Yahoo Groups -> YaBB SE 1.3.0 (working on it)

[yg_extractor]

I am working on a set of scripts to convert forums from Yahoo Groups to YaBB SE 1.3.0.  Here's the progress so far:

Working	Extract all message from a group (retries on ads)... this is the most difficult part.
Partial	Remove HTML and clean up messages from extracted pages
Done (but untested)	Translate YG member lists into SQL inserts for YaBB SE
Not Yet	Assign new passwords and email users to let them know
Not Yet	Parse subject lines to group messages into topics
Not Yet	Generate SQL inserts to load messages into YaBB SE

The scripts are (so far) written in Perl and tested on a machine running RedHat Linux 7.2.  It might be possible to use them on a windows platform... maybe.  The message downloader requires HTTP::Lite (from CPAN), so you need to have root access or convince your admin to install HTTP::Lite.

I'm planning to remain anonymous in this, in case someone at Yahoo gets pissed.  But I do want to distribute the scripts to anyone who's looking to move their forums off Yahoo's ever increasingly advertising-supported service and onto a nice YaBB SE bulletin board.

[Purple Raine]

WOW

this sounds AMAZING... Just wondering... can you apply this to other forums?

I have a board on ezboard that I really want to convert outta there... all I want are the messages... I don't even need the users... can this be done?

As you may know, Ezboard is 10x worse than Yahoo when it comes to ads...

[huijaa]

WOWI have a Yahoo-group and i'ld have to transport all stuff to YaBB...maybe possible...

[yg_extractor]

.. Just wondering... can you apply this to other forums?
I have a board on ezboard that I really want to convert outta there...
As you may know, Ezboard is 10x worse than Yahoo when it comes to ads...

Yes, I've seen EZboard and it's almost unusable.  Adding support for extracting ezboard might be simple, it might be a bitch.

Post a URL to your forum and I'll give it a try.  The script already has quite a bit of code to emulate the browser carefully (including cookies and redirects) to work with all the tricks yahoo does to force you into seeing ads.

[Purple Raine]

Thanks for looking!

My ezboard :: http://pub30.ezboard.com/feldaronlinemessegeboardfrm1

[yg_extractor]

EZboard has none of the anti-archive protections that Yahoo Groups uses.  You can easily download it using an archiver like wget (comes included with Redhat Linux 7.2).  If you use wget, be sure to give it options like "--recursive --level=3" so it gets all the messages.

The two popular windows-based archivers are Teleport Pro and WebZIP.  Give one of these a try if you prefer windows and pretty GUIs.  They're both shareware (last time I checked).  

Parsing the messages out of the html will be completely different than YG, since EZboard is a topic-based forum like YaBB.  YG puts each message on its own page and they even have some comments in the html to mark where the "content" begins.

[Purple Raine]

I'll give those a try!  Thanks!

[zrzrzrzr]

yg_extractor,

I'm very interested in this mod. Please email with more info! I'm trying to migrate two groups away from Yahoo, and this would be perfect.

zr

email: [email protected]

[groundup]

I too am interested in this converter.  If you would like to email me.. [email protected]

Or, you can contact me in other ways. (see contacts to left)

[zrzrzrzr]

How's this mod coming?