Migrating from phpBB 3.1.6 to XenForo

XPlus

Member
Hi

Old vBulletin fan here.
I have to say that you guys have done a great job with the XenForo.
It's that unique quality where I can feel I'm at home.

We currently have an expanding community of 3k+ who are moderately active and would like to move to a XenForo.
I wonder if there's going to be any importer from phpBB 3.1.6 any time soon.
If not, is there any cost-effective workarounds.

Thanks
 
Some people have used the phpbb 3.x importer on xenforo and it seems to work ok, but you could double import to something like mybb and then convert to xenforo.
 
I'm in the same boat as the OP here... I am currently running a forum on phpBB 3.1.6 and want to convert to xenforo... but purchasing the licence will wipe out all of our club funds, so it's a big step for a small community.

When will support be offered for the phpBB 3.1.x software to be converted to xenforo?
 
You could either try the phpBB 3.0.x importer or you could also contact Xenforo and send them your phpBB 3.1.x database, so they could analyze it, so they could make an importer for others. If you are going to import the site yourself, always do a bunch of test imports, to make sure you don't find any issues.
 
I guess that would be included in the "support" that is offered... I've read about the lack of money back guarantee, so I don't want to go into this not knowing. There are some refunds offered, but this is a large investment for my club, and a lot of my members are not "tech savvy"... so I need to make the whole switch over as easy as possible. If there are any problems, I risk losing members.

If push comes to shove, I'd rather keep my money and stay on phpBB until a known importer is available and proven to work, but I shall indeed contact the support team and send them a copy of the database to see what they can do.

Thanks for your help @rv65
 
I guess that would be included in the "support" that is offered... I've read about the lack of money back guarantee, so I don't want to go into this not knowing. There are some refunds offered, but this is a large investment for my club, and a lot of my members are not "tech savvy"... so I need to make the whole switch over as easy as possible. If there are any problems, I risk losing members.

If push comes to shove, I'd rather keep my money and stay on phpBB until a known importer is available and proven to work, but I shall indeed contact the support team and send them a copy of the database to see what they can do.

Thanks for your help @rv65

As long as its within a reasonable window (a week or two) if you really can't get XenForo to work for you in testing we will generally offer a refund with no quibbles.
 
As long as its within a reasonable window (a week or two) if you really can't get XenForo to work for you in testing we will generally offer a refund with no quibbles.

Well, I will be setting aside a weekend to get the full conversion done, so I should know well within that given time scale. Your comment is extremely reassuring, and shows that you actually care about customers. Thank you @Slavik

I have been testing the "test" site for a few hours... and in that time it's done everything I want and more. So I am really keen to make this happen. I will be spending a few more days researching other solutions available, but at the moment, xenforo is the clear winner by far.
 
Right, I have managed a successful migration from phpBB 3.1.6 to myBB 1.8.

I have purchased the licence and am currently installing the software, all I need to do now is convert from myBB 1.8 to XF 1.5

I'll keep you posted, but the whole process has been fairly simple to be honest.
 
I'm having one BIG problem now. Everything has migrated... but I'm getting the "exceeded log in attempts" for EVERY member on their first go. I've used a truncate SQL query twice now, and still getting the problem. It seems that users passwords have also failed to migrate over...

Is there an SQL query to reset every password and I'll just tell all users to change them once they have logged in?
 
If you require support, you will need to associate your forum user name with your license and post in the correct forum.

Will do - thank again. At least from this thread others can see that it is possible to move from phpbb 3.1 to XF 1.5 without too much hassle.

I think I managed to resolve most of the above problems by deleting cookies as I installed it in the same location as the previous forum and it was getting itself confused.

So - for anyone wanting to move to xenforo from phpbb - I highlight recommend it, and it is possible!

I went from phpBB 3.1.6 to myBB 1.8 then onto XF 1.5.

There have been teething issues as you can imagine, but all data and users have migrated successfully :)
 
We offer a phpbb3 import service.
Regards
I'm interested in hearing more about your import service. I've got a phpbb forum running version 3.1.6 for a long time now. Soon my hosting company is dropping support for the outdated php version.

I've tried updating the forum to 3.2 and 3.3, so I can use the xenforo 2 import tool, but it seems to crash out with a ton of errors (probably due to some extensions, but even disabling them it still won't update so I seem to be stuck with 3.1.6).

I'd actually considered switching to xenforo for a while, so this is the push I needed. Think you can help? I'm happy to pay for the service.
 
I'm interested in hearing more about your import service. I've got a phpbb forum running version 3.1.6 for a long time now. Soon my hosting company is dropping support for the outdated php version.

I've tried updating the forum to 3.2 and 3.3, so I can use the xenforo 2 import tool, but it seems to crash out with a ton of errors (probably due to some extensions, but even disabling them it still won't update so I seem to be stuck with 3.1.6).

I'd actually considered switching to xenforo for a while, so this is the push I needed. Think you can help? I'm happy to pay for the service.
Here's another company as well:
 
Thanks! I already wasn't getting a great feeling chatting with Todo10 on their website (which I found). Reminded me of some bad web devs I've dealt with in the past.

I'll check Driven Z out.
 
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