Switching a middle sized forum

[Nerogar]

I am maintaining a middle sized Forum (1,000,000 posts, 50,000 users) in german. At the moment I am using IP Board, but I am unsatisfied with the software. Therefore I am thinking about switching to Xenforo. Before I buy I have a few questions:

1) Migration: Are there conversion tools for IP Board and IP Gallery (version 3.x)? Can they handle german special chars?

2) Advertisement: Does XF has a system to manage banner ads? Does it have a system to automatically change Amazon, Ebay, etc. links to affiliate links? Does it have a partner system for paying forum partners?

3) Security: Is there geolocation system to prevent registrations from certain countries? Is there a registration system with support for questions where the forum asks "Bill ... founded Microsoft" and the user has to answer "Gates"? Is there a system to prevent double accounts?

4) Mobile support: Does XF has a responsive design? If not, is there a mobile theme available? Does XF offer all functions in the mobile view? How well is the mobile view advertiseable?

Thanks in advance for your support and help!

 

[Chris D]

1) Migration: Are there conversion tools for IP Board and IP Gallery (version 3.x)? Can they handle german special chars?

Yes, yes and yes! The importer for IP Board is built into the software. The importer for IP Gallery is built into our XenForo Media Gallery. German characters should be handled properly. We always recommend testing imports to ensure things like character set conversions (where required) have worked properly.

2) Advertisement: Does XF has a system to manage banner ads? Does it have a system to automatically change Amazon, Ebay, etc. links to affiliate links? Does it have a partner system for paying forum partners?

XF2 does have a system to manage banner ads. In XF1 you have to do template edits but there are special templates for this. There are add-ons available for changing Amazon/Ebay links to affiliate links. There are integrations for things like Skimlinks and Viglink. I'm not directly aware of any partner system, but it's possible.

3) Security: Is there geolocation system to prevent registrations from certain countries? Is there a registration system with support for questions where the forum asks "Bill ... founded Microsoft" and the user has to answer "Gates"? Is there a system to prevent double accounts?

We have a system that can ban IP addresses or ranges but nothing specifically that restricts locations. There are add-ons for this though. Registration questions? Do you mean like a question and answer style CAPTCHA? There is a system for that, plus a bunch of other CAPTCHA systems like reCAPTCHA. There's no system to prevent double accounts, per se, but we do provide tools to see if a user is sharing IPs with another user.

4) Mobile support: Does XF has a responsive design? If not, is there a mobile theme available? Does XF offer all functions in the mobile view? How well is the mobile view advertiseable?

Yes it's a responsive design. You get the same version of the site regardless of the device you're using. Companies like Adsense will mostly serve responsive ads now so that would usually be handled automatically on small devices.