Your forum migration experience?

[ulitka]

1. I have merged two FudForums in one vBulletin!
2. The database file was around 200MB (each)
3. 12.000 threads
4. 160.000 posts
5. All of attachments are gone
6. The whole process took like a day.

And of course, special thanks to Jerry.

[almty1]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
e107 0.7.8

How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
2mb

How many registered members?
14
How many threads?
169
How many posts?
566
How many attachments? (total and file size)
not sure. the attachments didnt make the conversion.

And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
After I got the updated impex files uploaded it only took a few minutes to import the data

[tk061022cnx]

Invision Power Board IPB v.1.1.2 Import

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
Invision Power Board IPB v.1.1.2

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

How many registered members?
700+

How many threads?
1,300+

How many posts?
41,000+

How many attachments? (total and file size)
none, attachments were disallowed

And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
About 4 hours. 2 hours for the import process. Record batches of 2000 stalled, so I had to start over with batches of 500 records. 2 hours for post-import manual configuration.

Altogether a smooth experience.

[DiSpy]

I have 2 imports to do... here's the results of the first one:

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
tforum -> phpBB -> vb 3.6.7PL1

How big is the database in file size?
180MB (gzipped)

How many registered members?
15,186

How many threads?
59,733

How many posts?
895,667

How many attachments?
none (I didn't want to migrate them)

Do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
Impex says: 343.22 min(s)
Plus several hours fixing it all afterwards.

Comments:

This was a fresh install of vB, with the theme modified.

I chose not to import things like attachments, private messages, polls, smilies, banlist, etc. because this import was from a very old backup of the forum that I started over from scratch in '04. I felt that these things weren't relavent anymore in this import, but WILL be importing them from the current board (my second import). Also, there was a user comments system on the old board that I didn't have the option of importing.

It would be nice to have some feedback on WHY things failed... all I got was this:

Import user: 15,179 Successful, 8 Failed
Import forum: 27 Successful, 1 Failed
Import thread: 59,728 Successful, 5 Failed
Import post: 895,139 Successful, 8,283 Failed
Import rank: 1 Successful, 9 Failed

If I knew why so many were failing, maybe I could go back and fix those... an error log would be nice to have (hint, hint).

Overall:

I'm satisfied on this import, as it's an import of a REALLY old database that I just wanted for historical purposes.

HOWEVER, I have another import that needs to be done of the current board (phpBB). This one is going to be even bigger, and I can't afford to loose so many posts, etc when I run it.

Again, some kind of error logging would be nice so that I could understand WHY things were failing (and have a chance of fixing them). If this happens again with the second import, I will be mighty dissapointed.

----

One last question...
In the second import that I want to do, I have several custom fields inserted to work with hacks that I installed (points system, user comments system, extra profile fields, sub-forums hack). How would I go about importing those?? Will impex detect things like the sub-forums and the extra profile fields? Also, what about the missing user comments from the old import and this new one that I want to do? Since the points system is not built-into vB, I assume i'll have to work on installing one and then figuring out how to copy them over... but the other stuff *is* built in, so it shouldn't be so hard, no?

(Maybe I should open a seperate topic about this.)

[Aden]

Well. Upgrading soon, but very impressed and will post my results.

There was no support for phpbb3 rc2 or rc3 yesterday and when i requested it in the support section instantly i was attended to and given much help.

Very impressed. Thanks very much..

[PJKCards]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to? Invisionfree, and they send you a conversion in IPB 1.3 format.
How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
9MB
How many registered members?
460
How many threads?
1200
How many posts?
10700
How many attachments? (total and file size)
0
And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
The actual conversion wasn't long (maybe 1 hour). Overall, it put probably 14 hours into it reading and asking questions. I will tell you, this was a great learning experience. If you have never touched phpMyAdmin, or SSH Access, or even created a MySQL database, you can still do it. Do a lot of research, and ask questions if you can find your answer. The vB team has been great support to my installation, and now I see how easy it really was. Great work Jerry and the vB staff!

