vBulletin 3.8 "Friends"?

DeltaHF

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What happens to vBulletin 3.8 "friend" relationships during an import to XenForo? Is it converted into mutual "follows"?
 
Wow, it has been a while. I just checked my old site which lives on for occasional reference. This is one of the options that users can enable in vb3.8:
Limit usage of Visitor Messages to Contacts and Moderators

Which translates into the xf "Post messages on your profile page:"= "people you follow only" setting
 
Dean is correct. Friends are converted to 'follows'. It is not listed but is part of the user module.

Friends, contacts, buddies... vB has a few words for this. But they are all converted to follows in XenForo.
 
Yes I was a bit surprised after my test conversion to see that members had followers and people they follow.

But I can't work out what it has done. A member with 20 friends and 9 visitor messages, is now in XenForo following 4 members and being followed by 25.

Another member has followers now in XenForo who were neither friends in vBulletin nor have they left visitor messages (or vice versa) so what's that all about. In fact, in XenForo another member is being followed by someone who they really don't like, I think this could cause some issues.

Anyone know how it's working this out?

Is there a way to stop that part of the import, or to clear it all out afterwards (ie remove ALL follow/following data?).
 
Is there a way to stop that part of the import, or to clear it all out afterwards (ie remove ALL follow/following data?).
I can answer this part, for our forum.

The entire concept of 'followers' is fantastic, but can sound 'scary' for people that have never heard of it before (think super low-tech people). I wiped out all followers after the conversion from vb, before the xf site was opened up - using phpMyAdmin.

From my original notes, it worked for me, no guarantees :)
Xf_user_follow table – wipe out followers so people do not panic:
TRUNCATE TABLE xf_user_follow;
 
Thanks Dean, I will try that on the test conversion. Having looked into this in more detail, quite a lot of members in XenForo now are following or being followed by members who are not showing up as friends or have not even left profile messages, I can't see how/where it is getting the data from :)
 
Dean is correct. Friends are converted to 'follows'. It is not listed but is part of the user module.

Friends, contacts, buddies... vB has a few words for this. But they are all converted to follows in XenForo.

Thanks Dean, I will try that on the test conversion. Having looked into this in more detail, quite a lot of members in XenForo now are following or being followed by members who are not showing up as friends or have not even left profile messages, I can't see how/where it is getting the data from :)

The data comes from usertextfield.buddylist in the vB database.

If you can't see those users on your vB forum then they probably aren't friends. Friendship in vB requires that both users agree to be friends. Friends are listed on a user's profile page in vB. Short of that, both users can add each other as contacts without the approval of the other user. Contact lists are not public. Friends are contacts, but not all contacts are friends.

The importer looks at contacts, not just friends. That explains why you can't see all of those users on profile pages in vB. They are contacts, not friends.
 
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A member with 20 friends and 9 visitor messages, is now in XenForo following 4 members and being followed by 25.
Have no idea with your visitor messages, but maybe it depends on the user_id. After the vB-3.8-testimport in our board i was following all my vB-friends with user_id > my user_id. And all my followers where my vB-friends with user_id < my user_id. Maybe the other way round, don't remember exactly. :D
 
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