Questions regarding switching from Invision

[Jennifer Bales]

I am hoping recent switchers from Invision (or elsewhere) can give me some insight. We plan to migrate our forums over. I think we have 100-200 active users and our forum has been up since 2018. It is for a professional association. So we would like to get a feel for the following:

(1) How well did the migration go? Did pretty much everything make it over in a usable form? What didn't work?

(2) How long did the migration take?

(3) If you care to share, what are your total costs, both for migrating and monthly after migrating? How many paid add ons did you find you needed? Are there other hidden costs?

(4) Do daily digests work? I know we need an add on for that.

(5) How long did you need to overlap the old and new forums?

(6) What else should I be asking? What do you wish you had asked?

Thanks for any help!

 

[ForumDevs]

I am hoping recent switchers from Invision (or elsewhere) can give me some insight. We plan to migrate our forums over. I think we have 100-200 active users and our forum has been up since 2018. It is for a professional association. So we would like to get a feel for the following:

(1) How well did the migration go? Did pretty much everything make it over in a usable form? What didn't work?

(2) How long did the migration take?

(3) If you care to share, what are your total costs, both for migrating and monthly after migrating? How many paid add ons did you find you needed? Are there other hidden costs?

(4) Do daily digests work? I know we need an add on for that.

(5) How long did you need to overlap the old and new forums?

(6) What else should I be asking? What do you wish you had asked?

Thanks for any help!

We have performed several IPB 4 migrations so I think I can answer. Last one was Guineapigcages.com which switched from IPB to XF 2.3.

1) The the official XenForo importer is robust but every forum is unique. Since yours dates back to 2018 you may encounter orphan data which are usually resolved with SQL queries during a test. The best is to do a migration test and ensure everything is OK before running the final migration
2) It depends on each forum. For a forum with < 300k posts the import usually takes less than an hour. CLI import is much faster.
3) The XenForo license $195) plus the addons you want to purchase depending on your needs.
4) There isn't native support. You must buy an addon like https://xenforo.com/community/resources/dbtech-dragonbyte-mail.5867/.
5) You have to close the forum (or set a read mode so no new data will be created) and run the import. Any style changes can be done prior the migration so you can speed up the open.
6) You should ask about 301 Redirects. Don't forget to set them because your SEO rankings are tied to your current URL structure.
I wish you had asked about XenForo services, in which case we offer a a full range of services from web hosting to forum maintenance. We’re happy to take that technical load off your hands if you need it