TOPIC: Importing MyBlog/JomComment comments into !JoomlaComment

I have a production site which has been using MyBlog/JomComment for quite awhile now (through several revs of those components) for my blog. Due to limitations of JomComment, I would like to switch over to using !JoomlaComment with MyBlog. Although I don't have many blog postings, one of them in particular has a LOT of comments (over 300) and I wish to preserve these comments across the migration to !JoomlaComment.

I installed !JoomlaComment 4.0 without incident. On the importcomment tab, I can select JomComment as an import component, but unfortunately the preview demonstrates that this would only import 3 out of the 330+ comments! A little investigation shows why: when I go to Components->JomComment and view the comments, it appears as though almost all of them are associated with the component "My Blog" and not "Joomla Content".

I'm not sure if this is an artifact of successive updates of the MyBlog and/or JomComment components, but that's what I see.

I did purchase and install the MyBlog<->!JoomlaComment bridge plugin because I assumed I would need that eventually anyway, but it did not give me any additional options for comment import (which I didn't really expect anyway, but it was worth a try).

Obviously, I'd like to be able to simply select "My Blog" from the import components list in !JoomlaComment and be able to pull in all of those comments... is there a simple piece of magic to do this? If not, can someone recommend the parameters I should use to do the import manually? Or any other guidance? This doesn't have to be an elegant or permanent fix... once the comments are imported I plan to use !JoomlaComment going forward.

Thanks!


tkarp

Hey Tom,
I'm sorry about the problem. Could you look the database of jomcomment and see where does it save the info that those comments are for myblog?

Daniel, thanks for the quick reply! Shortly after posting, I figured out how to do this myself.

I selected the JomComment import mapping that is provided with !JoomlaComment and wrote down the settings it pre-selected for the import settings lower in the form. Then I selected jos_jomcomment for the "Import from table" and com_myblog for the "Commented component value" fields. At that point I could simply set the remaining parameters according to the settings I had written down from the "standard" JomComment import. This works perfectly.

An Important Safety Tip for others using this product combination: the comment data is associated with com_myblog and NOT com_content. Be sure to look in the right place when wondering where all of your MyBlog comments have gone.

Daniel, you might consider including this combination as a standard comment import selection in the next rev of the product...?

Once I got past this step, integrating !JoomlaComment into my existing site, importing the old content from JomComment, and hooking everything up to MyBlog with the MyBlog<->!JoomlaComment bridge was trivial. I am now plowing through !JoomlaComment template massaging to make it look good with my site... when I am finished I will post a link here.


tkarp

Tom Karpowitz wrote:

Daniel, you might consider including this combination as a standard comment import selection in the next rev of the product...?

Well... I don't see the point of that. If you want to import comments that are in the MyBlog component, one would think you need to choose that component to import from. Alas, this is one of the small things along with many other hundreds of small things that are a little technical. But hey, that's Joomla for ya.

My only reason for making my suggestion is that Joomla IS so technical. I think the support for easy import of comments from "foreign" comment systems like JomComment is a VERY nice feature of !JoomlaComment. Being able to simply pick an "import template" rather than specifying individual field values helps to eliminate errors and makes it easier for non-technical folks or inexperienced Joomla hackers to migrate comments.

Because (1) JomComment is already supported as a migration import target, (2) MyBlog and !JoomlaComment are an expected pairing (based on the offering of a MyBlog integration component for !JoomlaComment), (3) most current MyBlog customers are probably currently using JomComment for their comment system (and thus are a potential market for the MyBlog/!JoomlaComment combination, as I was), (4) I already posted a working set of parameters for MyBlog/JomComment import in my post above, and (5) I figured it would be almost zero work to add that "template" to the comment import to support current MyBlog/JomComment users, I made the suggestion that it be added. At this point it doesn't matter to me one way or the other; I have made it past the comment import and my site is working just fine. It was just a suggestion that I thought might help some other users/customers.


tkarp

Well when you put it that way, yes it does make more sense. It would be a great companion for the MyBlog plugin that Daniel released not long ago.

By the way, if you want a reference site that is using MyBlog and !JoomlaComment together via the Compojoom plugin, you can refer to my Web site ( www.delmartian.com ), and more specifically my MyBlog-based blog , which is the only place I am currently using !JoomlaComment. I did a fair bit of modification to the CSS for the !JoomlaComment template I chose (modern black) so that it blends well with the rest of the site.

Again, my congratulations and thanks for a very nicely-written component and plugin.


tkarp

Great template modifications tom Your blog looks really nice. About the import. Are you perhaps willing to give me the jomcomment tables so that I can experiment with the import?

Happy to share tables with you. Please email or PM me to discuss what you need and the best way to transfer the files to you.


tkarp