Guide to big board move

[AndrewSimm]

Can anyone point me to a guide on best practices when converting a large board to XF. I will be coming from vb4 and have a little under 3 million post. I will be working on a XF2 install with the hopes of launching around Christmas.

 

[Slavik]

Generally, install all your styling, addons etc, done first.

Make a backup at this stage.

Run your test import, check everything is good, note any changes you may need to make.

Restore the backup.

Perform live import.

 

[Alpha1]

The very first thing to do is to turn on logging and turn off data destruction/pruning functions:
/admin.php?options/list/logging
If you import while a max number of days is defined or it is completely turned off, xenforo will delete your data.
6 months in, I am still using my old vbulletin install daily to find user log data and IP data. I am going to have an importer build to retroactively repair the damage.

 

[Slavik]

The very first thing to do is to turn on logging and turn off data destruction/pruning functions:
/admin.php?options/list/logging
If you import while a max number of days is defined or it is completely turned off, xenforo will delete your data.
6 months in, I am still using my old vbulletin install daily to find user log data and IP data. I am going to have an importer build to retroactively repair the damage.

You have a big board importer license dont you?

Just re-export the IP table, merge it with your live, then import back to XenForo.

 

[AndrewSimm]

Ok, so I setup a forum and import the data to test. After the test, how would I truncate and reimport the updated data. How would an importer handle attachments saved into folders?

 

[Paul B]

https://xenforo.com/community/threads/importing-guidelines.25325/

 

[Alpha1]

You have a big board importer license dont you?

Yes, I do. But I never used it.

merge it with your live

This part confuses me.

 

[Slavik]

This part confuses me.

I havent looked into it specifically to see if there are other tables that need updating, but...

After converting the vbulletin ip table to the XenForo format you should be able to do

insert into xf_ip select * from imported_ip_table on duplicate key ignore

which should fill in the ip history that was pruned.

Obviously give this extensive testing on a test database first.