Where can I find someone to create a style/template to match my old forum?

[Hilary]

I have a big, old vBulletin 4 forum, here:

I Ching Community

A friendly, welcoming and active community discussing the I Ching oracle.

www.onlineClarity.co.uk

It's a bit of a buggy monstrosity, and I'm greatly looking forward to moving!

As you see, it has a heavily customised template - all the forum-related links (forums, profile, 'what's new', search etc) are in the main menu. That includes static links that I just wrote into the vB template, and also vB conditional code like 'if there is a new message, display a notification'. I need a Xenforo template that looks the same.

Two questions:

1. Where can I find someone dependable to create the style/template for me? Any recommendations?
2. Should I get the same person to run the migration? In other words, how dependable is the importer, especially for big forums? I don't want to start looking for someone to help after it's all gone horribly wrong...

Actually, one more question: has anyone already done the work of writing an explanation for members of a vBulletin forum of how XF is different, where to find things that have moved, etc? I would love a cheatsheet...

 

[sbj]

1. You should definitely find available people who offer their services on here.
You can read the feedback of many people who commented those services.
There are so many good services, I don't want to give names to be fair.

2. If I were you, I would first migrate to a clean non-customized default XF forum (hire someone for the migration). And then later on do the customizations you need by a design service. Btw. 250k posts isn't big at all (no offence).

3. People will quickly get used to the new system, I haven't seen a case here where people migrated a board and their users were unhappy with the choice. It is very intuitive but there are some board owners, who did a "FAQ" type of things. If you use the search, maybe you will find some board owners who would be willing to share their FAQs.

 

[Mr Lucky]

I think the main thing is to not be too attached to getting it exactly the same. Getting something similar(ish) but better is a good way forward IMO.

I wouldn't even worry about the cheatsheet making a comparison - people adapt remarkably quickly apart from a few curmudgeons who just want to complain. But it's worth having a basic guide I did this here:

<span style="font-weight:bold;font-size:22px">FAQs:</span><br /> 1 Forums, signatures, profiles

cafesaxophone.com

2 New Posts and Notifications

cafesaxophone.com

 

[Mr Lucky]

The other thing that worked well for us (a similar sized forum) was do a test import into a test domain and invite several key members as "beta testers". They quickly get to know and appreciate the move forward. Give it a couple of weeks, and you will get to know the main issues you need to address plus you will have them on your side to help explain to the curmudgeons.

 

[Hilary]

Thanks, @sbj, for the link and for breaking down the process for me. And thanks, @Mr Lucky, for the guides! They've also introduced me to a couple of features I didn't know about, like post drafts. I fully expect to have lots of happy members (and the occasional curmudgeon, of course - life would be incomplete without them, after all).

 

[Mr Lucky]

The other thing I think is that Xenforo is so much easier to style than bulletin, I would actually avoid paying loads of money to a style developer and learn to do it yourself. That's exactly what I did and going forward is so much better than always relying on someone else to keep uppated. I'd be happy to get you started and give few pointers in the direction.

 

[Hilary]

I have a bad habit of DIY-ing everything when I really should be outsourcing - but I'll look before I leap here, thank you.

 

[Paul B]

Have a look at the online demo.

It's still at version 2.0, whereas this site is running 2.1, but it should give you a good idea of how things work in the back end.

Create a XenForo demo

xenforo.com