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

[Hornstar]

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

 

[dutchbb]

How can you have that many members with a relative small amount of posts? Looks like you can use XF to stimulate your members to post more.

 

[Steve10]

Really looking forward to seeing you (and others) move over to xenforo, more people to add to my big forums list.

 

[dtmcl]

It's great to hear that more and more big forums are flocking to this awesome piece of community software, it will honestly be the best decision they could make!

 

[Morgain]

I know there are a few large board owners ... 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.
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.

Addons are not held on a separate site. They are released to the community right here via the Resource Manager (resources" on navbar) which is itself expected to be an official XF (paid) addon very soon now.

Thank you fpr a great and sensible initiative.

 

[Hornstar]

How can you have that many members with a relative small amount of posts? Looks like you can use XF to stimulate your members to post more.

Let's hope so my theory is that a lot of people are just leeches on my site who register so they can download. I see members who registered years ago with 0 posts who still come on. My forum is feeling very stagnant so it's time I start putting more work into the sections and content too. I was up to midnight last night researching, I lost track of time, its very exciting making this move.

 

[Dakis]

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.

I had vBseo + VB4 and using the scripts provided here, was able to forward all of the old URL's to my imported URL's. Worked flawlessly.

Hey fellows, how did your move go, did you lose traffic from google? My forum (vb3+vbseo) gets 80% of its traffic from google and I'm worried about losing part of that.

 

[Slavik]

Let's hope so my theory is that a lot of people are just leeches on my site who register so they can download. I see members who registered years ago with 0 posts who still come on. My forum is feeling very stagnant so it's time I start putting more work into the sections and content too. I was up to midnight last night researching, I lost track of time, its very exciting making this move.

A good way to generate activity then may be to make an addon that for each month/quarter/year youve been registered, you need to make 1 post to maintain access to downloads.

 

[Hornstar]

A good way to generate activity then may be to make an addon that for each month/quarter/year youve been registered, you need to make 1 post to maintain access to downloads.

We tried a mod in the past, where you had to have x amount of posts to download. Unfortunately it was abused big time, the whole site was flooded with complete spam posts. It was a shame.

 

[digitalpoint]

A good way to generate activity then may be to make an addon that for each month/quarter/year youve been registered, you need to make 1 post to maintain access to downloads.

We actually did *away* with a similar rule we had when we were on vBulletin... it was just causing users to post pointless crap/gibberish. We moved to a system that measures quality over quantity now.

 

[Mike Edge]

Nice to see another old name from vBorg coming over. Looking forward to seeing gamerz needs on xF soon.

 

[Shelley]

We actually did *away* with a similar rule we had when we were on vBulletin... it was just causing users to post pointless crap/gibberish. We moved to a system that measures quality over quantity now.

Paint me curious. Could you elaborate on that system? The details DP?

Totally agree with the x amount of posts to download it entices users to just post one word posts and useless, redundant crap.

 

[digitalpoint]

Paint me curious. Could you elaborate on that system? The details DP?

Totally agree with the x amount of posts to download it entices users to just post one word posts and useless, redundant crap.

We extended the like system a bit... we've always had "established" users who get access to certain areas of our site (it used to be that you had to be a member for 14 days and make 25 posts... but it caused the problems mentioned above). When we switched to XenForo, I extended the like/usergroup promotion system a bit so an established member is one who got 3 likes from UNIQUE users who are already established. So a single user can't give someone all 3 likes they need, nor can a bunch of unestablished members "help each other" get established.

The idea behind it isn't to annoy users into participating or anything, but it *does* require some minimal effort to use certain "special" areas of the site... the bar is pretty low (3 likes aren't hard to get), but at the same time, it's enough effort that spammers/scammers aren't going to bother...

More info here (as far as how it works and what the restrictions are): https://forums.digitalpoint.com/help/established

 

[Shelley]

We extended the like system a bit... we've always had "established" users who get access to certain areas of our site (it used to be that you had to be a member for 14 days and make 25 posts... but it caused the problems mentioned above). When we switched to XenForo, I extended the like/usergroup promotion system a bit so an established member is one who got 3 likes from UNIQUE users who are already established. So a single user can't give someone all 3 likes they need, nor can a bunch of unestablished members "help each other" get established.

The idea behind it isn't to annoy users into participating or anything, but it *does* require some minimal effort to use certain "special" areas of the site... the bar is pretty low (3 likes aren't hard to get), but at the same time, it's enough effort that spammers/scammers aren't going to bother...

