Your Advice: Moving from vBulletin 3 to XenForo

[Phillip]

I’m a longtime vBulletin user for the past 10 years and am planning on making the switch to XenForo. I’ve been following XenForo closely since last July.

We want to do three things: upgrade from vBulletin 3.6.12 to XenForo, move our forum from “forum.mydomain.com” to mydomain.com/forum (because I believe XenForo will eventually have blogs, cms and more), and move to a new host. The following is my plan for migration. I wanted to run it by all of you who have already experienced this to be sure this is the right way to go. Your suggestions are encouraged.

1. Run a test upgrade at “mydomain.com/beta” to import the vBulletin database and play around with the software on our server.

2. After a period of time for testing. I’ll backup up the vBulletin database. Then do an upgrade to vBulletin 3.7 (so that the XenForo redirects will work.) Then backup the database again after the 3.7 upgrade. (Will mods need to be uninstalled before the move to XenForo?)

3. Then I’ll upgrade to XenForo on the live site at “mydomain.com/forum”. I’ll also install the redirect scripts at “forum.mydomain.com” to point to the new location.

4. We’ll then move to our new host moving only the XenForo database and files over.

Please let me know any potential issues or pitfalls that you can foresee. If you believe I should tackle this differently, please let me know too.

 

[Paul B]

Hmmm, that's a new one.
I haven't actually heard of this issue before.

This might sound like a cop-out but try uploading the files from the upgrade package, overwriting what's already on the server - it's possible something went wrong during the original FTP process.

As both installations are on the same server (presumably?), it can only really be something local to this installation.

 

[Phillip]

Yes, both are on the same server, same domain, different directories.

I uploaded the upgrade package and at the upgrade screen, install wouldn't accept my e-mail address or password (they still work on the main board itself though). I guess I'll delete everything including databases and try install number three. I'll probably give the databases a new name just to see if that makes a difference for some reason.

 

[Paul B]

If you drop the tables and remove the install_lock and config.php files, that will be enough to start a new installation.

You could also try with a completely new database but if it's empty anyway, I can't think why that would be the reason for this particular problem.

 

[Phillip]

The problem persists even with a new installation from scratch with new databases, etc. I'm sure there's a logical reason for it, but it doesn't make sense right now.

 

[Paul B]

Could it be a cookie issue as your're moving between installations?

Have you tried logging in to the second site using a completely different browser?

Is there anything configured in .htaccess which might account for it?

 

[Phillip]

It looks like it was a cookie issue. I am using different login credentials for both boards. Now I'm able to successfully be loged in to both boards or control panels at the same time. So far so good.

Moving on to customizing....

 

[Phillip]

I have a few more questions not easily found via search.

1. Can uploading attachments be easily turned off sitewide or will this have to be disabled per usergroup? (We still want people to be able to insert an image via a URL though.)

2. I would like to restrict the font used in posts to only one defined font and one default font size. The same would apply to signatures and any other areas of the forum. What are the steps to getting this done?

3. I’d like to call server includes with HTML code in various places like the footer. What’s the proper code for inserting includes in the templates?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[Dean]

I have a few more questions not easily found via search.

1. Can uploading attachments be easily turned off sitewide or will this have to be disabled per usergroup? (We still want people to be able to insert an image via a URL though.)

Set max attachment size to 1kb.. that should do it.

 

[Paul B]

1. If you have your user groups set up correctly, i.e. everyone is in the Registered user group as their primary, then you only need to disable attachments for that group (Upload attachments to posts) and every user will be affected.
http://xenforo.com/help/user-groups/

2. This is not something that's easily done. Even removing the font drop down from the editor wouldn't stop people from pasting in text in a different font.

3. I'm not clear on your last point, can you clarify? These two forums may be of some use though:
http://xenforo.com/community/forums/official-development-tutorials-and-resources.41/
http://xenforo.com/community/forums/development-tutorials-and-resources.33/

 

[Phillip]

2. This is not something that's easily done. Even removing the font drop down from the editor wouldn't stop people from pasting in text in a different font.

