Here I come...Threads: 194,968, Posts: 1,548,630, Members: 727,979

Hornstar

Hornstar

Well-known member
:) What an exciting day in the forum world. My congrats to Kier and Ashley (and hopefully Mike as well)

My site which is still on vbulletin 3.8 with Threads: 194,968, Posts: 1,548,630, Members: 727,979
And has been waiting for this day. It's time to make the move to xenforo and leave the sinking ship behind.

I suppose I have a thousand questions that I'd like to ask as this will be a big move for myself but I'd also like any advice you have.

1. I have two skins that I would like to have replicated to xenforo. I am not experienced in this field and the people who were are no longer around. So what are my options. I think my members will take to xenforo better if it looks a little like my old site. Ideally I want to get a brand new custom skin made however I think replicating the two main skins first will be important. Is there any info on how to pull this off for a novice? Or is this more suited at someone who is skilled? And if so who around here would I ask and how much am I looking at paying? This will be a big factor on my move.

2. I have vb3arcade installed. I have people who have been playing it since 2005. Is there a good working xenforo arcade and is there an importer from vb3arcade?

3. I'm running vbseo, is there an easy novice way to keep my URL structure?

Can't wait to be apart of xenforo :)
 
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Hornstar said:
:) What an exciting day in the forum world. My congrats to Kier and Ashley (and hopefully Mike as well)

My site which is still on vbulletin 3.8 with Threads: 194,968, Posts: 1,548,630, Members: 727,979
And has been waiting for this day. It's time to make the move to xenforo and leave the sinking ship behind.

I suppose I have a thousand questions that I'd like to ask as this will be a big move for myself but I'd also like any advice you have.

1. I have two skins that I would like to have replicated to xenforo. I am not experienced in this field and the people who were are no longer around. So what are my options. I think my members will take to xenforo better if it looks a little like my old site. Ideally I want to get a brand new custom skin made however I think replicating the two main skins first will be important. Is there any info on how to pull this off for a novice? Or is this more suited at someone who is skilled? And if so who around here would I ask and how much am I looking at paying? This will be a big factor on my move.

2. I have vb3arcade installed. I have people who have been playing it since 2005. Is there a good working xenforo arcade and is there an importer from vb3arcade?

3. I'm running vbseo, is there an easy novice way to keep my URL structure?

Can't wait to be apart of xenforo :)
Click to expand...

For a unique custom skin by the exceptional stylers you would be looking at $400-500 (guessing here, but you would need to contact them. some of the exceptional stylers I would highly recommend

Forsaken ( custom style plus you get a very good framework with tons of options) His styles are top notch quality.
Russ - He's available to do custom work and you can view his works around here.
Kim - unsure whether she's taking on work but if you can hire her she does some of the best styles I've seen
John - Any great styler who might do custom work and his style would also come with a built in framework with many options.

There's a few more but those above are from the top of my head, that I can recall. But the styling system in XF is easy to get a style done/replicated, and to your own requirements you might surprise yourself how easy it is to do it solo.

Kevin has an arcade out now and I know he has a few devs helping out in furthering it's development. http://xfarcade.com/
 
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Wow. So quick. And I love the alerts here. Thanks for all the great replies.
@kevin do you know if an importer is planned? It would be a huge loss to lose all the scores since 2005.
 
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Hornstar said:
Wow. So quick. And I love the alerts here. Thanks for all the great replies.
@kevin do you know if an importer is planned? It would be a huge loss to lose all the scores since 2005.
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I find that resetting them from time to time (by accidental database corruption of course ;)) revives interest in them. Everybody wants to see their name on top at least once. I have a couple that can stay in there 24 hors a day, after a reset, just getting their names to be number one on every game. Then the back/forth creates a frenzy.
 
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Dodgeboard said:
I find that resetting them from time to time (by accidental database corruption of course ;)) revives interest in them. Everybody wants to see their name on top at least once. I have a couple that can stay in there 24 hors a day, after a reset, just getting their names to be number one on every game. Then the back/forth creates a frenzy.
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I hadn't thought of that. Might be worth not importing them then. I'll just have to make sure all the games are compatible as I'm sure many have a favourite game.
 
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Hornstar said:
I hadn't thought of that. Might be worth not importing them then. I'll just have to make sure all the games are compatible as I'm sure many have a favourite game.
Click to expand...

I currently have the arcade running on my site. And I have a test account for playing games if you would like to try it out, just pm me for user/pw credentials.
 
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Slavik said:
Great to see another large board eyeing up XenForo :)
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Not just another large board, Hornstar's board, :cool:

I know of him, and if there was any forum owner that I could have picked to give XenForo a try, it would be him. Though I'm not sure what is up with his avatar, his regular one is one of the coolest (matches his user name quite well).

Welcome to XenForo Hornstar, give it a whirl, you and your community won't be disappointed at all, :)
 
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Lawrence said:
Not just another large board, Hornstar's board, :cool:

I know of him, and if there was any forum owner that I could have picked to give XenForo a try, it would be him. Though I'm not sure what is up with his avatar, his regular one is one of the coolest (matches his user name quite well).

Welcome to XenForo Hornstar, give it a whirl, you and your community won't be disappointed at all, :)
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Thanks :) It's time I update that old avatar. If you remember back to when xenforo first started, I am fairly sure the gender icon was used somewhere so I just used that pic to test the avatar out (wow time has gone by). Time to update to my regular avatar.
 
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Hi @Hornstar, I just posted a similar topic in the Off-topic chat section :)

I know there are a few large board owners (my largest is 160k users, 6.8m posts) who are considering xenForo. I've already contacted some of these guys to see whether we could combine our resources and develop (through hiring coders) any of the larger add-ons that are needed - for us, one example would be a good way of handling classified ad style threads.

While I know people are happy to work for free, most of us with large forums are happy to pay for development work in order to speed things up. We could then also agree to release these, for free, to the xF community - assuming there's something like vb.org here? This helps us and also helps xenForo by quickly providing it with some larger, well developed, add-ons.
 
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SeaDog said:
Hi @Hornstar, I just posted a similar topic in the Off-topic chat section :)

I know there are a few large board owners (my largest is 160k users, 6.8m posts) who are considering xenForo. I've already contacted some of these guys to see whether we could combine our resources and develop (through hiring coders) any of the larger add-ons that are needed - for us, one example would be a good way of handling classified ad style threads.

While I know people are happy to work for free, most of us with large forums are happy to pay for development work in order to speed things up. We could then also agree to release these, for free, to the xF community - assuming there's something like vb.org here? This helps us and also helps xenForo by quickly providing it with some larger, well developed, add-ons.
Click to expand...

No dedicated site, however we have a dedicated forum.

http://xenforo.com/community/forums/custom-service-development-requests.69/
 
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Hornstar said:
3. I'm running vbseo, is there an easy novice way to keep my URL structure?:)
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My forum was also vB3.8 + vBSEO, after conversion everything redirected fine (I even moved server and domain too, to complicate things!). vBSEO provide you with instructions on turning it off so all the links point to the non-vBSEO equivalents, then Xenforo's included redirects take people to the right thread or post in Xenforo. There are some casualties depending on the exact settings you have, but as a minium all threads and posts should redirect. It's not so much a case of trying to keep your old URL structure, rather it's more a case of ensuring the old URLs take people to the correct place on XF.
 
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