XF 1.5 Perform the importing process before installing add-ons or after? which is the right way?

[Earl]

What if I have to build the site (Installing add-ons and themes etc) after completing the import process?
I've read somewhere it's a good idea to import the forum to a fresh install.
What if I don't want to publish the live site until I finish with the importing, configuring settings, add-ons, theme and other stuff? I'm already having a simple auth .htpassword protection to the document root directory. So like I said It's a big community and its gonna take almost one week to complete the importing process so I don't wanna go live with an uncompleted site,
Then again I'm gonna have to face a big downtime too.

 

[KawaiiHannah]

You can keep the forums online and tweak settings so your users can access the forums, just place a notice stating that the site is under heavy development and many features will be changing or being added. That's what I did when I moved from mybb over to xenforo

 

[Mike]

The answer is sort of "it depends". Obviously if an add-on would affect the import, then you need it beforehand. Otherwise, it could be safer to do the add-ons after. Conversely, that does make it harder to finish and import and open the forum. Provided there aren't any compatibility issues with the import from an add-on, you would be ok installing it before, though I don't think we would provide a formal recommendation either way.

You definitely shouldn't have the forum open/accessible until the import is finished (and really, once at least some of the rebuilds afterwards are finished).