XF 1.2 vBulletin to XenForo migration question

[Joe Link]

I'm getting really close to being ready to convert my million plus post vBulletin site to XenForo. One of my last questions is the best practice for the actual migration. I don't want any trace of vBulletin on my site, directory, etc. Here's what I'm thinking, please let me know if there's a better way.

We'll call my current vBulletin install account in WHM vbulletin, making the directory /home/vbulletin/public_html/.

If I were to create a XenForo user, that directory would be /home/xenforo/public_html and it would be completely clean.

Before the actual migration I could install XenForo and get it setup the way we need it, do the DB migration, then I could just point my domain to that new directory.

In my head this makes sense, any reason it doesn't? Is there a better way to do it, considering I want a 'clean install'?

 

[SchmitzIT]

Your method makes sense. I've used similar approaches many times when migrating customers over. We'll typically close the vB forum, and import the system to XenForo in a separate folder. We do this to ensure that we'll have an easy roll-back option in case of any trouble. Once we're satisfied everything went as intended, we simply switch the folders around, put redirects in place, and we're done.

Remember to take backups (I usually backup vB prioer to starting, and XenForo as soon as the import finalizes. If there's any issues in-between import steps, I might take additional backups as sort of "save points" to save us from having to re-do a large and time-consuming import step).

Good luck with the migration

 

[Joe Link]

Great, thank you. I'm actually hiring @Slavik to do the migration, so I'm sure it'll go smoothly