TalkBack to JComment Migration is a free Joomla 5 and 6 extension that moves the comments from the old TalkBack comment script into JComment, keeping each comment's date, author and reply threading. It matches every old page address to the right Joomla article for you, lets you fix the few it can't match, shows you a dry run first, and can undo the whole import with one click.
Why this exists
TalkBack, Richard Williamson's standalone PHP comment script, was a popular add-on for older Joomla sites. It keeps its comments in its own bt_data table, filed by page address rather than by article, and it hasn't been maintained for years. When a site moves to a current version of Joomla, those comments usually get left behind, because nothing in Joomla can read that table. This tool was written to move a real site's 2,237 TalkBack comments into JComment, and it does the page matching and reply threading that would take days by hand.
What it can do
| Feature | What you get |
|---|---|
| Automatic matching | Reads the page address each TalkBack comment was left on and matches it to the Joomla article whose alias is in that address, so pages that kept their address since TalkBack days match on their own. |
| Manual assignment | The Assign Unmatched screen lists every address it couldn't match, with sample comments so you can tell which page it was, and you type in the article ID. Review All Mappings shows every pairing, automatic or manual, and lets you change any of them. |
| Dry run | The report shows exactly which comments would go to which article, replies included, without writing anything. |
| Import | Top-level comments go in first, then the replies are attached to their new parents, so threads come through intact. Original dates, names, email addresses and websites are kept. Comments that were still waiting for moderation in TalkBack are skipped. Imported comments use the same language as the comments already in JComment. |
| Undo | Every imported comment is marked as coming from TalkBack, so Undo removes exactly those comments, their votes and their cache entries, and nothing else. You can fix a mapping and run the import again. |
| Search and diagnose | Find a comment by author, text, email or TalkBack ID in both the old and new data. Diagnose Threading puts one page's old TalkBack thread next to what's now in JComment. |
Installing it
You'll need Joomla 5 or 6, PHP 8.1 or later, and JComment 2.0 or later from Joomla! Extensions Store already installed. It works with JComment only (the #__jcomment tables), not with the free JComments extension from exstreme. TalkBack's bt_data table has to be in the same database as Joomla, so copy it across first if TalkBack lived somewhere else.
- Download the ZIP with the button above.
- In Joomla admin, go to System โ Install โ Extensions and upload it.
- Open Components โ TalkBack to JComment Migration. The top of the screen shows how many TalkBack comments it found and how many have been imported so far.
Using it
- Back up the site first. Undo is there if you need it, but a backup is still the safe place to start.
- Click Check Mapping to see which pages matched an article and which didn't.
- Open Assign Unmatched, type an article ID for each address you want to keep, and save. Leave an address at 0 to skip its comments. Use Review All Mappings to check the automatic matches.
- Run Report (Dry Run) and read through it.
- Click Migrate. The log shows how many top-level comments and replies were imported and whether anything failed.
- Look at a few articles on the front of the site. If something isn't right, click Undo, fix the mapping and migrate again.
Once the comments are where you want them, you can uninstall the extension. The imported comments stay in JComment.
Permissions and security
It's an administrator-only tool: anyone who can't open the component in Joomla's admin can't run it. The import and undo only touch JComment's tables and only the comments marked as coming from TalkBack. Your bt_data table is only ever read, never changed.
Open source
TalkBack to JComment Migration is open source under GPL-2.0-or-later. The full source, issue tracker and release downloads live at github.com/cybersalt/cs-talkback-to-joomla.
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