Fix for the dreaded ImpEx white screen timeout error. ImpEx is a utility to import various forum mysql databases into the VBulletin format. This timeout error happens most common when importing the POSTS with a count over 400,000. This is probably the largest part of your database. The timeout error around 400,000 posts imported results in a blank white screen that you can’t navigate away from (and an incomplete database transfer).
It took me 12 hours to figure this out. And if you’re here, you’ve probably already spent 2-4 hours pulling your hair out. So if it works, please drop a comment.
Fixes I saw posted online included changing server settings to increase MySql and PHP timeout settings. But that didn’t make much sense to me because I have a really beefy server. I also saw a fix that suggested you go through all your posts one by one and look for errors. 700,000 posts? No thank you. One fix actually said I should build my own local server, upload ImpEx to it locally and process, then upload the complete database to the server. Build a server for this? Yikes!
So here it is. The solution.
Problem: ImpEx times out with blank screen when importing database posts into Vbulletin.
Fix: Upload your impex folder into your root directory and access it directly there (www.yourwebsite.com/impex). The timeout error was seemingly caused by the VBulletin control panel.
*Note* – I also increased post imports to 5,000 per page. Don’t know if this was part of the fix.
I imported over 600,000 posts from a PhpBB2 database into VBulletin 3.7.0 using ImpEx 1.89 uploaded to it’s own root directory. Time for this conversion was about 75 minutes.
Just thought i’d let you know this seems to have worked. I was having a problem with usernames, but figured it was the same issue. Moving to the root dir seems to have solved the time-out issue 🙂
Thanks!