Importing from vBulletin 4 questions

[Apokalupsis]

I am thinking of importing my vb4 site and renewing my XF license to do so. Before I make this seemingly big jump however, I had a few questions...

Intention: I plan to integrate XF and WordPress for the new site, using the old forum content from vB4. I want to create a community, interactive site (we are a debate site and I want articles to be created in WordPress then discussed in XF.

1) I'm currently using vb 4.1.12. The site has just over 500k posts and 2k members. I've used numerous mods from vb.org over the years, many uninstalled but I'm concerned about the database and the leftovers from all those mods.

Should I clean up the database as much as possible prior to migration? If so, is there a "best practice" or even a good way to do so?

2) With a forum of that size, how technical will the migration be? Are there likely to be a lot of issues?

3) Will the included import feature of XF be sufficient? I've never migrated a forum before, I don't know how involved it is, and I don't know how efficient the built in importer is. Ideally it's a spot on feature that will do the job, but I see that there are sites out there offering their services and even import mods to do the job. I don't know if that is because the built in importer has issues or because those folks are just looking to make a buck.

4) Should I upgrade to the latest version of vb 4 that I can? It would be 4.2.5?

5) Should I remove all vb mods before migration?

 

[Chris D]

1) I'm currently using vb 4.1.12. The site has just over 500k posts and 2k members. I've used numerous mods from vb.org over the years, many uninstalled but I'm concerned about the database and the leftovers from all those mods.

Should I clean up the database as much as possible prior to migration? If so, is there a "best practice" or even a good way to do so?

Should be unnecessary. We'll only import the data from the known core vBulletin tables / fields.

2) With a forum of that size, how technical will the migration be? Are there likely to be a lot of issues?

I wouldn't foresee any issues with an import of that size.

3) Will the included import feature of XF be sufficient? I've never migrated a forum before, I don't know how involved it is, and I don't know how efficient the built in importer is. Ideally it's a spot on feature that will do the job, but I see that there are sites out there offering their services and even import mods to do the job. I don't know if that is because the built in importer has issues or because those folks are just looking to make a buck.

For an import of this size, the built in importer would be sufficient. Import services would mostly be targeting much bigger forums.

4) Should I upgrade to the latest version of vb 4 that I can? It would be 4.2.5?

Shouldn't be necessary.

5) Should I remove all vb mods before migration?

Again, shouldn't be necessary.

 

[Apokalupsis]

After importing, would it be a good idea to clean up the database from vb leftovers to ensure the site is running as smoothly as possible?

Also, does the import feature allow using a new prefix for the XF tables? I figured that might be a good way to be able to quickly identify the tables I no longer need.

 

[jmurrayhead]

After importing, would it be a good idea to clean up the database from vb leftovers to ensure the site is running as smoothly as possible?

Also, does the import feature allow using a new prefix for the XF tables? I figured that might be a good way to be able to quickly identify the tables I no longer need.

You should be using a new database for XF. The import will move data over from the old database to the new one.

 

[Apokalupsis]

Ah, even better. Thank you.