3. I'm not clear on your last point, can you clarify? These two forums may be of some use though:
http://xenforo.com/community/forums/official-development-tutorials-and-resources.41/
http://xenforo.com/community/forums/development-tutorials-and-resources.33/

Concerning #2... Yes this will probably be a multi-step process. Hopefully there is a way to only show one font and one font size in the editor. If the BB codes designating other fonts were disabed, would this in theory work? We made this change with our vBulletin forum without modifying any code so I'm hopeful to find a work around.

Concerning #3... I'm referring to calling a PHP include (similar to server side include) to embed HTML code easily into multiple pages or areas of the forum. So that for example part of the forum footer is the same code used as the main footer for the rest of the site. When the include is updated, it will be reflected in both the forum and the site with one change. If includes aren't possible, then a borderless iframe might do the same job even if it wasn't the ideal setup.

 

[Paul B]

For 2: I suspect you will need to delve into the code. This is a built in function of the editor.

For 3: Template includes are done using: <xen:include template="name_of_template" />

See here for more: http://xenforo.com/community/threads/frequently-asked-questions.5183/#post-181112

 

[Phillip]

Here are a couple modifications we'd like to make to the style. If you look at the attached image you'll see a number 1 and a number 2.

The first change is that we'd like to slightly decrease the width of the search box to 225px. We modified the right sidebar to 225px and we'd like the search box to match.

The second is that we'd like to decrease the inner margin width of the main page so that it aligns with the beginning of the light blue navbar at the top. Since we're running at a smaller resolution, we'd like to maximize all of the available real estate on-screen. I'm sure this can be done under style properties I just haven't found the right area yet.

 

[Paul B]

The search box can be done using EXTRA.css.

Add something like this to that template:

#QuickSearch {
width: 225px;
}

I haven't tested that so you may need to play around with the CSS a bit.

The main page margin is adjusted using Style Properties -> General -> Content: Padding

 

[Phillip]

The search box can be done using EXTRA.css.

The main page margin is adjusted using Style Properties -> General -> Content: Padding

Both of these worked like a charm. Thank you. You've been awesome.

One more... if you look at the "XenForo_width" image I posted above, in the peach box you'll see that the "by:" is wrapping to the next line. What would be the easiest way to change this so that the bar and text is all on one line?

 

[Paul B]

Your options are limited there.

You can reduce the padding for the title bar but ideally you need a bit more width to fit that in properly.

Your other option would be to change phrase to just "sort".

BTW, that looks like an old release as "sort by" has since been dropped.
Are you up to date?

 

[Phillip]

You can reduce the padding for the title bar but ideally you need a bit more width to fit that in properly.

Your other option would be to change phrase to just "sort".

BTW, that looks like an old release as "sort by" has since been dropped.
Are you up to date?

Yes, I'm running 1.0.0. It was just downloaded over the weekend.

 

[Paul B]

Is this a new installation from 1.0.0 or an upgrade from a previous version?

If it's an upgrade do you have any outdated templates?

 

[Phillip]

This is a new installation and the control panel says there are no outdated templates.

 

[Paul B]

Have you exposed that yourself?

That's definitely not a default feature of the 1.0.0 release.
It is hidden using CSS.

.discussionList .sectionHeaders dt span {
    display: none !important;
}

If you want to increase the padding though, this is the CSS.
Again you can add it to EXTRA.css and adjust the padding to suit.

.discussionList .sectionHeaders a span {
    padding: 5px 10px;
}

 

[Phillip]

Have you exposed that yourself?

That's definitely not a default feature of the 1.0.0 release.
It is hidden using CSS.

I'm not exactly clear what you are asking but the only thing that's in extras.css is the search modification you gave me above. I also tried changing our style to XenForo default and the "sort by" remains. The "sort by" tab is also not clickable (in IE8) whereas the other links are. Again we're running a new install of 1.0.0 just downloaded on Saturday. Please let us know how to fix this.