jReviews Support Forum

I apologize for the lack of documentation, but I preferred to release the beta as soon as possible since so many users were waiting for it. I've only migrated one jReviews installation and that was the demo site. If you would like to share your steps, then please do so you can help others. Here's what I did using phpMyAdmin:

1. Export core table data (not structure) using the complete insert option. Complete insert is important because the table fields are somewhat different. You only need to export data for the core tables:

jos_content, jos_categories, jos_sections, jos_content_frontpage, jos_content_rating (optional if you are using core ratings anywhere on your site).

Alternatively you can use the migrator application in J1.5, but I haven't used this so you need to hit the Joomla.org site for that.

Now import it in your new site.

2. Export jreviews tables including table structure and data and select the drop tables option. By now you should've already installed jReviews on your new site. Because the table structure is exactly the same and because some tables contain columns for custom fields, you must use the drop tables options so they are re-created with the correct columns.

Now import it in your new site.

This works well for english, but might produce problems for languages with special characters if you are moving from a non-ut8 site. Unfortunately I don't know the steps to convert from non-utf8 to utf8 at the moment. If anyone does this, please share.

Just for your information:

Migrator from 1.0 to 1.5 (http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,4223/Itemid,35/)
This need used on Joomla 1.0, with this component you do a dump of your db and in the mean time you convert some table (jos_content for ex.) in the new Joomla 1.5 format (very few changes but necessary).
You need:
install the migrator on joomla 1.0
do the dump
start the installation process of Joomla 1.5
load the dump during the installation process.

In my case some time all fine some time not.

You can use also
mtwMigrator (http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,3895/Itemid,35/)
This is a component for Joomla! 1.5, so you need install Joomla! 1.5 normally and then install this component and follows the instruction.
In my opinion is better, but please do a lot of test locally before , in both case is not so easy, especially if you have a lot of content, menu, categories and your site isn't in English.  ;)

I hope this can help someone.  :)

I have a clean install of joomla 1.5.  I was under the impression that jr reviews would not be difficult to install. Is it difficult with this release?

With a clean install you just need to install jReviews and that's it. If you are migrating from another version, then you need to follow the steps outlined in this post.

Thanks.

My Joomla v1.5 site is not a fresh install and has a lot of content so i need to update the site with my JReviews content from J1.0.  What's the easiest way of doing this?

That is definitely more complicated, even without jReviews. For instance if you have sections and categories with certain ids in your Joomla 1.0 site that already exist in your Joomla 1.5 you need to change those ids which needs to be changed in the sections table, category table and content table for the content item belonging to those categories. The same goes for content ids, and that affects the jReviews comments table which stores those ids for each review.

This is a complicated migration, without even considering jReviews, if you have overlapping section,category and content ids and you should hire someone with Joomla and mysql expertise to help you with it.

Nice tutorial, but I'm running into problems.
The Joomla migration process is finished and all Core content is there.

I have installed Jreviews.

If I have understood correctly I can drop all the jreviews tables in the databse and import all the old ones from my old install because structure is the same.

I can see all of my old content from the Joomla 1.0 install in PHPmyadmin, but they are called bak_jreviews..... and so on.

I first tried to export one of these tables (comments table) just renamed the file from bak_jreviews_comments.sql to jos_jreviews_comments .sql.
Then I tried to import it but it wouldn't work.

So how can I change the bak prefix so the table is excatly as it should, and so it will be imported successfully?

Hope this makes sense, and that someone are able to tell me how to get these old bak tables in.

Why don't you rename the table from bak_ to jos_ ? If you export it, you need to edit it and do a search replace of bak_ for jos_ because changing the file name doesn't do anything to the table names.

Do I need some kind of a program to edit it, or do you mean with notepad? Or do you mean just to rename the filename. I tried to rename the filename, ut it seems like there are some other stuff that causes error when trying to import. It won't let me.

Hey!


Easy!

Used Dreamweaver and replaced all bak.... with jos....

Works!

Hi!

I´ve got a few questions before I start exporting from 1.x in joomla 1.0 to jReviews 2.0 in Joomla 1.5:

I´ve migrate the content allready to my new 1.5-site. It works and all sections, categories and the whole content works fine! :)

Now I want to export the jReviews-tables! I´m not a phpmyadmin-profi and so I´ve got some questions about it:

I´ve checked all jReviews-tables to export them - but I don´t know which checkboxes and settings in phpmyadmin have to checked in and wich one not. There is a picture added at this posting, so you can see my problems!

Could someone please tell me details about the export? That would be fine! :)

The other question: How to import the downloaded tables? Do I´ve to do this by clicking on SQL in phpmyadmin and then upload the downloaded sql-file? What do I have to attend at this step?

- and here is question and problem number three:

when I download the sql-file, the file has a size of over 30mb!!! The problem ist the table jos_jreviews_captcha! Ther are so many entries... - and the upload-limit for the sql-file is 9MB! So do I have to export the jos_jreviews_captcha neccessarily? What is the function of this table and why has it such a big size?

I hope for an answer! :)

best regards,

filmforward

Hi,

You can ignore the captcha table. This is used to store temporary information and should actually be cleared automatically, so obviously something is not right.

For the export:
1) Under Struktur, check boxes 1,3,4 as you have on your image
2) Under Data, check first and last boxes only

Once you export you will have an sql file or compressed sql file and you can import by selecting this file or copying the contents in the sql window, but given the size it's better to import using the file.

The most important thing here for data integrity is that the ids of the articles in the jos_content table still match the pids of the reviews in the jreviews_comments_table. Otherwise your reviews will be assigned to random articles.

If you are having problem with the size, you can export the tables separately as well.

Hello, Alejandro!

Can you please write another post with the exact mysql tables needed to be exported from Joomla 1/Jreviews 1 and then imported in Joomla 1.5/Jreviews 2 with the exact modifications needed to be done to the sql file before the import (columns to be added/deleted)?

Thank you!

The jReviews tables didn't change at all. My recommendation is you follow the steps in the original post where all tables are listed. Don't export the table structure, just the data, and use the complete insert option:


In point 2. you can also export only the data if you have already installed jReviews in the new site.

Ok, I am doing a test install on my beta site, I copied over what I believe to be correct via the information given at the top.  But when I link a menu item to my test jreviews install I get "The directory is empty".  Looking at the backend, when looking it shows 2949 Published Listings, when clicking on the Listings link (which shows 3 next to it like Listings (3)) it will display all of them, but if I click and item, it comes up with no data.  So I am guessing I copied the data over incorrectly.  Since 2.0 has been out for a little while, have you posted more detail instructions yet, or could you?

I haven't actually done any migrations so the information at the top is the most current one. It would be useful if you tell me exactly the steps you followed so that i can correct any of them if I find something wrong.

Could be where I screwed up, I think I dropped the original structure and imported the tables also.

You can drop the jReviews tables because the structure remains the same, but not the Joomla tables because there are changes in them.

If anyone completing the migration wants to do a write-up I'll be glad to post it in the knowledge base for others.

Yup, that is what I did, I dropped and then added them.  I will go back and re-add the original SQL for those and just import the data.  Will post when done.

Got it working, can get a little confusing in phpmyadmin. If I was thinking, I would have taken screenshots while doing it, but I forgot and had to do couple exports because I forgot a checkbox.  Got it working now, thanks!  And thanks with the domain help earlier.

Screencast! glad you are all set.