Hi,

I am migrating a small Joomla 1.5 website I made for a student organization back in 2007 and noticed that migration of Community Builder 1.9.1 is very easy yet there seem to be no tutorials actually describing the process. Here I summarized the process which involves only free tools. Maybe someone will benefit from this.

The main trick is that CB 1.9.1 is almost exactly the same whenever it runs on Joomla 1.5, 2.5 or 3.x. Meaning that the database tables are compatible and only some platform specific data may not work directly. Otherwise it is just “copy – paste – fix minor issues” operation.

1. Update the source website to have a fully working CB 1.9.1 and test its database integrity by clicking on every button EXCEPT “Load Sample Data” under “Components / Community Builder / Tools”.
2. /Joomla 1.5 specific/ migrate the website using free redMIGRATOR (I used v1.0.0 in RESTful mode to migrate to Joomla 2.5.24). After migration the User IDs seem to be preserved. IMPORTANT: when you install new website for redMIGRATOR, use a unique, temporary username AND email for administration – If username or email will match any of the previous users you are migrating, everything will still actually work, only you will need to edit username and email back to original one after you are done with everything listed here.
3. Make a backup of what you just migrated while it still works (MySQL & folder with the files)
4. Through phpMyAdmin export from the database of the old website all CB tables which contain “_comprofiler” in the table name.
5. Import those CB tables into the database of the website where you are migrating to.
6. Through phpMyAdmin manually rename each imported table to have the correct new table prefix (so that all tables start with the same letters).
7. Check the “_comprofiler_plugin” table. The default plugins have IDs from 1 to 15. I would recommend deleting all other entries for additional plugins you had installed.
8. Now you are ready to install CB 1.9.1 on the newly migrated website. (I would take another backup, just in case).
9. Install CB 1.9.1 component and then login module as usual into the newly migrated website.
10. Then directly go to the “Components / Community Builder / Tools” and press “Synchronize Users”. Afterwards you can run other checks, but they should be fine anyway.
11. Now the remaining fixes & tweaks:
a. Edit your existing CB user Lists in “CB List Manager”. I needed to open, fix the access levels and resave them to make them work.
b. Open “Components / Community Builder / Configuration” on both old and new website side-by-side and check/fix every option. Some options will need to be adjusted, but it extremely easy to do with old website for reference.
12. This is it – Everything should work already. MAKE a BACKUP. Now it is up to configure login module and install any additional plugins.
One additional Joomla 1.5 specific hint - redMIGRATOR v1.0.0 requires at least PHP 5.3.0. While Joomla 1.5 is officially supporting max PHP 5.2.x. I used PHP 5.3.0 (Through WAMP 2.0i) and it worked to migrate website, but then switched to PHP5.2.11 to do Everything else, not related to redMIGRATOR.

Notice that the method I described should work just fine even if a specific CB migration tool is not working properly between the CMS versions you are migrating between. Manual steps are easy even for a amateur like me & the only possible problem is if the user IDs are not the same between old and the new website (hope it is not an issue for your specific migration scenario).

Big thanks for Community Builder and all the great free tools around!