XF 2.1 VBulletin migration, test instance and move to production tips

[ELAM Webmaster]

Hi,
I'm super new to XenForo and was after some tips and advice on best plan for migrating an existing VBulletin 4.2.5 forum to latest XenForo. Mainly around the high level approach to doing doing a test migration, finalised XenForo config in a test instance, then doing a proper production migration. My current thinking is along these lines, please advise if this is a good approach:-

Current VBulletin forum is in mysite.com/forum. I'd prefer if the final production XenForo resided at this same url.

1. Setup a test instance of XenForo at mysite.com/forum_test
2. Do a test migration from VBulletin
3. Do I follow instructions in manual section "XenForo and vBulletin at different URLs" here?
4. Tweak test XenForo config, themes etc.
5. Setup Production XenForo instance
6. Take offline old VBulletin forum
7. Do a final VBulletin migration
8. Import test XenForo config?

It's the final move to Production i'm unsure of. Can this be in a new url (e.g. /forum_prod) and then renamed once done? Or should I move VBulletin folder first and install production XenForo instance directly into /forum path (does this work with attachments on disk)?
What mechanisms are there for moving XF test instance config over to the production XF instance?

Any advice or suggestions of better approaches much appreciated!
Arthur.

 

[Paul B]

This guide will help with doing multiple test imports: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/importing-guidelines.25325/

As for this:

It's the final move to Production i'm unsure of. Can this be in a new url (e.g. /forum_prod) and then renamed once done? Or should I move VBulletin folder first and install production XenForo instance directly into /forum path (does this work with attachments on disk)?
What mechanisms are there for moving XF test instance config over to the production XF instance?

It makes no difference whether you install XF in a temporary directory, do the import, then archive VB and move XF to the final URL, or archive VB first, install XF in the final location and do the import.

Moving XF is simply a matter of moving the files on the server (or renaming the directory) and updating the Board URL in the ACP.

Most people do the former as it minimises the downtime.