Xenforo VS Vbulletin 6
- Thread starter Zweeper
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For my forum (Topics: 1,866,647 Posts: 25,147,360 Members: 357,024) vB 3.8 WAS flawless for just over a decade.
I had to upscale to a more powerful dedicated server when I 'upgraded' to vB 6 and it's still not entirely right.
I've heard for some time now that Xenforo was noticeably lighter on resources which is one of the main reasons I'm intrigued by it.
@Kestryll
The last time i spoke with a xenforo staff member they said that migrating costs $120 if you wanted someone from the xf staff to do it.
That was from slavik who is a mod here who does this type of work.
The staff here aren't scary.
You have the cloud version which has everything built in and the annual cost is from $648
The last time i spoke with a xenforo staff member they said that migrating costs $120 if you wanted someone from the xf staff to do it.
That was from slavik who is a mod here who does this type of work.
The staff here aren't scary.
You have the cloud version which has everything built in and the annual cost is from $648
The flawed issue with vB 3.8.11 was non-optimized performance. I was formally a 20+ years vBulletin user and forum, you won't convince me otherwise.
The fact that you're saying you have to keep up-scaling server resources for vBulletin and you said it yourself, Xenforo is noticeably lighter, confirms what I'm saying. vBulletin is flawed.
Xenforo was the right move for us, as it fully modernized the board in performance for both PC and mobile use.
That is good to know. No disrespect to anyone but there is a certain comfort in having the people who wrote the code handling things. If something goes sideways they know the nuts and bolts of the program.@Kestryll
The last time i spoke with a xenforo staff member they said that migrating costs $120 if you wanted someone from the xf staff to do it.
That was from slavik who is a mod here who does this type of work.
The staff here aren't scary.
You have the cloud version which has everything built in and the annual cost is from $648
For me the issue is the added expenditure on top of the license. With that I'm up to or over $500 which while not exactly selling the family ranch is still a fair chunk of change in this economy.
We're going to have to agree/disagree there, based on my experience, Xenforo is still lighter than 3.8 itself.
But regardless, the cost to convert the board and the savings from being able to downgrade the resources back may be worth it.
Also with a board as large as yours, you can also try running a donation upgrade campaign, sell some membership upgrades, etc.
That'd likely help cover $500~ easily.
That'd likely help cover $500~ easily.
lesslethaltalk.com
New member
How can I do that. I want to import my smf 2.1.7 version to xenforo?
It mentions here that SMF 2.0 is supported, might work with 2.1.7:
Importing data from other software | XenForo
XenForo has the ability to import information from other forums, including users, forums, threads, posts and private messages, along with various other data.
docs.xenforo.com
You can try contacting staff to confirm: https://xenforo.com/contact/
If it's confirmed to be supported, it's quite easy assuming you have full access to the SMF forum database.
I'd suggest setting up a test site to do a trial run, where you can work on skins, and any customizations needed. Then you do a live convert when you're ready.
My 1st forum was founded in 2001. Everyone used VB back then. Sadly, they went south quickly, fortunately I discovered Xenforo back in 2015 and switched. Great staff, and there are great add-ons as well. The forum grew quickly after I switched to XF and we dominate the space now.
I am an OG server admin, I don't use cloud hosting, have dedicated server in a data center. The response times for are excellent for XF.
I am an OG server admin, I don't use cloud hosting, have dedicated server in a data center. The response times for are excellent for XF.
lesslethaltalk.com
New member
You didn't tell me. All you told me is to ask chatgpt and that is nonsense.
I told you, ask chatgpt. I'm not telling you how to do it, it will tell you how to do it.
We had to modify our vB 3.7 installation so much to make it friendly to high traffic that we never upgraded to 3.8. Numerous changes, and I didn't have the time/energy to devote to remembering and repeating all of the modifications I'd made. Around 2011 we decided to move to XF instead. And...
...moving from 3.7 with our customizations to XF 1, our server load dropped in half. And even with XF 1 not being as high-traffic-friendly as it is now with XF 2.3, it still ran a lot more efficiently.
At one point, vB 3.7 was so resource intensive that we had to move to two servers for a while--we needed a second dedicated server just to run the database. That got too expensive so after making more modifications to 3.7, we were able to scale back to a single but newer/more powerful server.
I did a test import to vB 4.0 back in the day but didn't feel it was worth the effort. Plus, resource usage was said to increase.
What kind of scares me is that the vBulletin staff are actually active and answering questions on their customer forum. I don't really see that here 
Stuck wondering what to start with but each platform seems to have some sort of questionable future for self-hosted options. Specifying specifically because of Invision.
Stuck wondering what to start with but each platform seems to have some sort of questionable future for self-hosted options. Specifying specifically because of Invision.
I don't worry about it myself. I figure that the less time they spend here, the more time they can spend working on future releases and swatting bugs. I've been with them since the original version 1.0 was in beta, so, from about 2010; a lot of us who have been here for a long time have a lot of collective knowledge to help someone out. Some of the add-on and theme developers (@Xon, @Russ, @Bob, and dozens of others) have been here a long time also.
XF also has a support ticket system. And the staff does read many of the posts in these forums, even if they can't respond directly. They have a small staff and it's not like they can spare the time to have someone one here parked 24/7 with assistance.
vB is still owned by a larger corporation, and I'm betting they were told to interact more, since they have lost so much market share. And presence of staff still doesn't mean the product is any better than the others.
Xenforo are a small business.What kind of scares me is that the vBulletin staff are actually active and answering questions on their customer forum. I don't really see that here
Also they moderate many threads that seem to have the usual crew of "i want support from XF staff today" compared to the support tickets where they get the support asap.
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