Converting my site from PNC 4.5 to Ravens nuke

New Member Joined: Feb 05, 2012 Posts: 2

First off I want to apologize in advance if I have posted this in the wrong forum.

I am running a site using Phpnuke clan (PNC) and I was told by a friend the other day that PNC is dated and that the project looks as if it is dead with no update in sight. Also, right now PNC only supports php 5.2 which is fine because my web host is running php 5.2....for now. If my web host goes to php 5.3 then my site will be broken Sad

and that would be a huge pain! On top of that, I was told that the VWar module PNC has is extremely insecure.

Ravens Nuke was recommended to me but I don't know how I would go about converting my PNC database to Ravens nuke or if its even possible. I would like to keep all usernames/passwords, news articles, forums/posts for sure and anything else that could also be converted over. I really want to install Ravens Nuke badly it seems to be updated more often and also more stable. Then when my web host goes to php 5.3 I'll be good:)

Also, would I be able to install the new version Ravens nuke on my php 5.2 server or would I have to use an older one?

Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2012 5:50 pm

This should help you get started:

http://rnwiki.ravennuke.com/wiki/RNWiki_Home

Also I would do it locally with Xampp or one of the other programs which allow you to practice on websites on your local computer. I believe you should have no problem with RN2.5 on a php 5.2 server... Smile

Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2012 3:39 am

After many hours of testing/tweaking/and installing I have successfully converted my site from PNC to the current version of Ravens Nuke. Also, preserving all content and users on the site. I am posting this reply in hopes this helps someone else who many encounter this problem in the future. I would've killed for this info when I was doing this. Luckily I was able to figure it out Smile

Here's what I did:

First, I installed WAMP (Windows, Apache, MYSQL, PHP) on a server machine I had hooked up to my network (to test/convert the site BEFORE I did anything to my host's web server). Then I exported my PNC database on my host's web server and imported it into my local SQL server.

Then I downloaded and installed the current version of Ravens Nuke onto the local server. Here comes the hard part (not really but it will take time to find what you need). I went to phpMyAdmin for the local SQL server and then to my PNC database and manually converted the table names to fit Ravens Nuke. In my case I changed the start of table name from PNC_ to nuke_ . Then I copied the newly renamed table checking the box to include a drop statement (very important) to the Ravens Nuke database on the local SQL server. I carefully looked at all the table and only convert the ones I thought I would need without breaking Ravens Nuke.

Here's a list of the tables I converted from PNC DB to Ravens nuke DB :

Code:




 nuke_users


 nuke_authors


 nuke_autonews


 nuke_banner


 nuke_bbauth_access


 nuke_bbcategories


 nuke_bbconfig


 nuke_bbforums


 nuke_bbgroups


 nuke_bbposts


 nuke_bbposts_text


 nuke_bbprivmsgs


 nuke_bbtopics


 nuke_bbtopics_watch


 nuke_bbuser_group


 nuke_ctshout_shoutconfig


 nuke_ctshout_shouts


 nuke_faqanswer


 nuke_faqcategories


 nuke_message


 nuke_nsnst_admins


 nuke_stats_date


 nuke_stats_hour


 nuke_stats_month


 nuke_stats_year


 nuke_stories


 nuke_stories_cat


 nuke_topics

I may have missed some tables and/or another person may have different tables than I to convert. Granted, my site wasn't very large.

From there it was all smooth sailing.

BAM! Raven's Nuke converted from PNC baby! Hecks ya I did it Very Happy

Hopefully I am not missing anything but I think that's it though. Who knows it's 3:30 am and I'm tired, It's entirely possible. Forgive me if it's not complete but hopefully this will serve someone else well in converting their PNC 4.5 site to Ravens Nuke 2.5.0. It was some work but totally worth it. Now my site is more secure, it functions better and when my web host changes their servers from php 5.2 to 5.3 I'm good to go.

Thanks fire for your reply your link did help get me started at least Smile

Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2012 5:10 am

Congratulations on your conversion!..... Smile

Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2012 6:28 am

Congrats cbviking, btw this should be sticky Very Happy

Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2012 7:13 pm

I will join in the congrats too.

Note to others doing something similar. There is a table comparison utility in the RN 2.5 distribution that you can use to compare the official RN2.5 table structure to the one in your old database. Or you can use a tool like MYSQLdiff. Nothing wrong with the way you did it, obviously, but those tools do give you a more scientific approach and greater assurance that problems won't pop up down the road.

Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2012 7:26 pm

fkelly wrote:

I will join in the congrats too.

Note to others doing something similar. There is a table comparison utility in the RN 2.5 distribution that you can use to compare the official RN2.5 table structure to the one in your old database. Or you can use a tool like MYSQLdiff. Nothing wrong with the way you did it, obviously, but those tools do give you a more scientific approach and greater assurance that problems won't pop up down the road.

+1

Congrats on the conversion!

Involved Joined: Jul 03, 2006 Posts: 273

As the ONLY (hence the very slow development as I have no time for it) Developer (trying) to work on PNC I can confirm to anyone reading this that it is likely PNC will not continue to be developed in the future. There is currently an 80% finished updated version to yet be released. However, it still needs the brand new installer (20% started) to be completed but of which is also on hold while a complete re-desing and migration of the site which hosts PNC to a new system is completed. That is also nearly 80% completed.

The next release of PNC will be 5.3 compatible and will be secure (the vWar rumours are old and it has been secured and no known vulnerabilities exists on the version we run) but will also likely be the last release of PNC that runs vWar. It will be mostly a compatibility and maintenance release with only a couple new modules or features. Any future release of PNC (other than the next one) will not contain vwar at all but will include an all new Roster and Battle Management system. It will also not likely be built on the Nuke platform but, even if for some reason it is, it will not likely be called "PNC" anymore. The one thing that will happen if that does change is the new system will be designed to upgrade from PNC to it.

That said Thanks for sharing your conversion experience I am sure it will help others who wish to migrate to RN and good luck with your new site! Wink