Vauxhall Owners Network - Finally moved over :)

[PVO_Dave]

Firstly we waited for 1.1 to come out for the thread prefixes, then for a working VB4 importer, yesterday I made the move! I'd done two test upgrades prior to the live update just to make sure...

Started at 7:30 (I'd pre-installed XF on a new folder the day before, imported the theme and imported the forums), I moved all of the VB4 files into a new folder, moved all of the XF files I'd installed to root, then had to restart the server as all I got was a white screen.

Then the importing took place:

2m+ posts in 7 hours isn't too bad

Once complete, and it was rebuilding indexes, I started working through the permissions (the test permission tool on XF is amazing), installing needed plugins, and manually re-adding the user upgrades (paid subs).

It took an age, but well worth it, SO much faster than VB4 ever was, and no moaning (so far, users can be a funny bunch, not liking change etc...)

A big thanks to everyone on here who has taken the time to help others and create plugins, the support so far has been fantastic.

Very happy to be running XenForo live

www.vauxhallownersnetwork.co.uk

Dave.

 

[Brett Peters]

Congratulations on the change over
I look forward to giving it a testing out, I need Vauxhall advice again

 

[PVO_Dave]

Thanks Brett,

If you find anything, let me know

 

[Brett Peters]

Lol, I am the one that should be saying thanks to you for supplying such a decent service.
Looks good, Probably wouldn't hurt to remove the "Home" tab though

 

[PVO_Dave]

I didn't actually know you could remove the home tab... lol - I'll take a look

 

[Brett Peters]

Should be under ACP > Basic Board Information

 

[PVO_Dave]

Job jobbed!

Thanks!

 

[steven s]

I like the unanswered threads mod.
How did you get unanswered threads to work?

 

[PVO_Dave]

I just followed the instructions and installed it!

The only thing that wouldn't work during install was installing the file from the server, so I just did it from the local file

 

[steven s]

I just followed the instructions and installed it!

The only thing that wouldn't work during install was installing the file from the server, so I just did it from the local file

I used my local file too. Oh well.

 

[Brett Peters]

I would be interested in how XF is working out so far for Vauxhall Owners Network

 

[PVO_Dave]

So far so good really.

Few moans and groans about how "we'd changed it for the sake of it" it's "too cartoony" etc..

Slight drop in traffic so far, but then we don't have a working sitemap so far and we are losing out on archive traffic from google due to the re-directs not working 100%

Still glad we made the move though, the site is a lot quicker than before and to me a lot nicer to look at / use

 

[Brett Peters]

That is good to hear (except for the complainers), I shall drop over every now and then to contribute where I can.
Always good to get an update so please keep us posted if you can.

 

[PVO_Dave]

Just a quick update... (was finding this thread for something else).

After taking an initial hit on traffic to the site, things started to improve and continued to do so.

Our stats are now up across the board, time spent on the site, number of visitors etc..

One thing I really have noticed, is how much better the index rate is from the sitemap we supply, they seem to index about 99% (99.57% at the moment - Over 475k URL's!) of the URL's submitted, a lot better than it used to be.

So glad we are seeing KAM developing again, looking forward to the software continuing to improve

 

[borbole]

Welcome to xenforo PVO_Dave. It is nice to see that more big boards are switching to xenforo.

 

[BlackCobra]

Looks like the standard theme but slightly modified, congrats on your move from VB though. Even though you seem to have a relevant theme to the default, you've customized it enough that it looks good on your forum and I give you props for that.

 

[MattW]

Seeing VXON on XenForo one of the things that helped with my decision to move my site over.

 

[PVO_Dave]

Seeing VXON on XenForo one of the things that helped with my decision to move my site over.

Excellent! - Glad we helped in some way