Your forum migration experience?

[Greg-SHT]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
phpBB 2.0.18
How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
Can't really remember. (17megs maybe)
How many registered members?
~220
How many threads?
~2,500
How many posts?
~11,000
How many attachments? (total and file size)
None
And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
15 mins

Nice and easy. No problems

[xeon711]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
phpBB
How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
30 megs raw SQL
How many registered members?
450
How many threads?
1500
How many posts?
12,000
How many attachments? (total and file size)
0
And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
After all the test runs, and modifications to template. The amount of time it took me to make vBulletin live, took less then an hour. I made sure I had many good backups before I went live.

[melbo]

Wow!
Forgot top post here after my move

Had a small board on phpBB2 by Przemo
270ish memebrs with a db size of around 90 MB

Created a test forum where I installed vB into.
Ran IMPEX and imported copy of my SQL db
Flawless.

Ran all update counters and everything seemed to work.
Had the usual troubles with bad paths to attachments and avatars. That Path.php trick really works. I suggest you search on it if you need help. I would have bet money that my path was correct. I would have lost

So I went and closed my old forum down. Did another import from scratch and all went well. Changed the name of my new VB dir to the old forum dir. Had to hunt down a few URLs to be changed manually, (RSS) and had the site back up in under an hour.

I suggest you try the import into a temp DIR first to see how it goes. This is common sense but you know. Do it that way.

So now here I am. vB and feeling fine.

I have a survival and preparedness site and the forum is doing pretty well. A lot of information.
http://www.survivalmonkey.com/forum

[KW Group]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
PHPBB 2.0.21
How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
260 mb uncompressed
How many registered members?
3925
How many threads?
8500
How many posts?
620000
How many attachments? (total and file size)
0
And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
Approx 2 hours (from uploading of files to navigating the fully imported board)

Great tool... thanks

[bmn]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
webwiz 7.97
How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
580mb. access, when converted 250mb mysql dump file
How many registered members?
~10700
How many threads?
~3,800
How many posts?
~380,000
How many attachments? (total and file size)
None
And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
3,5 hours


It was really very easy after 3-4 test import, if Jerry wouldn be, i couldnt, he did a lot of stuff and answering lots of questions for 10 days. Thank you very much guys, this forum is really fantastic, you too.

[BeeWeeNL]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
Cutecast 2.0 beta
How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
about 20 Mb
How many registered members?
~2.100
How many threads?
~4.000
How many posts?
~51.000
How many attachments? (total and file size)
None
And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
3 days (20 min)

If you convert Cutecast to Vbulletin, remember this (it took me some days):

* Copy the whole Cutecast dir from your cgi-bin to a httpdocs dir. If it's in the cgi-bin, the import script can't reach it.
* Make the whole backup dir 777. If not all files are reachable, not all the users, threads and messages will be imported.
* Look in Cutecast how many users, messages, etc. you have. I had to re-import it several times. Play with the defaults!
* Avatars are not imported, defaults for registered users have to be changed, PB's are not imported.

But, most important thing, I've 99% of all my users, threads and messages.

Best regards,
Bas
The Netherlands

[s3xt0y]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to? wBB 2.3.5
How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile) it was 600kb gziped, 5 mb non gziped
How many registered members? 1,124
How many threads? 318
How many posts? 2,230
How many attachments? (total and file size) didnt convert attachments
And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert? >5

[AdmiralSpock]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
phpBB 2.0.21 with Categories Hierarchy (a major modification)
How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
672kb
How many registered members?
29
How many threads?
120
How many posts?
131
How many attachments? (total and file size)
None. PhpBB doesn't support attachments :P
And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
About five minutes to run the modules and rebuild the counters.

It was very simple once I figured out how to use it (and I followed Jerry's instructions of doing it on a test board before doing it on the live).

This is only a few months after the site was created, so it went quicker.

Thank you vBulletin!

[Aneurysm]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
Mambo / Simpleboard 1.1.4 stable

How many registered members?
500+

How many threads?
550

How many posts?
1500

How many attachments? (total and file size)
about 20 / 5mb total

And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
Two or three practice runs over a weekend and then:
20 minutes for impex and all the rebuilding afterwards and another 2-3 hours to clean up users and move the forums around to where I wanted them.

Thanks for making it all so easy!!!!!

[Smoothie]

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

How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
200MB

How many registered members?
5100

How many threads?
15585

How many posts?
269,766

How many attachments? (total and file size)
Can't recall

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

[karlm]

Database in the 20mb region...fairly small eh.
That's the current size, but as I've only had vb for about a month, and I admin only a small community (of some 200), I doubt it's changed much in that time.

Just today, from vb 3.5.4 to 3.6, but when I first bought vb I migrated from phpbb 2.18.

I don't know, it just says in the 'quick stats' that the data usage is 20mb and the index usage is 6mb.

216 members.
1516 threads
6061 posts
God knows about the attachments.
it took some few days as i did many test convertions before doing my final. the final one in all took about 1/2 hour i think.
#

[justbenice]

Forum : InvisionBoard
180K + members
1,3 MIL + post
1,8+ G database ( uncompress)

24 hours and haven't finish . It damn slow when converting

[cfish]

phpBB 2.0.17 to vBulletin 3.6

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
phpBB 2.0.17
How big is the database in file size?
~80MB raw SQL
How many registered members?
~2,800
How many threads?
~8,800
How many posts?
~44,000
How many attachments?
None
And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
The actual database import took just over 17.5 hours (yes, hours!)

Breakdown:
Check and update database: 10 seconds
Import user: 14 seconds
Import forum: 2 seconds
Import thread: 25 seconds
Import post: 1049 minutes
Import poll: 6 seconds
Import private messages: 16 seconds

As you can see from the figures, all imports were pretty quick except for the posts and I have no explanation for this. I used the default value (2000) for the import cycle and I wish I'd set it much lower (maybe 250) because my browser and admin login kept timing out during the import and I had to restart, causing a number of duplicate entries for posts. Fortunately, these were easily cleaned up using help.php

It was a bit of a nightmare but it all worked out in the end.

Things I wish I hadn't done before the import:

I cleaned up my phpBB database before the import by deleting all users who hadn't visited for 12 months. What I didn't realise is that I then effectively lost all the usernames from posts made by these users because phpBB does not store usernames in the post table, just a user id. vBulletin, on the other hand stores the username in teh post table. The result of my cleanup is that I lost all those usernames and posts are now attributed to "Anonymous".

What I should have done was import the whole thing and then cleaned up later in vBulletin.

Things I wish I had done before the import:

I spent about a week preparing for this and did a number of test imports on smaller data sets. All worked well and I developed my import strategy. Unfortunately, there is no substitute for doing the real thing and I now wish I had closed my live phpBB forum in order to do a test on the real data set before the final import. That would have made the whole process much easier for me and created only slightly more inconvenience for my users.

[dvermeul]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to? phpbb 2.0.17
How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile) uncompressed ~125MB
How many registered members? 1200
How many threads? 2.200
How many posts? 22.000
How many attachments? (total and file size) none
And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert? 3.5 minutes

Making al the necessary adjustments took muuuuch longer, of couse...

[henners]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
Well, vB 3.5, but it still counts as an import!
How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
~200Mb database
How many registered members?
~900
How many threads?
~36,000
How many posts?
~450,000
How many attachments? (total and file size)
45.28Mb, 653
And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
Impex says 421 minutes. Everything whizzed along bar the post import, which took a troubling 392 minutes. But after that everything else worked great, so I just went with that import as opposed to coming here, posting for an answer and getting the import to run better. Really impressed with Impex - great work Jerry!