[yogesh]

Just converted Forum from phpbb 2.0.22 to vb 3.6.8

Database size (Compressed): 4mb

Threads: 1,111

Posts: 14,253

Members: 361

The database migration took roughly 4-5 minutes, however getting every thing to work properly and configuring 301 redirect etc. took roughly 4 hours.

Overall I am quite impressed with the migration process, thanks every one, especially Jerry for answering my queries

[leeman]

I migrated from IBP to 3.0.x like when it just got out.

Database uncompressed 800Mb before ...
Sorry didn't check after.
~2.000 members
~30.000 threads
~400.000 posts.

Store files/images in filesystem.

As I remeber it went like a breeze ... 20 mins total.

Only had to delete like 15 pictures outa 25.000

[ledzep1]

mine went fine once I got help from support, I'm happy.

[SydneyBrothers]

Very bad.

While all the messages and members were transferred over, the old messages now don't have any authors attributed to them.

[Robert Waanders]

Hey everybody,

My first convertion from phpBB2 2.0.22 tot vBulletin 3.6.8 went fantastic!

Using the impex module I've converted:

- 48,391 threads
- 757,448 posts
- 11,266 members

Everything was going ok, a phew time i got time-out sessions during the posts-convertion but after a F5 reload the script continued.

This was a test-conversion to create a new forum for www.modelbouwforum.nl , currently a phpBB2 board, but on www.modelbouwforum.nl/forums/ I am building the new forum.

Robert

[D. Thomas]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to? UBB Classic 6.7
How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
How many registered members? 35,000
How many threads? 72,000
How many posts? 650,000
How many attachments? (total and file size)
And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert? Took 3 hours to import members and 6 hours just to import the threads. Server has now been optimized but didn't seem to make any difference in insanely slow speed. It would take 54 hours to import the posts if post import went at the same speed as thread import.

Host has now increased server memory limits so starting fresh for the 3rd time and now the Impex just refuses to import any users at all so I'm dead in the water once again. Needless to say, my import experience has been horrible.

[argus]

phpBB3 RC7 port to vBulletin 3.6.8

phpBB3 RC7
~5MB (before) / ~10MB (after) database
~1000 users
~300 threads
~3000 posts
~200 attachments
~8 hours for full setup and tweaking to my anal-retentive satisfaction

Overall it went very well, and I am extremely satisfied with ImpEx and the support.

Simply put--Jerry is the man.

It did take a few hours for me to get everything tweaked just right. Had to run some custom queries to get the profile options set like I wanted for the imported users. Signatures didn't get imported but the rest of the profile did, which made me very happy.

One very strange quirk that took me a while to correct involved the Views count for each thread. The import appeared to set Views count to display a number on the forum page that equaled replies + 1. So, if a thread had 10 replies, the Views showed as 11 (get this though ... the views field in the thread table showed 0 ... strange!). So, if a user clicked on the thread, it wouldn't increment the Views, until you exceeded 11 views in this example. I almost thought the views thingy was broke, but ...
I decide a fix would be to set the views field in the threads table as follows:

UPDATE `thread` SET `views` = `replycount` +1

This ensured that each subsequent view by a user would actually increment the counter. And it worked. Hope that makes sense.

Anyway, switching to vBulletin is the best thing I've done to my board in the almost 3 years I've been running it. Would do it again in a heartbeat! Thanks again to Jerry and the other team members here!

[EDIT Jerry] : I've updated it now to get the views correctly

[Afterglow86]

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to?
SMF 1.1.4

How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile)
15mb uncompressed.

How many registered members?
667

How many threads?
150~

How many posts?
4500+

How many attachments? (total and file size)
Attachments were disabled.

And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert?
It didn't take too long to convert the whole database over, possibly around 45 minutes to an hour. I would have to say that I've never seen a convert process from one software to another go so smoothly.

[se_p800]

Not actualy transferred yet, but doing as we speak!

From what forum software did you convert to vBulletin to? - phpbb3
How big is the database in file size? (compressed/uncompressed, database or flatfile) ~ 300mb umcompressed
How many registered members? - 1963
How many threads? - 430
How many posts? - 3006
How many attachments? (total and file size) - not sure, not that many
And do you remember how long it took you to do the actual convert? - not done it yet but will edit once I have