XenCMS, XenGallery etc: How best to prepare?

[Tigratrus]

Understanding that Mike, Kier and Ashley can't really discuss future plans, I wanted to see if perhaps it might be possible to get some vague advice to assist in planning site architecture for those migrating to XF. I'm not asking for any specifics because I know they can't give any.

I'm pretty sure they've at least talked about general ideas of how official add-ons might function, so I'm hoping they might be able to find a way to point those of us migrating to the XF platform in the right general direction to provide the best chance of good positioning once those add-ons roll out.

I totally understand that any response they might decide to make is just advice/suggestions, NOT official guidelines. Just some best guess advice from friends that have a perspective we lack.

Do you think there's enough qualifications and general bet hedging/vagueness in the above? If not, please add whatever more is required...

Basically, it never hurts to ask, and you never know what you can find out UNTIL you ask. Right?

For instance:

Articles:

Would it be better in general to have site articles (CMS content) residing in an external system (WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, Contentteller, Concrete5 etc) where it can be migrated into a future XF platform solution?

Or would keeping all content in XenForo and using something like XenPorta to show threads as "Articles" likely ease the transition down the road?

Galleries:

Might it be better to maintain a legacy gallery structure until an official add-on becomes available?

Or perhaps migrate to an XF based 3rd party gallery system (once they start appearing) in the hopes that it'd be easier having it on the XF platform in some fashion?

Member Blogs:

Might it be better to maintain a legacy blog structure (vBlog) until and official add-on becomes available?

Or maybe look into migrating existing vBlog member blogs to WordPress multi-site blogs (adds 7 tables to the WP DB per member blog created, though they would be largely empty or very small).

Thanks in advance for any insight you can share, and for considering it if you can't.

 

[TNCclubman]

Galleries:

Might it be better to maintain a legacy gallery structure until an official add-on becomes available?

Or perhaps migrate to an XF based 3rd party gallery system (once they start appearing) in the hopes that it'd be easier having it on the XF platform in some fashion?

You read my mind, I came online right now to make an almost identical post.

I know we cant find out dates, but realistically, are we looking at around 2 years to get an official xF gallery? I figure xF 1.0 Gold will not have it, so the earliest is 2.0... thats the earliest, and that wont be until at least 2012 or 2013, depends on how long our license is good for the 1.0...

My question is, I dont want to wait to give my main site xF. But I cant loose the 40,000 photos located in peoples vB3.8 albums...

What are my options?

Should I convert the board now, lose all the photos...(If so, will there be some sort of album only import later on?)

Should I wait 2 years to go to xF...(losing photos is not an option)

Is there a temporary solution? I dont mind converting everyone's albums into a forum where each thread is an album, thats how much I love the current lightbox for attachments on xF... if this is even possible. (If it is, I'll be buying another license )

Im crapping my pants thinking Im a couple of years away from converting.