Large VB 3.8 Board > XenForo ?

Rodrigo Farcas

Active member
Hello there!

I am currently analizing where to move a "big board" from VB 3.8

Alternatives
a) To VB 4.1
b) To XenForo

Please give me your comments, pros, cons. on each alternative.

-Also, I want to know if there is a safe way to import data to XenForo, without the timeout concerns. Does the import routine works via command line?

-Finally, if I move to XenForo, what will happen with vBSEO'ed URL's?

Thank you all!
 
There is a beta version of a command line installer but even if the browser timesout it does so gracefully and picks up from where you left off. I test converted out VB3.7.x board and it did timeout a few times but it finished to completion fine.

I'd definitely recommend moving to XF over VB. We bought a VB4 license on the promise of an integrated CMS, new features, etc but none of it arrived so we've stayed on VB3.7 for the past few years. We'll be moving to XF shortly as it's much faster and less bloated than VB and most importantly gives a much better user experience/engagement.

If you want cons for XF, the ongoing lawsuit is something that might put people off but it's something that most seem comfortable with.
 
I did an import of a 10m+ post vB4 board into Xenforo 1.0.x in August (see my sig for details).

At the time there was no command-line import but even so the import went pretty smoothly (if a bit slowly). With the later tools, it should be faster and even more reliable.

We weren't using VBSEO so I can't comment on that side of things but can say that redirection from vB4 URLs worked well (once I'd sorted out in my head how it was working) and we didn't lose any significant traffic.

Best advice is to do practice runs with a copy of the big site if you possibly can, have a test system where you can try out all the add-ons you might want, redirections etc.

And if it's a big site you'll want to look at the new Xenforo Enhanced Search as the MySQL-bases search will struggle with a large postbase.
 
I did an import of a 10m+ post vB4 board into Xenforo 1.0.x in August (see my sig for details).

At the time there was no command-line import but even so the import went pretty smoothly (if a bit slowly). With the later tools, it should be faster and even more reliable.

We weren't using VBSEO so I can't comment on that side of things but can say that redirection from vB4 URLs worked well (once I'd sorted out in my head how it was working) and we didn't lose any significant traffic.

Best advice is to do practice runs with a copy of the big site if you possibly can, have a test system where you can try out all the add-ons you might want, redirections etc.

And if it's a big site you'll want to look at the new Xenforo Enhanced Search as the MySQL-bases search will struggle with a large postbase.

Hello Lazy!

This new search is already available?
 
Hello Lazy!

This new search is already available?
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/development-update.25726/

XenForo Enhanced Search will be made available for purchase next week (the week of January 16th). It will cost $50, with an update-and-support renewal cost of $10. Add-on renewal costs are linked to your XenForo license renewal, meaning that all purchased add-ons will be renewed with your license. (For clarity, this means that with XenForo Enhanced Search, your license renewal would currently be $40 + $10.)
 
One question mark for me is moving all of the custom user fields from vB 3.7 over to XF. The big board I may move makes heavy use of the custom user fields; having everyone redo them will only upset the natives. ;)

The big board search is exciting! We use Sphinx on vB 3.7 and it is worlds better than any MySQL-based search. I'm glad it's finally here, as that was one major hurdle to upgrading. (iTrader was another, but XenTrader has now been released to replace it, and will take imports from it.)

Our server is pretty much at its limits now, so moving to vB 4.1 is out of the question. I've read of how much more resources it takes. Granted, using XF on this same server will only buy us time until we need to upgrade, but I think everyone will enjoy the move for its other features.
 
If I am not mistaken, you can import a vb3 board to xenforo and keep the thread id's intact which will make it even easier to do 301's.

ie:
vb3: mysite.com/board/vbseo-catagory/vbseo-titlted-url-25838
xen: mysite.com/board/xenforo-titlted-url,25838
 
One question mark for me is moving all of the custom user fields from vB 3.7 over to XF. The big board I may move makes heavy use of the custom user fields; having everyone redo them will only upset the natives. ;)
...
Our server is pretty much at its limits now, so moving to vB 4.1 is out of the question. I've read of how much more resources it takes. Granted, using XF on this same server will only buy us time until we need to upgrade, but I think everyone will enjoy the move for its other features.

Custom user field imports are handled in XF:

custom fields.webp

As for the server, moving to XF will probably ease the load, even when moving from vB3.8. Like you said, in time it might still be neccessary, but at least you would buy time to properly investigate :)
 
Custom user field imports are handled in XF:

View attachment 23552

As for the server, moving to XF will probably ease the load, even when moving from vB3.8. Like you said, in time it might still be neccessary, but at least you would buy time to properly investigate :)

That's a relief with the custom fields!

As for investigating, I know what's wrong with the server: we've just simply outgrown it, and we really don't have the resources right now to look at upgrading. We could actually, but it'll be tight. Our MySQL hard disk is at or near 100% i/o activity. Just the move to XF alone for the more efficient queries would really help us. We already run Sphinx (which aside from installing APC a few years ago, was one of the more amazing resource savers I ever installed).

With XF in place and a fresh server, I think we'll do nicely. Now I just have to convince everyone else!
 
If I am not mistaken, you can import a vb3 board to xenforo and keep the thread id's intact which will make it even easier to do 301's.

ie:
vb3: mysite.com/board/vbseo-catagory/vbseo-titlted-url-25838
xen: mysite.com/board/xenforo-titlted-url,25838

Hello,
So what's the code to handle this? I am concerned as I get MUCH search-engines traffic wich I don't want to lose at all.

Thank you!
 
Actually XenForo doesn't keep the same ids like said above. It keeps a log of oldId and newId which you can use to redirect. There are scripts that do it for you. Basically it simply sees an old URL, grabs the oldId from it and matches with the newId and redirects.
 
With XF in place and a fresh server, I think we'll do nicely. Now I just have to convince everyone else!

Direct them to the free admin demo available on the XenForo site, so they can give the product a whirl from the administrative sitde as well.

It's outperforming vB in every possible way. Less queries, leading to less stress on the disks, and just lots of other smarter solutions.
 
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