Questions About Migration from vB

CF Mike

New member
Hello.

I'm one of two administrators on a discussion board. The other admin (Stovebolts) should be registering here soon as well so that we can get a feel for the migration process before we commit. As with many others, we're determined to move from vBulletin. We're currently running vB 4.13. My chief concern is spam control. I've read a few threads here about your ability to deal with it, but I haven't seen anything addressing it the way we currently do.

We've tried quite a few mods that have promised to do the trick. Some of them were quite complex, and others were simple. In the end, they failed in their delivery, and we were forced to moderate roughly 50-75 spam-bots per day. Even though they didn't make it to the board to bother our membership, they were quite taxing on our team of about 10 moderators. Our board averages about 400 posts per day.

What finally worked, and worked perfectly, was a mod that boots any first post by a new member with a hyper-link included. When a new member registers and posts with a hyperlink, they are given an error message explaining exactly why their message was not accepted. Of course, spam-bots don't read that, so they continue to pound away with the same program, and the system deletes their posts before they even reach our moderation queue. They continue to pound their spam, and we're oblivious to it. Live members will read the error message and make the necessary changes. Our spam volume immediately disappeared with the activation of this mod, and it's been terrific!

Can something similar be applied using XF? If not, can you direct me to a link showing exactly how what you do offer works as well. I have more migration questions, but I'll keep the length of my first post down with this one for now.

Thank you!

Mike
 
If it's bots you want killed this inexpensive add-on works perfectly: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/foolbothoneypot-bot-killer-spam-combat.1085/ - I have it on all 8 of my boards and bots don't even get registered.

@tenants also has other spam-combat add-ons that work very well too, but in XF 1.2.x there are more built-in tools linked to Stop Forum Spam and Project Honey Pot that you can use to help you fight spammers.

You can also use the usergroup promotion system to put people in a low-privs usergroup to start with (requiring their first few posts to be manually approved by your mods) - then after say 3 -5 posts have them auto-promoted to a group that allows them to post straight into the board and let them run free. :)

I don't think you'll have too much of a problem. (y)
 
Thanks everyone for your comments. I did notice that when I signed up for my account here, I had to type the first four letters of a word. In my opinion, this was much easier than captcha! Yeah, everyone loves captcha!

Clickfinity said:
You can also use the usergroup promotion system to put people in a low-privs usergroup to start with (requiring their first few posts to be manually approved by your mods) - then after say 3 -5 posts have them auto-promoted to a group that allows them to post straight into the board and let them run free.

Thanks for posting this! This is something that we are currently doing in vb and I wanted to make sure our Moderators could do this in Xf. I'm assuming we could set this up where when our mods approved of the users first post, it would auto-promote the user.
 
Hey @Jeremy , I just noticed the "Like" feature. Do you get notified when somebody likes one of your posts?
Really liking what I'm seeing with Xenforo :)

Also, I'm noticiing the Tweet and Facebook recomend buttons. Is that part of a standard install, or are those add on's?
 
Yes, you get notified. And yes, those are standard. Everything you see here (except a few things such as the resource manager / filters / settings) are in the default package.
 
Well, the Resource Manager is just a file downloads system, and can be seen in action by clicking "Resources" in the navigation bar. The settings on these forums are tweaked to allow it to run smoother (ie, spam settings, etc.) and to enforce our rules such as filters on what can be posted (censors). Other than small tweaks (and the footer), everything is a stock installation. Basically, if you see it here, you'll have it when you purchase.
 
Jeremy said:
and to enforce our rules such as filters on what can be posted (censors).
So you can create rules on what can be posted? Can this work off key words? Do you have a link explaining this, or you can teall me :-)

Also, can you set specific censors to specific forums to prevent specific topics in those forums while allowing them in others?

As an example. Lets say you made a rule that said no topics or posts about cars could be had except in a "car" forum. Could you set up a filter that used key words to stop a post about cars from being posted, say in a "dog" forum?
 
No, the censors are global. For example "****" is censored, and can't be posted anywhere on the forum. You can set them to be exact matches or to match any sub-string. The functionality you are looking for doesn't exist in XenForo, but you can prevent spam using spam keywords:
http://xenforo.com/help/spam/
 
Ha! What a bummer! Our moderators are always moving topics or reminding users that certain topics are better suited in other areas of the forum. Would be nice to automate a response!

Thanks for the link!

Next question, Example:
Lets say we have a Mens and Womens user groups that allows members of said groups to access the Mens and Womens forums respectfully. After all, we wouldn't want the women in the garage with the boys and they certainly wouldn't want the men in their rest room!

When we migrate from vb4 to Xenforo, will these custom user groups and assignments migrate as well or will we loos all of that?
 
This is all very good information. Thank you! Jeremy, can you confirm that if a member has two separate accounts tied to one email address that neither will migrate to XF? We have a rule that members may only have one active account, but we don't want to leave members behind or lose their data if they have an old one we're not aware of.

Also, I've always been averse to the "like" system, trophies, or kudos when they populate by a post for members to see. IMO, this creates a popularity contest and compels members to grandstand. Do the "likes" appear to other members? If so, can that feature be turned off?

One more thing. Is there a tagging system or a way to add it on? We have a very popular mod where someone can type "@Mike" or @any member and it will send a notification to the member with a link to the post. This mod does the same thing when a member has been quoted.

Thanks!
 
I believe you will need to merge the users. Yes, likes on a post appear to other members as well as total like counts. If you'd like to remove them, you will need to make edits to the template.

Tagging works (and alerts) just by typing a username after the @ symbol.
 
Likes = Popularity contest
Post ratings seems to minimize this effect.
http://xenforo.com/community/resources/post-ratings-taking-likes-to-the-next-level.410/
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I didn't use any spam preventing add-on, just made my own questions for registration form and I had no problem with bots so far. Just make a good questions (they randomly appear at registration process) and I am sure you won't need any add-ons against spam :)
 
I believe you will need to merge the users.

We're still in the process of moving our database, and I just thought of something. Once we're established here, what happens when a person tries to register using the same email address? Do they get a message saying they already have an account? Does XF let them register with it?

With that, we have a plugin that alerts us if someone posts with an IP that matches one already in use to flag that there might be someone with two accounts or a banned member trying to get back in. Is there a matching IP safeguard built into XF. I'll search for a plugin that does this if not.

Thanks!
 
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