Moving from Xenforo to vBulletin

Discussion in 'vBulletin Discussions' started by Dan Hutter, Aug 5, 2012.

  1. Dan Hutter

    Dan Hutter aka Big Dan

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    Hi Folks,

    I wanted to share with you my experiences converting from Xenforo to vBulletin using this IMPEX script. My first few test imports failed due to an error in the script. Ragtek posted a fix (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showpost.php?p=2351944&postcount=55) and everything just worked. Three test imports later I was confident that it was going to go smoothly. At the time of import we had roughly 490k posts and 3,500 members.

    The import itself was pretty uneventful. It just worked. The only issue with the import is all forums were set to sort ascending by thread title and to only show thread from the last 30 days. The default is descending by last post date and show all posts. I got scared for a minute thinking where the heck did all my threads go! Manually setting all forums back to vB defaults was time consuming but fixed everything.

    Due to the way vBulletin stores passwords all member passwords had to be reset. Urgh! That's worst thing about the import. Once everything was imported, initial settings set, and the boards reopened I sent an email to all members with the password reset link. For moderators, I reset their passwords and emailed them individually. To date that has been the biggest issue with members that cannot figure out how to reset their passwords or cannot read the CATCHPA, etc. I've spent the last 2 days manually emailing those with trouble. This will calm down eventually.

    Other than that there is really nothing to report. I do notice with some polls the counts are off, that's the only thing off. There is of course the running all over like a chicken with its head cut off modifying settings and stuff to get things back to what members expect but that'd be with any software change.
     
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  2. Brandon

    Brandon Regular Member

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    That sucks about that Captcha.
    That "view threads 30 days old" only option has to be default with impex, I'm always running into that.

    Please report back on traffic stats :)
     
  3. Iconic

    Iconic The Original

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    I use the Q&A system and it works pretty well instead of the CAPTCHA. I don't know if it would make it any easier for you.

    It looks good, and I see a lot of your members like it.
     
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  4. Brandon

    Brandon Regular Member

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    PS.. I see you're able to tag this post @Dan Hutter ?

    PPS.. I could read the captcha just fine
     
  5. cpvr

    cpvr Regular Member

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    Glad the move back when okay @Dan Hutter, be sure to let us know how your activity/traffic numbers are for the whole month. Are you using 301 redirects to move all the XF links back to vBulletin or?;)
     
  6. Dan Hutter

    Dan Hutter aka Big Dan

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    Yup. I was able to tag. Dunno know if it has anything to do with me tagging when I first made the thread. The hot dog thread I tried tagging after I'd already submitted.

    Thanks I switched the CATCHPA back to GD instead of using reCatcpha for now.
    Didn't even try because I wasn't sure the thread IDs would be the same. Once the conversion was done, I generated a sitemap and submitted it to Google right away hopefully Googlebot will get the hint. :)
     
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  7. snoopy5

    snoopy5 Regular Member

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    Hi Dan,

    would you be interested in selling yor XF licence?
     
  8. Dan Hutter

    Dan Hutter aka Big Dan

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    I have two and am interested in selling one. One had extended search and one does not. Both expire in the first quarter of next year.
     
  9. DaUnknownAdm!n

    DaUnknownAdm!n Regular Member

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    What made you decide to make the switch to vB?
     
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  10. Dan Hutter

    Dan Hutter aka Big Dan

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    My members really. A few didn't like it from the beginning. We wouldn't of even made the switch if they voiced their opinions when I had a test board setup for them to kick the tires on. The biggest recurring issue with the editor being flaky. I didn't believe them until running into the issues myself.

    There is also the lack of updates. In 6 months I upgraded XF 1 time. That's glacially slow. The lack of word on updates from XF themselves plus a big part in this at least vB gives me an idea of what's coming. XF is dead silent.

    Lastly XF, not having an arcade played a small part. I didn't realize how much some my members enjoyed playing in there and maintaining a seperate vB install for just the arcade was ugly.
    ---
    @cpvr; registrations are up, way up. I'm getting at least 5-6 new user emails per day. On XF it was maybe 3 per week though it could be the mod I was using to email me about new members. Most are freemail addresses though but Stop Forum Spam didn't flag them.

    In just a few days live we'd had 600+ hits from Google. I guess the Big G took my sitemap hint. :)
    search-awstat.PNG
     
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  11. DaUnknownAdm!n

    DaUnknownAdm!n Regular Member

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    ^thanks for sharing your thoughts.

    I remember thinking about making the switch to XF just because things were so chaotic at vB, but quickly realized that I wouldn't be able to replace some of the most used Mods that my community had grown so attached to. So instead I would just visit those sites that made the switch and compare the before and after. Some made the switch and came out looking great (like wtf.com), while others made it look like they downgraded the site.

    It sounds like you might have saved your forum by switching back to vB. Looks like Google agrees :)
     
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  12. Brandon

    Brandon Regular Member

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    How’s the transition been now that a few more weeks have passed @Dan Hutter, any big search engine hits or anything that you would of done differently?
     
  13. Dan Hutter

    Dan Hutter aka Big Dan

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    I definitely would've tried to do the redirects. I keep getting a list of soft 404 errors from Google due to the old XF urls but it appears to be working itself out slowly. We are taking a hit though the site is a little slower with much less SE referals. For the past few weeks we've had maybe 3 or 4 legit registrations yet tons of spammers.

    We went from having 90+ members logging in daily to ~75. Daily postings have decreased by 30 or posts. I'm not really sure what's causing this, The platform switch or the general tenor of the community lately.
     
  14. dojo

    dojo Regular Member

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    Sorry to hear you're leaving XF, but, if your members were used to VB and the features, it's indeed a steep change for them to be migrated to a platform which, while really good for someone like me, does lack some features other more mature platforms either have by default or via plugins. Best of luck on VB. It's a solid platform in the end.
     
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  15. Carlos

    Carlos Regular Member

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    I don't think it's the vB familiarity that turned them off, I think the colors and the theme did not match what the community had before. For example, people on EverythingHalo liked xenforo, but isn't familiar with it, either... so one of the members was like "will it look anything like the old EH?" I responded, yes. That's the idea.
     
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  16. Dan Hutter

    Dan Hutter aka Big Dan

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    That's a good point. When we went back to vB I reinstated the theme we previously had. It's blue like the stock XF theme we ran but it does look much different.
     
  17. Carlos

    Carlos Regular Member

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    *Sigh* You didn't need to go back to vB - All you had to do was find a matching theme to the one that you previously had.

    EH had a dark theme which can be seen here. Threads can't be seen since it's being redirected to my xF instance, but I've posted a thread at xenForo showing the postbit screenshots. The ideal xenForo theme is this beaut.

    Now you can expect:

    A) Shoddy updates that will ultimately result in errors on your vB site.
    B) That high risk of being well, hacked... It IS vBulletin.
     
  18. cpvr

    cpvr Regular Member

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    @Dan Hutter What's the status on your indexed pages and traffic from serps? Has all your traffic returned, and users that left because of the change came back? Just curious on how your forum is currently doing now that you're no longer running XF. It's been a while since you updated us.
     
  19. Dan Hutter

    Dan Hutter aka Big Dan

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    It's been okay. Search traffic still isn't good I'm going to have to dive into SEO once I get a little less busy offline.

    Most of my core members are there and I see the some of the lurkers logging in but not as many as before. Thought I really cannot complain it's a slow season anyhow.
     
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  20. Carlos

    Carlos Regular Member

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    I transferred EverythingHalo to xenForo, and was able to get the skin looking somewhat familiar to the old skin...
    newEH.png
     
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