Porting from Vanilla 3 Garden to Flarum

[MrCaspan]

So I was able to get your project to work kind of with a bunch of issues that I wanted to put here in hopes that if others have the same issue this might help them find the answer or you can update your documentation page:

1. The defualt config uses source and test as a label for the source and target database. This is just confising, why not use target as the alias name for the destination DB? Not a huge deal but was confusing at first. Alos users make sure you set your config.php properly and you know what is your source and what is your target or else make sure you have a BACKUP of your source DB jsut incase!!. And quick tip for testing a migration back up your destination DB so you can keep restoring it over and over while you play!

2. If your source database is Vanilla 3 you need to choose vanilla2 as your package alias aka -p=Vanilla2 not sure why were using 2 for verison 3 of the forum? Maybe the dev could make a Vanilla3 package alias and just point it to Vanilla 2 for confusions sake?

3. Make sure to look at your source database to see if you have a prefix on your table names. IE. I believe by default Vanilla forum uses GDN_ for all their tables. If you don't specify the correct source table prefix using --src-prefix=GDN_ you will get and error about
   Base table or view not found: 1146 Table 'databasename.PORT_User doesn't exist This error makes it seem like it has to do with the destination database but this is becuase it cannot find the source database table name becuase you didnt set the prefix for it. This error from PHP is very misleading!

4. There is not clear instructions about this but there is a mention at the very bottom of the instruction page. This tool will create a bunch of PORT_ tables in the target database while doing the migration. This is not a prefix you get to specify, it's a defaut of the script that is uses as a temporay place to put data while doing the migration before placing it in the final tables in the target database. After you are finished porting you can delete all the tables that start with PORT_.

These are some suggestions for the dev and hopfully help others!

[linc]

Thanks @MrCaspan, I've addressed these notes in #55 and they are in the 3.4.2 release.

[MrCaspan]

what's really funny is I'm just about to use this porter again today and was like "I wonder if linc saw my messages?" :) All good, Inly suggestions from my use of it. I'm about to do a test port again and I'll let you know if I see anything different!