Potential New Cusomer Using phpBB 3

[Reedals]

Hi
I am looking at various options for a new home for my Forum. I have decided that XenForo looks the most likely but just wanted a bit of advice if thats OK..

The import will be vital - I dont have a massive forum - currently 1600 users and about 400meg database, but at the same time I will need to ensure that everything is transferred over if possible (all posts users forums etc.)

I was wondering if the best bet would be to leave my current forum running as it is and maybe set up XenForo on a test site to make sure everything ran smoothly - is that possible? I then assume that I could then switch off the old once I was convinced all was well on the new site (obviously losing any posts on the old site made while I was dual running)

Has anyone out there had any experience or got any tips with moving a pphBB 3 forum ?

Just like to say great work on the software - looks very slick and user friendly. I am not a coder by trade but have developed quite a few websites over the years so very comfortable with HTML versions.

 

[MattW]

Hi
I am looking at various options for a new home for my Forum. I have decided that XenForo looks the most likely but just wanted a bit of advice if thats OK..

The import will be vital - I dont have a massive forum - currently 1600 users and about 400meg database, but at the same time I will need to ensure that everything is transferred over if possible (all posts users forums etc.)

I was wondering if the best bet would be to leave my current forum running as it is and maybe set up XenForo on a test site to make sure everything ran smoothly - is that possible? I then assume that I could then switch off the old once I was convinced all was well on the new site (obviously losing any posts on the old site made while I was dual running)

Has anyone out there had any experience or got any tips with moving a pphBB 3 forum ?

Just like to say great work on the software - looks very slick and user friendly. I am not a coder by trade but have developed quite a few websites over the years so very comfortable with HTML versions.

I moved my phpBB3 forum over 12 months ago, and it was the best decision we made as a site.

Have you had a play with the online demo? You'll not be able to do a test conversion until you have actually bought the software.

I bought, migrated and set up my site with over 200,000 at the time in under 3 hours. The built in converter works really well for phpBB3, and the only thing you'll need to do is a bit of URL rewriting with .htaccess to ensure the old links from search engines still work until you are fully re-indexed.

 

[borbole]

Hi
I am looking at various options for a new home for my Forum. I have decided that XenForo looks the most likely but just wanted a bit of advice if thats OK..

The import will be vital - I dont have a massive forum - currently 1600 users and about 400meg database, but at the same time I will need to ensure that everything is transferred over if possible (all posts users forums etc.)

I was wondering if the best bet would be to leave my current forum running as it is and maybe set up XenForo on a test site to make sure everything ran smoothly - is that possible? I then assume that I could then switch off the old once I was convinced all was well on the new site (obviously losing any posts on the old site made while I was dual running)

Has anyone out there had any experience or got any tips with moving a pphBB 3 forum ?

Just like to say great work on the software - looks very slick and user friendly. I am not a coder by trade but have developed quite a few websites over the years so very comfortable with HTML versions.

There is a built in phpBB 3 converter in xenforo that will make the conversion process very smooth. You can also do a dry conversion run by making a duplication of your live phpbb 3 forum to a test folder/subdomain and convert that first to xenforo to see how things will go.

 

[Reedals]

Cheers for the quick replies - I have set up various 2 day demo forums to play around with some of the functionality. I think I will try a dry run first so that is sound advice..good to hear evidence of smooth transition - and very quick as well - I had visions of being offline for days !

 

[Paul B]

Another former phpBB user here.

Post import you may need to clean up the posts with regards to custom BB code.
Other than that, it should be straight forward.

See the guidelines here: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/importing-guidelines.25325/

It shouldn't take more than a few hours so downtime will be quite low, if you decide to close the forum while you do it.

You can also do it locally for testing, etc: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/how-to-install-xenforo-locally-to-your-pc-using-xampp.355/

 

[Nudaii]

I've moved several forums from phpbb3 to Xenforo for clients, without exception the members of those forums all liked the changed! so sure your members will too

 

[Arty]

Moved several forums from phpBB to XF too, all owners and their users were very happy. Conversion process is very easy.

 

[Martok]

I have recently moved my small phpBB forum to Xenforo with no issues apart from some custom bbcode tidying as Brogan says. Post Content Find / Replace is a useful resource to help with this.

Doing a dry run first with a copy of your phpBB database is a must just to check that the import works fine and to see if there are any other issues that need addressing.

It's a move you won’t regret, Xenforo is so much better than phpBB and much more easily extensible with the various plugins available. All of my forum users love it and there have been no complaints.

 

[Teapot]

Current phpBB owner here - I'll be moving to XenForo as soon as humanly possible (when all my custom code has been written!) All the testing I've done on my board (and I've got an interesting edge case, as I'm actually merging two databases together) have come out flawlessly - you'll only have to use Post Content Find/Replace (linked in the post above me) to fix any BBCodes you might have (I have a [youtube] BBCode that needed changing), and setting up .htaccess-based redirects to silent redirect anyone going to old threads to the equivalent new ones, which you can find by searching "phpbb redirects" here

Everyone who I've shown my test board to absolutely loves the change (me included!), the moderators are finding moderation infinitely easier, and everything's far more fun and intuitive to use. I highly recommend it