may be easier to just re-build the pages.

ProcessWire has a terrific import feature that lets you take a csv file and pull the columns directly into ProcessWire fields, creating new pages. I have used it to pull in thousands of listings for a project I'm doing for a TV station (with 58 custom fields).

Here are the general steps to follow:

1. Install the csv import module (http://modules.processwire.com/modules/import-pages-csv/)

2. Create your "content type" in ProcessWire with all the fields you need

3. Export the relevant tables from your Seblod database

4. Create a csv file from the data in step 3

5. Give your csv file a header row, the top cell of every column containing the exact name of your ProcessWire field

6. Go to admin > setup and run the csv import module (directions are very clear from there)

It's really easy -- and fast.

After you run this, you will have a set of pages in ProcessWire with the fields and data you need.

I can provide more details if you need it.

Thans,

Matthew

[Pete]

Just thought I'd chip in and say it's EXTREMELY unlikely that you would be able to copy passwords across. Most CMS systems use slightly different ways of encrypting passwords, and the point of an encrypted password is that you can't decrypt it - rather when a user enters their username and password to log in, it encrypts the password that's been entered and checks that against the value in the database.

Having said that, it would be pretty easy once you've moved everything across to email all the users a link to reset their passwords, so that's a good way around it.

The short version of the above is: no matter which CMS you are moving to, it's unlikely that you could copy passwords across.

If you could point us to the URL of your current site we would be able to give you a better idea on how you might go about migrating your site, but I suspect Matthew has far more hands-on knowledge of Joomla than I do

[Beluga]

Thanks, guys.

Pete, yep, that's what I suspected about the passwords. CSV import module will be really handy as I find working with spreadsheets very easy.