Your forum migration experience?

[Floris]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
From vBulletin 3.8.4 to vBulletin 3.8.4

How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
560MB uncompressed .SQL file, including attachments.

How many registered members?
15,000

How many threads?
50,000

How many posts?
145,000

How many attachments? (total and file size)
260MB in the database, not sure how many.

And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
41 minutes, with 'testing'.

[tylercruz]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?

vBulletin v3.7.1 to vBulletin v3.8.4

How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)

Source: 42megs compressed
Destination: 24megs compressed

How many registered members?

Source: 6,500 Destination: 1,600

How many threads?

Source: 3,000 Destination: 3,100

How many posts?

Source: 70,000 Destination: 55,000

How many attachments? (total and file size)

Unknown

And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?

It took me about a total of 20-24 concentrated hours to complete the entire merge, but that's including it breaking the first time I tried which took me 3-4 hours to fix, and also includes many hours moving threads, reorganizing the forums, etc.

On my second try, the whole merging process with ImpEx only took around 25-30 minutes.

It's really not too bad, but just be sure you make backups like everyone recommends. I did, and it saved me as I broke things my first time around. I didn't do the "test merge" because I felt that would take far too long and was overkill, especially if you have backups. I would just recommend closing down both your forums and making backups right after you do that so you can go right back to the way they were before you started.

In the end, everything merged fine with no problems, except people's friends lists didn't get transferred over but that's no biggie.

Good luck!

[designeru]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
phpBB 3.0.5

How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
DB uncompressed: PHPBB => 1.1 GB; VBULLETIN => 1.4 GB

How many registered members?
+165,000

How many threads?
+7,000

How many posts?
+800,000

How many attachments? (total and file size)
+100,000 => +60 GB

And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
About 6 hours... the posts took more than 4. This is just the IMPEX tasks... the actual transfer time took me more than 2 days.

[Britmovies]

Just to say it works ok for 3.8 to vb4 but doesnt do attachments

http://www.britmovie.net/britforum/forum.php

[Floris]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
vBulletin 3.8.4 PL1

How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
DB uncompressed = +150MB

How many registered members?
+180

How many threads?
+1,800

How many posts?
+27,000 million

How many attachments? (total and file size)
None

And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
about 30 minutes to {

get the .sql, import into new db,
upload 3.8.4pl1 and run upgrade.php
download impex 1.93 and upload to target site
backup target site
setup impexconfig.php
run impex
run update counters
}

it all went smooth and fast,

1 problem: polls show up on the wrong thread.

[Alisa Lindsay]

IPB 1.3 to vB 4.0.5

Sad to say, our import experience was both hideous and a complete and total failure. I am very disappointed in all regards, especially since the board (and new VB customer) will have to remain on InvisionFree.

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to? Tried to convert IPB 1.3 to vB 4.0.5, when that failed dismally, tried to convert IPB 1.3 to PHPBB 3.0.5 and then to vB.

How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile): Not that large.

How many registered members? < 200

How many threads? Perhaps 2000

How many posts? < 13,000

How many attachments? (total and file size): N/A

And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert? We worked on the import for two weeks.

Our support ticket rendered us little to no aid as the questions asked were not answered and the solutions did not work.

As a long standing vB customer who has spent a considerable amount of money with the company, I am truly disappointed. And while I realize that there are issues, obviously, with IPB's provided database, the lack of interest in aiding us to add another paying customer to VB's client list makes me leery in recommending the product in the future...especially to those that have standing forums they would like to move easily to vBulletin.

Regards,

Alisa

[Hall of Famer]

I technically started my forum from scratch, but it had several merges with other forums to reach its current popularity. We've had one merge with Vbulletin 3.8 forum, one for a Mybb forum and another failed merge that I do not wish to mention here. Its always easy and convenient to merge with VB forums, the only problem I had was with Mybb forum's merge since it disabled users visitor/private messages options by default. I received like tons of requests from these users asking me to edit their visitor/private messages options, lmao.

[Loco.M]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?phpbb, smf, ipb, vb
How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile) i don't remember off hand, there have been several imports. one was 200,000 post, so a decent size DB
How many registered members? i think the largest was 4K
How many threads?20K ish
How many posts? 225,000 was the largest
How many attachments? (total and file size) idk again, several
And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert? an afternoon, usually within 2 hours from start to finish


I'm imported much larger sites for clients of upwards of a million post as well..

[ercule]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
PHPnuke with phpBB2

How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
435MB uncompressed

How many registered members?
2,361

How many threads?
5,788

How many posts?
70,195

How many attachments? (total and file size)
0

How many articles (CMS)?
1482

And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
Alltogether it took one day and a half though impex job was very quick

I imported from phpnuke+phpbb so I had different steps to do as phpnuke is not supported by impex.
1 - transform my forum into a real phpbb forum (v 2.0.22)
2 - migrate from phpbb to vbulletin (first image) with impex
3 - do differents steps after import (update counters, permissions, etc. )
5 - migrate my phpnuke articles to CMS wordpress (v 2.9.2). I had a script for that.
6 - migrate from wordpress to vbulletin with impex
7 - after import steps
8 - create 301 redirections for search engines. I altered sources tables and script for that.
9 - check that everything was OK