ZeroPaid.com - vBulletin migration

[zeropaid]

I recently migrated my large 10+ yr old vBulletin installation over to xenForo. I wanted to share with the community my experience and reasons why I moved away from the platform. I also wanted to rule out any doubt about migrating from my the sluggish (vBulletin) platform.

My Forum: http://www.zeropaid.com/forum/

Why I left vBulletin?

1. Speed - I've never really been happy with the speed. The bigger my site got, vBulletin slowed down.
2. Spam - This was one of the biggest reason I left. Spammer target vBulletin.
3. Bloated - I'm not looking for a blogging software and vBulletin really wants to be one.
4. Low user engagement - vBulletin lacks excitement.

Migration

• Only issue was modifying the signatures column length to 'long text'. I as up and running in 3 hours without a major problem.

Initial Setup

• Once I got all the data in and started poking around, I noticed the indexes were not created. Once I created the index, search started displaying results and I was able to browse messages from a particular user.
• 301'ing URLs - Once I figured out what I had to do, it was pretty easy to code. I'll give you a hint: the xf_import_log table. This table has all you need to write your URL rewrites. Just create an intermediary page.

Addons I Liked

• Route Changer - I really like this addon, since I was already rewriting a bunch of the URLs I decided
• Separate Sticky and Normal Threads
• Thread Watchers
• [bd] Tag Me
• WDB Popular Content

Style
I haven't had a lot of time to dive into templates, but my initial assessment is it can handle what I need. I have modified several templates without a problem.

In closing, I would recommend this software to anyone considering migrating from vBulletin.