Big Board Thinking of Moving

SatGuyScott

Active member
Hi there, I run a very big site... a site with over 3 million posts. And I am looking at possibly getting rid of vBulletin.

The folks at vBulletin are leaving a bad taste in my mouth, I got banned from vb.com for asking a question about ForumRunner (a product that comes built into vBulletin, and is owned by IB/vBulletin.) as I wasnt getting help in the external ForumRunner forum. They banned me saying that they do not support ForumRunner there... yet a few days after banning me they opened a ForumRunner support forum on vB.COM... yet I am still banned...

Another reason for me wanting to leave is because I do not want to upgrade to vBulletin 5. To me its a major step backwards, not a step forward. When you upgrade to a new version of software you should not lose many of the features you had before, nor should it be slower then the older version.

The final issue is because of the CKeditor in 4.2.0 which is way out of date, which is making my site unusable to those with IE 10. I was hoping they would update the CKeditor in 4.2.1 but now they are saying it does not appear this is going to happen. With Microsoft starting to push IE 10 to people overnight this is becoming a big issue.

Anyways I think I have finally had enough and am looking into moving.

Before I move though I need to know a few things. I am on a brand new server and use NGINX with PHP-FPM. With vBulletin this has been a GREAT move for me, as with 2,000 members online my server load is at 0.20.

1) Will XENFORO work fine with NGINX / PHP-FPM?

2) I have over 3 million posts, 280,000 theads and 185,000 members. Will this size be a problem?

3) I have a few hundred paid subscribers on my site, is there a way to import them without losing their subscription information?

4) We have both custom branded versions of TapaTalk and ForumRunner will I have any issues? (They just use the standard plugins.)

5) My forum has over 100 forums in it, and I have a plugin which lets uses filter out the forums they dont want to see on the site. Is there anything like that for XENFORO?

6) We use vBAdvanced for our Homepage, is there anything like that for XENFORO?

7) Currently we are using SPHINX on our site for our search engine instead of the default vBulletin search. Does XENFORO support SPHINX?

8) Is there anything else I should consider before making the switch?

Thanks!

Scott
SatelliteGuys.US
 
Scott, i've been documenting my impressions on my blog and will have a post up soon enough published for public, ill share it here and AT. What I can say currently is vB4 compared to XF, no comparison so far. I am really digging XF especially the tools in the back end.
One thing that stood out right away believe it or not was the censor tools with the option to * out or rewrite the censored word. FANTASTIC! And the ajax, so smooth!

Migration on a 100k post vB4 site was less than 15 minutes. Did it twice so far on a production (live) box. Its a small site but went amazing. XF brought over prefixes, passwords, signatures, avatars etc. I mean really, that's awesome off the hop.

So, I have gone as far to contact some devs to quote on custom work for whats to be my new XF sites. If anyone can refer some devs, I am all ears :)

I have gone as far to list 20+ of my vb licenses for sale. I am done with vBulletin and trust me, that isn't easy to do. I really did appreciate vB3, its like a reliable old car, not perfect but never let me down. I honestly thought I would stick it out with vB3 for another 5 years but a lot of the functionality seems already available in XF and frankly, XF is very slick. Perhaps I am embracing it more than before since I am just going to go for it but Id like to think its because it just works well. But I dont like the stock theme.

I was hesitant about loosing albums but I have looked at the analytics. I don't see it as a big issues migrating images to a gallery forum section instead of an album. Statistically speaking it should not impact me too much.

Things that I need to get used to. Base theme & theme availability etc. XF is nice, will be nice to see some themes ported and different styles out there by quality designers. Ive been fortunate with Odesk designers and will look there :) Most of the coders I have worked with from Odesk as well work with Ajax. They dislike vB3 but make stuff work. My bb will be exciting to modify over.
Facebook and twitter integrations. I found the twitter settings lacking a bit of instructions. Ive never really been into twitter so a bit of a learning curve there.
I want to show sub sections, havent gotten there yet. LOL I am looking :p
Resource area. Again, stuck in my ways of looking through my backed up mods and custom devd ones. Sourcing out new ones is interesting especially since I am looking for similar to vb3 mods I have. I mean, its just different. Its tough adjusting.


When I get brave and try to tackle my BB as I want to see how XF handles the import of 177,482 attachments.
 
I have done a few tests and am happy with the results. I setup a test forum and had my users try it for the past two days and they really like it. (Oh course they will say its great until I move to it... then they will hate it... always seems to be the way.) :D

3) I have a VB4 subscription importer which you may be able to update for your needs, otherwise the SAFARI importer or the digital point ARFI will handle them.

Only thing that did not convert over are the subscriptions, if you could tell me where to find he subscription importer, I would be greatful. :)

8) Just make sure you do a couple of test imports to make sure everything is there you expect to be there :)
Yup did it twice and had no issues at all. I love the add on system as well. Now I got to try installing it on my NGINX system (the test server was an Apache server)

Thanks for the advice![/quote]
 
Scott, I cant run fast enough. One migration at a time means 1 new customer for XF. Im at 2 licenses now, long ways away from the days of 45 licenses with vB but that's ok. :)
anotherlicense.jpg


As for porting a theme, here is where I am at. A vB4 site to XF. Left is the live site, right is the dev environment. My guy is awesome :)
This is another reason I will be migrating, the theme porting worked no problemo! One other small board (why i got a new license) and then Ill tackle my first big board.

durhamrc-vb-xenforo.jpg
 
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