Lack of interest Continue development of the cli importer

[imthebest]

As an incentive maybe you should sell this one as an official add-on like the RM or ES but a cli importer is much needed if you want to get more big boards converted to xenForo. And it needs to be official, not made by third parties (very expensive btw).

 

[HappyWorld]

Which 3rd party importer that you meant? From digitalpoint?

 

[imthebest]

The original one from @digitalpoint has an affordable price (in fact it's even free if you're already a premium member of his well known community). I was talking about this one which is based on the one made by him but costs $125 more

So if people are already paying $150 for an unofficial importer why not make an official and supported one and sell it for something reasonable as $50? That would be a good idea, it's a win-win deal for both xenForo as a company and we as customers.

 

[Slavik]

That would be a good idea, it's a win-win deal for both xenForo as a company and we as customers.

Unfortunately not, the time to code, maintain and support a CLI importer would not justify the very small number of boards who actually need it.

 

[woei]

@Slavik Of Course you don't find this a good idea, you are the one selling it? So you have every interest in keeping your business up?

I also think the support of import for big vBulletin (or any other big forum software like IPB, phpBB and etc...) should be supported as best possible. As XenForo you want to make the switch as easy as possible for new clients. It's investing in your new clients, so it would be "marketing". I'm happy I that I did not need the importer. Just did not want to spend another $150 dollar on what should be core functionality. Luckily the standard importer works good enough for me and Mike helped me really well with the error I encountered.

My board of 3,2 million posts imports in about 4 hours total, that time is for me acceptable. The only thing I don't have after the import is the history of attachments that I have uploaded, but the attachments itself are all there and working. So are the avatars. I don't understand the difference with the paid version. Is it only the speed? If so, this "trick/procedure" should or can be implemented by XenForo to speed things up?

And Slavik, I don't mean all bad. It's good that you offer services to help people with the import, but I hoped that the tools for an import would be free or included for anyone.

 

[Brent W]

This is all an assumption that big boards are only on vBulletin, which isn't the case. Anyone not on vBulletin with a large forum is already discouraged from importing from the start due to the massive down time required.

 

[imthebest]

It would be a good marketing move because you can advertise that people can migrate to xenForo with very low downtime thanks to the built-in cli importer (something that your competitors don't offer afaik). I disagree with the point that the amount of people that will use the add-on doesn't justify it's support... it's the same thing with the ES add-on, not everyone needs that but it's available for anyone who wants it.

 

[Mouth]

The CLI importer works fine with v1.1 - a big board migration to XF could just use v1.1 for conversion and then perform a v1.3 upgrade immediately afterwards.
No extra charge required.

I disagree with the point that the amount of people that will use the add-on doesn't justify it's support...

I disagree that a big board couldn't afford a once-off $150 for migration.
I'd rather see XF development efforts going into functionality that everyone can use, than maintaining something for only a very small % of the (potential) userbase.

 

[imthebest]

I have tested the cli importer with 1.3 RC2 and it works fine except for this and this. However I don't know if the web importer migrates that data so I'm still waiting for confirmation.

 

[Slavik]

@Slavik Of Course you don't find this a good idea, you are the one selling it? So you have every interest in keeping your business up?

I don't understand the difference with the paid version. Is it only the speed? If so, this "trick/procedure" should or can be implemented by XenForo to speed things up?

If Mike and Kier wanted to code a new or update the CLI importer then I would fully support and promote it.

I'm just stating facts, that big boards who need a CLI importer are a very small percentage in the forum world, I would say <1%, if that.

Basically, your paying for speed if you can take 4-5 hours downtime for an import, then, yes thats fine, but some people need it in 30 minutes, which is where this comes into play.

It's kind of like comparing a volvo to a lamborghini, both will get you from point A to point B, but one is a lot quicker with a price to match