More info here (as far as how it works and what the restrictions are): https://forums.digitalpoint.com/help/established

Thanks for explaining that and I think this is excellent implementation. My problem is I've never had trouble with people registering but rather posting quality content (when they're able). there's nothing more I loathe than sloppy/lazy posting to gain access via x amount of post count. I just perm ban accounts for this.

Thanks again for the info Shaun there's always a wealth of information in your posts and given me something to think about and some poor developer to start coding something for me. Last time I asked he ran so when he asked for a smiley design I sliced it in 1px increments for him to piece together.

Thanks again.

 

[digitalpoint]

Thanks for explaining that and I think this is excellent implementation. My problem is I've never had trouble with people registering but rather posting quality content (when they're able). there's nothing more I loathe than sloppy/lazy posting to gain access via x amount of post count. I just perm ban accounts for this.

Yeah same... I've gotten to the point that I just permanently ban users who ask dumb questions even that have been answered 500 times prior. lol

When we migrated to XenForo, I also rolled out some stuff that *intentionally* caused us to get less new user registrations. The system blocks registration from users it deems to be a high probability will be a "low quality" user. There's some interesting backend trickery/fuzzy logic going on with it that *unfortunately* is probably in my best interest to not go into details about (then people start working out systems to get around it)... But a little info on it here: https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/mitigation-of-low-quality-users.2628741/

In the end, it seems to generally be working... I noticed literally an overnight increase in post quality (still not where I'd *like* it to be, but compared to what it *was*, it's a good improvement so far).

While the system isn't based on geographic region, it's an easy way to measure success since certain geographic regions tend to have more low quality users/posts from it vs. others. Since rolling it out, we've seen high growth from places like United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, and other areas that typically have a higher percent of low quality users we've seen less activity from (India, Indonesia, Pakistan, etc.) Some stats from a month after XenForo (also the time we rolled out the low quality user mitigation system) vs. a month before:

https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/one-month-after-switching-from-vbulletin-to-xenforo.2637721/

 

[SchmitzIT]

We could help you replicate your styles to Xenforo, if you wish to have a similar style - but also to create new styles if you'd want.

Replicating an existing style into Xenforo usually takes around 5-6 hours (this is colour, styling, designing and placing graphics only - not including special features or coding). We normally charge 60 USD / hour - but if you also choose to use our vB import service, the price for styling will be down to 50 USD/hour as well (the offer, we're having atm to celebrate Xenforo ).

We will always first look at the existing styles/skins to get a view over the time, we would need to spent, but also if there are features in the styles, which might take longer - and you would be able to see the work as we go along, so you have time to comment etc.

Click under my signature to see our service thread - or also, look here:

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/schmitzit-vbulletin-conversion-discount.45110/#post-483441

 

[Renegade]

an established member is one who got 3 likes from UNIQUE users who are already established. So a single user can't give someone all 3 likes they need, nor can a bunch of unestablished members "help each other" get established.

I had read all about it a week ago and was intrigued by the implementation. I had a few queries if you don't mind..

1. How do you enforce that the likes will be from 3 unique members before they get promoted (this does not look like an out of the box setting)
2. How do you restrict likes from non-established members (I think this is standard XF permissions to deny ability to like a post?)
3. What if a member gets promoted to established and then his spam post on which got the likes gets deleted. Will he go back to the non-established group? How do you enforce that (this also seems to be standard promotion rule which say 'while' he has these many likes)

 

[Handyman]

I would get rid of vbseo, I did last year and I now have more page views per month that ever before. Modern search engines don't need it.

 

[Shelley]

Couldn't have been easier to update the avatar on xenforo

Missed by most, but i particularly appreciate you don't even have to leave a page to upload/apply an avatar (I change mine often ). click click, done avatar uploaded/applied. Beautiful implementation.

 

[digitalpoint]

I had read all about it a week ago and was intrigued by the implementation. I had a few queries if you don't mind..

1. How do you enforce that the likes will be from 3 unique members before they get promoted (this does not look like an out of the box setting)
2. How do you restrict likes from non-established members (I think this is standard XF permissions to deny ability to like a post?)
3. What if a member gets promoted to established and then his spam post on which got the likes gets deleted. Will he go back to the non-established group? How do you enforce that (this also seems to be standard promotion rule which say 'while' he has these many likes)

1. It's a custom system.

2. Standard permission

3. Also standard.

 

[Renegade]

Sorry for taking this thread on a tangent, maybe thats why VB5 has comments within threads.

1. It's a custom system.

Do you plan on releasing this as an add-on please (even if paid)? I think a lot of people will benefit as controlling spam through likes is a much better option than post count and time. We have been struggling since eternity with what should be an ideal post count or time since registered. At some point everyone agreed that ability to recommend a member should a better criteria. This method of yours takes it in that direction.