vB forum (10 million posts) migration help?

Typhon

Member
Greetings,
I've been considering migrating for quite some time; and I've just come to the conclusion that I'm just tired of dealing with vBulletin and am ready to move on. But first; I have a couple questions that I would love your input; and if there is a professional service that would do everything for me; that would be great!

I currently run two vBulletin forums (7 million and 3 million posts, respectively), and am going to merge them (using vBulletin's impex; unless xenForo has a multiple import system). My main issue is that I need a search that works, migrate a vBulletin add-on (iTrader), blog, and a custom application (that mainly relies on vbulletin session for the userid).

Additionally, I need to rebuild the home page and associated custom pages (migration of vBAdvanced), and theme everything so that my members aren't too lost.

Obviously since this is a production environment; and can't have a lot of downtime.

Anyone well versed in the migration of a site/forum this size and is willing to quote me on getting things moved? I can provide more details over PM.

Thanks!!!
Tony
 
Greetings,
I've been considering migrating for quite some time; and I've just come to the conclusion that I'm just tired of dealing with vBulletin and am ready to move on. But first; I have a couple questions that I would love your input; and if there is a professional service that would do everything for me; that would be great!

I currently run two vBulletin forums (7 million and 3 million posts, respectively), and am going to merge them (using vBulletin's impex; unless xenForo has a multiple import system). My main issue is that I need a search that works, migrate a vBulletin add-on (iTrader), blog, and a custom application (that mainly relies on vbulletin session for the userid).

Additionally, I need to rebuild the home page and associated custom pages (migration of vBAdvanced), and theme everything so that my members aren't too lost.

Obviously since this is a production environment; and can't have a lot of downtime.

Anyone well versed in the migration of a forum this size and is willing to quote me on getting things moved? I can provide more details over PM.

Thanks!!!
Tony
There are several that do professional migrations, including Jake. I am not sure of a replacement for iTrader, but [XI] Blog is being actively developed and an importer for posts from vBulletin is being built. XenForo provides Elastic Search as an additional add-on purchase, which DigitalPoint is currently using. Many people use XenPorta as a vBA replacement.
 
We moved from VB3 and replaced VBAdvanced with XenPorta. It's quite similar with blocks/modules, etc for your homepage.

On that size forum you should look into the Elastic Search official Addon on here. It works great but does use a fair bit of memory.

A new blog Addon is about to be released (beta version is already available) and looks pretty decent.

Russ does custom theme integration and specialises in making your XF site look like your old VB site.

If you look in the 3rd party services forum, there are various people who would be able to do the import for you. Personally I'd talk to Slavik who's been working in a big board importer that's heavily optimised.

Hope some of that helps :-)
 
What version of vb are you using?
The larger of the two forums is running 3.7 and the other is running 3.8.4. I'm still researching how best to merge + migration (impex to 4.2 then xenforo?). Lots of options; but I just know I need to get it done because my search is getting crushed and I feel I really need to get onto elasticsearch.

Thanks!
 
The larger of the two forums is running 3.7 and the other is running 3.8.4. I'm still researching how best to merge + migration (impex to 4.2 then xenforo?).

Run two imports, one after the other, into the same installation of XenForo. That is an effective merge of the two vB forums into XenForo. The built-in vB 3.7/3.8 importer will work for both forums. During each import it will give you the option to name the import log table. That way you can save the import log from each import under different names so you can have two sets of redirect scripts to redirect old traffic from the old vB forums into the new XF forum.

I do offer import services, but the import from vB3 to XF is one of the most thorough and problem-free imports there is. The devs did a great job on the vB->XF importer. Here is a guide:

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/import-guide.10053/

But if you need some one to do it for you then I am available.

As others have mentioned, Slavik is working on a faster importer which is good for very large forums. The built-in importer will work fine but it will take several hours to complete 10 million posts. If time is not a concern then just use the built-in importer.

And here are the redirect scripts for vB3:

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/redirection-scripts-for-vbulletin-3-x.5030/

but I just know I need to get it done because my search is getting crushed and I feel I really need to get onto elasticsearch.

With 10 million posts... definitely.
 
I just converted a vBulletin 4.2 forum for a client with 9 million posts (over 2 mil threads and almost 7 mil posts), it took 33 hours, 21 minutes and 33.18 seconds to complete.

I used the vB4 to XenForo importer posted by Jake. On a server with a Phenom II 965 processor and 12 GB of RAM.
 
Looks like you have some work ahead of you :)

I currently run two vBulletin forums (7 million and 3 million posts, respectively), and am going to merge them (using vBulletin's impex; unless xenForo has a multiple import system).

Kind of, as long as you don't want to keep the thread and forum ids you can import two or more vBulletin into a single XenForo installation, just run the importer twice given the data for the different databases each time


I need a search that works

The default search is pretty good. For a forum that size you can use the Elastic Search add-on available here too.

migrate a vBulletin add-on (iTrader)

That one is tricky, take a look at XenTrader to see if it is enough
http://xenforo.com/community/resources/xentrader.245/


You have different options, there is XI Blog (http://xenforo.com/community/resources/xi-blog.713/) and Better Blogs (http://xenforo.com/community/resources/better-blogs.1055/)

and a custom application (that mainly relies on vbulletin session for the userid)

Concepts are similar, but the framework is different. You still have an xf_user table and session data
 
Mind that Slavik's importer is not only 25 times faster or so, it also imports much more things, that you would otherwise loose.
Also mind that the upcoming 1.2 will have post edit history and likely some other stuff that will reduce data loss.
 
Top Bottom