Converting from vBulletin 3.8 to XenForo - What to do Exactly?

[fattony69]

Alright, this may sound like a stupid thread, but I am just making sure that I covered everything so I do not have to make a "HELP - I SCREWED UP, SAVE MY COMMUNITY" thread. Like almost everyone else, I too am converting my forum to vBulletin 3.8.

I currently use many modifications (which I am so glad to get rid of), vBSEO for my urls (and whatever else it is supposed to do), have tons of custom BB Codes, links, and moving my community from the main directory into mydomain.com/community directory.

I would like to know what are the correct steps (in-order) to make sure I have a clean, smooth sailing conversion?

I have seen redirection scripts by Kier, I have seen something for vBSEO. I have read that I need to use Post Content Find / Replace. I want to make sure that this is all covered.

Did I miss anything?

 

[fattony69]

I've no idea why boatswife had a problem, mine came through fine. Nor do I see any reason to keep the usergroup IDs the same. Here are part of my notes:

When deleting usergroups, be sure no one is in the user group
When deleting users, be sure they have made no posts first.
delete all user groups that are not necessary.

Stock xf has these user groups:

• Administrative (puts vb Administrators in this group)
• Moderating (puts vb Moderators in this group)
• Registered (transfers over, activated accounts)
• Unregistered / Unconfirmed (same as Unregistered / Not Logged In – 0 users)

VB Users Awaiting Email Confirmation are brought in as invalid users, and usergroup automatically discarded.
VB COPPA user group disappears all by itself after the import – no need to worry, user group automatically discarded.

Banned Users & Super Moderators are brought into xf itself, no point to the usergroups so delete them after import manually. In addition the COPPA user group disappears all by itself after the import – no need to worry about that .

This is very good to know. I shall remember to change that!

Lets see if fattony69 can work through the list and help me edit/polish, then they can be posted for everyone.

I will definitely get it back in a week or so. This is something everyone should have / see.

 

[Dean]

Well if we are going to do it, we need to do it right and things like coppa need to be documented. If you have no coppa members then maybe add a test account?

I am looking at someone else's test import and it appears that coppa members are brought into the Awaiting Moderation state correctly, but it could be that they are also considered banned.. needs further testing to be sure of what is going on.

 

[Wildcat Media]

Did anyone have trouble importing polls? I imported to vB from phpBB2, and the polls were fine. But once they hit XF, the counts all disappeared, and an unrelated number was put in the very first choice. (For instance, the newest poll had only about 24 votes scattered among the responses; XF somehow put 104 on the first response, and left the others at zero.) It also appears in the database that I voted in the poll where, in fact, I haven't yet. (I see my "vote" under my user ID in the XF database, in other words.)

If there is something in the vB database I should check for before import, that would be helpful. If something did not come over properly from phpBB2, I'm not aware of it.

I don't think there is such a thing as a flawless import... This is my third one, and each one has had its challenges.

 

[Paul B]

All of my poll results were messed up, but I imported from phpBB3 -> vB3 -> XF

Not worth worrying about now, way too late to fix.

 

[Wildcat Media]

Almost the same, Brogan--I went from phpBB2. There must be something flagged wrong when polls are imported from phpBB to vB, although for the life of me, everything I'm looking at in the database and on the vB site look fine. Even in vB, I can vote on the polls I haven't voted on yet.