Lack of interest Suggestion: Phased Migration from vBulletin to Xenforo

[Harbinger]

Hi
Firstly, to avoid any confusion with terminology I will try to explain what I mean by the term "Forum" in the context of this suggestion.

The vB site has a number of forums. It has football forums (one for each team), a horse racing forum, a general forum and various other forums for different sports. The idea was to migrate one of these forums over initially (say the horse racing forum) so that if there were any problems it doesn't affect the entire site. It would be easier to manage a relatively small forum in the event of problems.

Suggested Approach (non technical)
To distinguish between Xenforo data and vB data I will prefix all data references by X or vB as appropriate

I am having to guess at how the import actually works, so please bear with me. Hopefully I’m not talking complete rubbish but I think, logically, and in broad terms, it will be something like the following.


Phase 1 (Migrate a single forum or selection of forums)

vB Members. Migrate all Members from vB. On import each Member will be allocated a unique ID which I will call the X Member ID). The X Member Name will be set to the vB Member name.

All Members will remain on the vB site until all Forums have been migrated


vB Member PMs. Migrate all vB PMs. Each PM for the vB member will be imported with the vB member Name attached. Where vB Member Name = X Member Name the X Member ID will be used to create an X Conversation record with a unique X Conversation ID being allocated. Using the same X Conversation ID, further X Conversation records will be created for each additional Participant in the PM, Where the vB Participant Name = an existing X Member Name, the X Member ID will be adopted.

All PMs will remain on the vB site until all Forums have been migrated


vB Threads. Import all threads for the selected forum(s). Each post in the thread (including the opening post) will be imported with the vB Member Name attached. Where vB Member Name = X Member Name the X Member ID will be attached to the post and a unique X Post ID will be allocated. Each X Thread will be allocated a unique X Thread ID and posts will be linked to their respective thread via the X Thread ID). All attachments will be allocated a unique X Attachment ID and linked to the post via the X Post ID.

The imported forum will be removed from the vB site and a redirection to Xenforo placed on the All Forums Index


Subsequent Phases (Migrate a selection of forums or all remaining forums)

vB Members. As for Phase 1 but import only those Members registered since the previous import. If the import program does not allows filters the members to be migrated will have to be filtered out first and the import carried out from the filtered file.

vB Member PMs. As for Phase 1 but import only those PMs timestamped after the previous import

vB Threads. As for Phase 1


I think this will allow for the situation where members can engage in conversations on the vB site and the Xenforo site whether or not they have migrated over.

Any comments welcome.

 

[Slavik]

This seems like a very, personal suggestion, not something I could see many people wanting.

You could potentially do it instead with a combination of the waindigo import tools and some clever management, it would be quite messy, though not impossible.

Why not simply do a test import first, see if everything behaves as expected and then commit to a full import?

 

[Mr Lucky]

I think this will allow for the situation where members can engage in conversations on the vB site and the Xenforo site whether or not they have migrated over.
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Unless I'm totally misunderstandig what you mean, i think this is asking for trouble. You would have the same users messaging on two different databases. At some stage you will lose content when you finally migrate.

As Slavik says, do a test and if you like it just bite the bullet. That's what i did and there's no turning back. I'm very happy with xenforo as are my mods and members.

 

[Harbinger]

I'm used to more major system migrations over long periods where taking chances with one off conversions is just not an option. Maybe, based on comments so far. I'm just being too cautious. If no-one has encountered problems requiring a re-convert following a period of activity on the Xenforo system that would be reassuring.

 

[Harbinger]

Unless I'm totally misunderstandig what you mean, i think this is asking for trouble. You would have the same users messaging on two different databases. At some stage you will lose content when you finally migrate.

As Slavik says, do a test and if you like it just bite the bullet. That's what i did and there's no turning back. I'm very happy with xenforo as are my mods and members.

You are correct we would have members posting on both sites (ie they could be posting on more than one forum , some having been converted and some not) but I don't see why that should be a problem with the right conversion logic. However, please see my general response.

 

[Harbinger]

So, roughly, how long would it take to convert around 28k members and 7 million posts? I'm sure it will depend on this and that, but a minimum time or range of times will do for now.