Importing from vBulletin is there a limit on how much can be saved?

Fenway

Fenway

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I have been told there is a limit to how much data can be migrated from vBulletin to xenForo. Is this true as it would be painful to lose a good chunk of our board's history. ( We currently run 3.8.7 )

If there is a limit - Why?
 
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A limit could only be based on the database that has to store the imported data. In most cases, all VB and XF boards run MySQL in the background, you should be able to import everything.

One reason that could be possible would be limited disk space when you run the import on the same server, and disk space can be limited due to many reasons.
 
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Fenway said:
I need conformation on this. I'm told we could possibly be the largest vB board to convert to date. Losing our history would be tragic.
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Quite curious to see you back up this claim to be honest. With sites like IGN, Digital Point & AVForums XenForo has had its fair share of large converts.

XenForo doesn't impose a limit on what can come over. You may experience timeouts using the web-based importer but that is why there's a CLI importer.

Read this for some experiences:
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/converting-a-large-vbulletin-site-to-xenforo.52621/

https://xenforo.com/community/threa...tin-big-board-1m-posts-import-services.55328/
 
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Is this your forum?

http://www.patriotsplanet.com/BB/

Just curious, it seems to run the same vb3.8 and I see your avatar is for New England patriots. That is a huge board.

Seems like a possibility. But either way good luck. I've never done a huge transfer but I transferred mine from vb 5 with around only 500 posts. It went smooth but users were not able to recover their passwords. We used a custom importer from someone on this site. The passwords not recovering were expected but it may be a different case with the Xenforo made importer (not sure).

Just make a ton of backups is what I suggest. I don't see any reason why this can't be professionally done. As long as you have the backup handy (I mean I would even put it on a hard disk), you should be alright.
 
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The only limits are in the types of data you can convert with the available converters and the target functionality. Some functions that you currently have on your vbulletin site are not available on xenforo. But if you need those then you can have custom addons developed or use custom addons to resolve this.
In regards to the conversion it will probably be a good idea to talk to @Slavik for advise and conversion services.
 
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I handled both the imports for Disboards and Christian Forums, these were 2 boards with over 50 million posts each, the data size isn't an issue, the issue will be your hardware and its config setup and if you have the ability to throw a whole lot of resources at it for a short period while getting everything over.
 
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Slavik said:
... and if you have the ability to throw a whole lot of resources at it for a short period while getting everything over.
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Can't stress this one enough. I migrated a board running on a custom made script with 2.6 million user accounts. We soon realized our hardware wasn't going to be enough. Digital Ocean really saved the day with their one click resource upgrades. For anyone wanting to migrate large boards, I strongly recommend Digital ocean so you can just throw in several cpu cores and ram on it while running parallel CLI operations.
 
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Fenway said:
I have been told there is a limit to how much data can be migrated from vBulletin to xenForo. Is this true as it would be painful to lose a good chunk of our board's history. ( We currently run 3.8.7 )

If there is a limit - Why?
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Since your server is apparently overloaded on 3.8 already ("The server is too busy at the moment. Please try again later."), you'll likely need better hardware to run XF based on my experience. That said, I don't know how customized your vB is since I can't view it right now, but addons on XF can stack up very quickly if you'll want to get all the vB functionality back and that comes with additional resource demands.

Assuming that the forum linked above is actually yours, that is. It's running 3.8.0 and not .7, like you mentioned.
 
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Gladius said:
Since your server is apparently overloaded on 3.8 already ("The server is too busy at the moment. Please try again later."), you'll likely need better hardware to run XF based on my experience.
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What makes you say that?

According to the feedback we have had many times, in general, XF requires less resources than other similar software packages.
 
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That's not my experience with several big board conversions to XF, the load on the servers in question has always gone up afterwards. Not by a lot, but enough for me to notice. Of course a lot of that can be specific to the boards in question so the next forum's MMV, but still. If someone's on an already overloaded server, XF will likely not be a solution to that problem, or at least not in the long run.
 
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As I said, YMMV. If you want to argue that XF trumps all other forum software in terms of performance without knowing the specifics of each big board using said software, I won't bother to contradict you.
 
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For an import that size, you probably would be better off with a dedicated tool (as referenced above in the big board importer). There's no limit on the amount of data imported by the core importer framework, but it's designed more for ease of use than raw speed (though the big board importer requires a bit of additional server knowledge). TBH, I think the downtime for 66 million posts with the core importer tools would probably make that route a non-starter.
 
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