Implemented If Blogs will come later: A tool to migrate existing vBlog entries into a designated forum?

Tigratrus

Tigratrus

Well-known member
Frankly, I wish to GOD we had never introduced Blogs on our site at ALL. The way it's implemented, all it's done is fragment the community interaction. I'd really be quite happy to have all existing Blogs moved into a designated "Project Blog" forum, with one thread per ex-vBlog and call it good.

Actually I'd jump up and down and sing alleluia. Or... Maybe "Ding dong the witch is dead"? :P
 
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I am going to suggest a no, but don't take my word for it. It doesn't really make sense to do that, but I can see why this would be helpful :)
 
vrtsolus said:
I am going to suggest a no, but don't take my word for it. It doesn't really make sense to do that, but I can see why this would be helpful :)
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Can you clarify why you think it wouldn't make sense? Because you prefer to have a "Blog" section?

Frankly, having tried to make blogs work for about 3 years or so (starting with vBlogetin and then migrating to vBlog after the release of vBlog essentially killed the vBlogetin community), we've come to the pretty firm opinion that Blogs (as they are implemented in vB) are a serious detriment to the community interaction and we would very much prefer that we had never even experimented with it. Many of our best, most involved members put some of their best content in their blogs where it gets little to no exposure and generates very VERY little interaction/commentary with the rest of the community.

The problem is, we DO have people that have spent time effort on their blogs and refuse to let their effort be in vain. We'll almost certainly want to move to XF, but Blogs are going to be a likely deal breaker as far as a migration is concerned.

Galleries are going to be the other one.
 
My test import of vB 3.8 went very well and the users who I've let test our new xF are amazed. One question that has come up is about our current vB blogs- I'm wondering what to do about them as well. I'm sure I could do something with a WP bridge but would that be able to import current blogs, attachments and comments?
 
melbo said:
My test import of vB 3.8 went very well and the users who I've let test our new xF are amazed. One question that has come up is about our current vB blogs- I'm wondering what to do about them as well. I'm sure I could do something with a WP bridge but would that be able to import current blogs, attachments and comments?
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Brandon over at XenFans created a migration tool for blogs.
 
Tigratrus said:
Frankly, having tried to make blogs work for about 3 years or so (starting with vBlogetin and then migrating to vBlog after the release of vBlog essentially killed the vBlogetin community), we've come to the pretty firm opinion that Blogs (as they are implemented in vB) are a serious detriment to the community interaction and we would very much prefer that we had never even experimented with it. Many of our best, most involved members put some of their best content in their blogs where it gets little to no exposure and generates very VERY little interaction/commentary with the rest of the community.

The problem is, we DO have people that have spent time effort on their blogs and refuse to let their effort be in vain. We'll almost certainly want to move to XF, but Blogs are going to be a likely deal breaker as far as a migration is concerned.
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I am seeing exactly the same on my vB3.8 powered platform. Obviously (what's in a word), the Blogs on that platform are invisible (which we kept pointing out to Jelsoft/IB, but nothing was done about it... like so many other things that were not right in the 3.7 - 3.8 series... God I long back for the Jelsoft days before IB took over).

There definitely is a need for member Blogs on my site, but by all means... if Xenforo ever implements this, then please make it so (this time around) that they are visible and properly integrated in the whole package. We are in need of Blogs for our regular members, but we also have plans to introduce commercial blogs for our advertisers. XenForo has an outstandig UI/UX for publishing postings, why not extend it to Blogs as well?
 
This request has the label [Implemented]. Now with XF 2's birth I am interested to upgrade my vB 3.8 board to XF 2 soon (it's about time after 7 (!) years :eek: ... where does the time go?!) . Does this now mean that I don't loose my vB Blogs and that they are imported as threads? I can not find any information on XF.com that an official importer now saves our vBlogs into threads (which would be wonderful solution indeed).
 
I’m not certain it’s anything that has been implemented recently.

Maybe it’s referencing the non official vb4 importer which I think did take that approach.

That said, I think with the structure of vB5 this happens naturally in the new vB5 importer.
 
We had to combine two importers and a custom solution to get all the content, including blogs, albums, social groups etc. imported from vB 3.8 to XF1. It was a PITA not having a single importer that would do it all.
 
Forsaken said:
Brandon over at XenFans created a migration tool for blogs.
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Does anyone know if there is a migration tool for IPB Blogs? I've got about 500-600 old blog entries with 2,000 comments/replies that I need to get imported into my XF forums. They've been missing for a good two years now but I've still got members asking me to bring them back. Short of copying and pasting one by one, and then changing author and date, I have no clue how to get it done.

Agree with above, by the way, that blogs are a bad idea!
 
WRT vB 5, we now provide an option to either import only forums within the ‘Forum’ root, or to import all forum-like structures as threads and posts, including material within ‘Blogs’ and ‘Groups’ - and you can opt to have all these dumped into a single existing XF parent node for ease of management post-import.
 
Thank you for your quick responses Chris and Kier.

Do I understand it correctly that it is only then possible to import our vB3.8 Blogs if we first upgrade from vB3.8 to vB5? Ever since IB took over vBulletin I did not touch that platform anymore (join the club ;)), so I have no experience whatsoever with vB4 and vB5 and I am not sure if I want/prefer to upgrade my trusted vB3.8 platform to vB5 'just' to be able to import our vBlogs.

But if that is the only option we have in the end, I would like to know/understand if there are any negative side effects for our board if we go that route by upgrading vB3.8 to vB5 and then migrating to XenForo2?

I understand Xenforo 2's importer handling vBulletin 3.8 (specifically) did not and will not (in a future update?) offer the option to import vB 3.8 blogs? If that is the case, are there any other trusted means (@Gladius and @Forsaken are talking about a custom solution above) to import vB 3.8 Blogs into XF2?
 
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Actually, for blogs, we just used the importer module (IIRC) that converted them to regular forum threads since blogs have fallen into disuse on our site. If you want to keep the blogs as proper blogs, I remember that at least one XF1 blog addon had the option to import the vB blogs directly, but that was years back when we converted initially so I have no idea what the situation is currently.
 
I’ll have to revisit vb3 blogs to see if they can easily be added to the importer system. I’ve been aiming for an import of all content that can possibly be meaningfully translated into XF data, so blogs are a good candidate.
 
Grover said:
Do you mean your own custom importer (not the default official XF importer) converted your vB 3.8 blogs to threads?
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Not custom made for us per se, I think it was one of the publicly available unofficial vB importers that had a module that allowed conversion of vB blogs to XF threads. Back when we converted there was the official (lacking) importer and one or two unofficial importers which also imported some of the stuff that the official importer didn't (or imported it differently).
 
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