Thinking of Moving from vBulletin to XenForo

[Amaury]

Hello!

So moving to XenForo was brought up once before, but ended up being rejected. However, I like XenForo about as much as vBulletin now and therefore think it might be nice to move just for something different.

Right now, this is not a definite, just a thought, mostly because I need to see if our owner can afford a license, but I brought up the idea of moving KH-Flare, which is on vBulletin 4.2.2 at the moment, to XenForo, which I'm awaiting feedback from the owner and our other staff, and I've got some questions:

1. There is now an official vBulletin to XenForo importer. Does this come with the software or is it a separate fee?
2. Can we opt out from importing friends / contacts? When @mistypants moved KH-Vids from vBulletin to XenForo in August 2012, some friends imported as followers while others imported as following, which became quite confusing. We don't have a big member base, so I'd rather just go around and follow who I was friends with before.
3. Following the above, we'd rather have a professional do the import to make sure nothing is lost (threads, posts, groups, group posts, etc.). Who would you guys suggest from a third-party service?
4. How long would it take to set up XenForo and import our data, which can be seen on the Forum Statistics sidebar block in the the KH-Flare hyperlink above. However, if you don't feel like looking for the statistics, we have 1,320 threads, 10,514 posts and 88 members plus all the group posts, although I'm not sure if those are counted.
5. How are private and visitor messages imported?

These are all the questions I can think of at the moment.

 

[Amaury]

You can choose to retain IDs or not. If you retain them, they remain the same. If you don't retain them, they don't.

What happens if we choose to not retain them? Do we get new IDs?

 

[Jeremy]

As stated in my previous post, yes, you will get new IDs.

 

[Amaury]

As stated in my previous post, yes, you will get new IDs.

That would probably fix our ID gaps, then, due to things like deleting spam bots, huh?

For example, there are 20 users. Users 11-19 are spam bots and are deleted. When moving to XenForo and choosing not to retain IDs, User 20 would become User 11, if I'm understanding you correctly.

 

[Jeremy]

Yes, you are.

 

[Amaury]

Yes, you are.

You're awesome, Jeremy! Thank you!

 

[rainmotorsports]

If you have any good links coming in from other sites its a good idea to retain ID's especially if you implement redirecting incoming links to the new urls which isn't hard. Once you get new thread ID's that goes out the window in general.

A successful site is always going to have gaps in ID's. Another thing to consider is links inside your own forum to other threads will be broken if you do not retain the IDs.

 

[Amaury]

Your board is small, so I do not see any problem doing the import yourself. You should not lose anything.

Additionaly, take a look at the help document here: http://xenforo.com/help/importing/

The following screenshot show what is imported with the importer.

So we're planning on using @Waindigo's Social Groups resource, but I see no step there to import groups. However, @mistypants was able to get the data when she moved KH-Vids, it just couldn't be used because there wasn't a groups resource installed at the time.

How can we import groups, albums and group albums?

 

[Jeremy]

The importer doesn't import data into 3rd party add-ons. It doesn't handle the import of anything it doesn't have any destination for. You will need an add-on that adds the import functionality.

 

[Amaury]

The importer doesn't import data into 3rd party add-ons. It doesn't handle the import of anything it doesn't have any destination for. You will need an add-on that adds the import functionality.

Seeing as how @mistypants did it, an add-on must exist.

Do you know of one?

 

[Jeremy]

A quick search in the add-on you want to use will give you your answer:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/social-groups-by-waindigo.34152/page-31#post-649051

 

[Jon W]

We're actually releasing a direct importer for Social Groups in the next few days.

 

[Amaury]

A quick search in the add-on you want to use will give you your answer:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/social-groups-by-waindigo.34152/page-31#post-649051

We're actually releasing a direct importer for Social Groups in the next few days.

Thanks, guys!

So some more questions. We've got these user groups:

• Administrators
• Super Moderators
• Moderators
• Site Staff (Custom)
• Registered Users
• Banned Users
• Adult Users (Custom)

(I'm not including the guest and awaiting confirmation user groups here.)

If we choose to import our user groups, how much re-configuration will we have to do? If we don't import user groups, where will our users land?

 

[Paul B]

Importing user groups is not an exact science so you will have to check the permissions afterwards.

All users not in a group will default to the Registered user group.

 

[Amaury]

Importing user groups is not an exact science so you will have to check the permissions afterwards.

All users not in a group will default to the Registered user group.

Thank you, Paul.

And I'm assuming with permissions, it's possible to have our Super Moderators and Moderators (sectional) user groups work like on vBulletin?

 

[Jeremy]

Yes, you can have moderators only function within a certain forum.

 

[The Dark Wizard]

That would probably fix our ID gaps, then, due to things like deleting spam bots, huh?

For example, there are 20 users. Users 11-19 are spam bots and are deleted. When moving to XenForo and choosing not to retain IDs, User 20 would become User 11, if I'm understanding you correctly.

Yes, you are.

Would it be possible to do something like this with out needing to merge databases?

Though I understand the complexity of doing this in any other situation. We have hundreds of thousands of ids we want to fix.

 

[Paul B]

You could do a XenForo to XenForo import and not retain IDs but that would require redirection scripts for existing indexed links.

 

[Jeremy]

Would it be possible to do something like this with out needing to merge databases?

Though I understand the complexity of doing this in any other situation. We have hundreds of thousands of ids we want to fix.

You would need to do as Paul said. There are too many instances that would need updated for a direct query update.

 

[Amaury]

We may be moving on January 1, 2014, as that's when our owner gets paid. It just depends on if he can afford a license or not.

 

[C.Stanley]

You should defiantly to it. Best choice i have made in 7 years of forums