Moving a Big Board from vBulletin to XenForo?

[Agusti Fernandez Pardo]

Hello there, I've got here since we updated our forums to vb4, I hate this last release, didn't know about all the 'changes' on vBulletin Development Team, but now it all makes sense... I've paid a lot for my move to vb4, and I'm not really happy about having to look for new perspectives. I might consider moving to XenForo, but there's a lot of things I need to get in XenForo to be able to do that.

Some of my forum stats, so you get my POV.
Threads: 220k Posts 1500k Members 1500k
Online users minimum: 1000, Online users average: 3000, Online users top: 6000 (Time:15Min)
Daily Analytics (Google) 150k visits, 1200k pageviews.

I also will need some custom stuff done, I dont need it to be free, I can pay, but I need to know if there's people willing to do the work or not...

And the most important question I've, SEO.... 70% of my traffic is organic, Meaning I can't risk to ****up with google, so, does XenForo really include all the stuff vBSEO does but without to pay for an addon? Or will I get my organic traffic ****ed up with the change.

I'm not sure if there's any forum that big using XenForo, I haven't been able to find it, So I would like to know if XenForo Staff can tell me if everything will be ok or not before making this swap.

 

[el canadiano]

Example, DigitalPoint.

HackForums.net is another example (sticks with MyBB default URL). MyBB's Google SEO URL feature alone needs six queries which slow down even a 100k post forum (by experience). I personally find that going the extra distance just to rewrite URLs from the URL/categories/title is quite a bit too much work and not enough benefit, as Google says more often that they can in fact index regular URLs.

Not to mention the biggest downside with vBSEO is that it adds to the server load as it isn't part of the core package.

 

[Deebs]

....

Not to mention the biggest downside with vBSEO is that it adds to the server load as it isn't part of the core package.

Actually can you back that up? I have vBSEO installed on my forums and did not notice any slowdown at all when activating it.

 

[Shamil]

Actually can you back that up? I have vBSEO installed on my forums and did not notice any slowdown at all when activating it.

To clarify, slowdown != additional server load.

 

[Deebs]

To clarify, slowdown != additional server load.

I know that, I have been in the IT industry longer than you have been alive I suspect having worked for several enterprises in the UK. My point was that enabling vBSEO did not make any noticable impact on the speed of my forums.

 

[Shamil]

I know that, I have been in the IT industry longer than you have been alive I suspect having worked for several enterprises in the UK. My point was that enabling vBSEO did not make any noticable impact on the speed of my forums.

There was no need to be rude.

Your experience was your experience.

For the record, I did not notice any performance regressions in using vBSEO.

 

[a legacy reborn]

I would suspect that a professional product like vBSEO has been developed to have minimal overhead, it will still do something, just not noticeable if you have a decent server.

 

[Deebs]

There was no need to be rude.

Your experience was your experience.

For the record, I did not notice any performance regressions in using vBSEO.

I am not being rude, you questioned my response.

 

[Shamil]

I am not being rude, you questioned my response.

Actually, I wasn't. I was clarifying the situation, in the event that someone would think that slowing = additional server load

 

[Shamil]

I would suspect that a professional product like vBSEO has been developed to have minimal overhead, it will still do something, just not noticeable if you have a decent server.

I only remember small overhead when it was still encoded by ioncube/zend.

 

[Deebs]

Actually, I wasn't. I was clarifying the situation, in the event that someone would think that slowing = additional server load

I disagree.

 

[Shamil]

I disagree.

Looks like we'll have to agree to disagree, evidently, this'll only cause the thread to be locked.

Back to the topic, OP have you played with the XenForo demo?

 

[James]

I disagree.

Actually can you back that up? I have vBSEO installed on my forums and did not notice any slowdown at all when activating it.

Not to mention the biggest downside with vBSEO is that it adds to the server load as it isn't part of the core package.

To clarify, slowdown != additional server load.

Deebs, el canadiano said that vBSEO adds to the server load, you replied that you haven't experienced any slowdowns. El canadiano wasn't actually referring to slowdowns, which could confuse people. Shamil merely pointed out what I just pointed out.

 

[Deebs]

To clarify, slowdown != additional server load.

I took offence to the above.

Regardless, I stand by my findings, on my systems I did not notice a slowdown 0r additonal load; to back up my credentials I built directline.com when the internet was just coming to age and they are still using my design (tech). That was over 15 years ago, using MQSeries talking to a mainframe.

 

[Shamil]

I took offence to the above.

Regardless, I stand by my findings, on my systems I did not notice a slowdown 0r additonal load; to back up my credentials I built directline.com when the internet was just coming to age and they are still using my design (tech). That was over 15 years ago, using MQSeries talking to a mainframe.

How is that offensive? I am not disputing your credentials.

 

[Deebs]

How is that offensive? I am not disputing your credentials.

When you respond "To clarify, slowdown != additional server load. " it means something....

 

[Paul B]

Can we move on from the argument about vBSEO and server loading/slowdown please?

 

[User]

I think we are all in agreement that content is king. Most of the people who run forums know this to be true based on first hand experience and the rest knows it from actual examples in the real world like the referenced forums earlier in this thread.

Where the differences in opinion come in is whether the forum name in the URL matters when you take two forums of essentially equal quality content. Does the one with the forum name in the URL have an SEO advantage? For me personally this is more of an academic question since all forums I ever ran were niche forums with very sharply defined target markets. Yes, some of my users came from search engines but the overwhelming majority came from word of mouth that members of those interest groups would spread among themselves using existing "social networking" before it was called that.

The new forum I am about to launch will be a very limited market as well with maybe around 80-100k potential customers world wide. If I can capture 1% of those as active members I'll be a happy camper and SEO really won't help me doing that one way or another.

 

[Agusti Fernandez Pardo]

Hey guys, altough I've finally decided to stick up with vBulletin for now, this thread has really helped me to see all the potential that XenForo has. I've played around with the demo, and I've to say it captivated me in no time. It just looks like admin a site with it would be more pleasant... My decision is more related to the fact that updating to VB4 has meant us a lot of time and money, and would be a wasting now if we simply switch. Anyway, i'm keeping XenForo present, and probably with 1.1 release I will rethink about it. For now I'll be keeping an eye and maybe buy a license to play with...

Thank you all, and if you will keep discussing on the topic of what downsides/upsides you see on XenForo for a big forum, I think a lot of admins can benefit on that.

 

[Mikey]

Just a query, 1500k , so 1500000?

 

[Agusti Fernandez Pardo]

1,552,449 right now, yes. To justify it, We're a warez site, and you've to register to see the links.