Can You Add a Large Number of Members From Day 1 Via email addresses?

[Bob Howes]

I'm involved with the support forums for a large software company. At present they handle their support via a rather strange third party piece of forum software which is very user unfriendly (sorry to be vague but I don't think it appropriate to mention names.

In any case, I'm presently involved in a discussion with some of the company employees and other moderators for the site, trying to convince them that vBulletin would be a far better option. However, one of the objections raised is that every current user would have to be required to register in the new forum software. At present, accessing their software requires you to set up and account with email address and password...and doing so also give you a log in for the forums.

So...my question is: could an existing data base of email addresses and passwords somehow be used to create a membership list for a vB forum?

I should stress that, although I'm involved in the discussion, I in no way speak for the company nor do I have the authority to initiate the change. However, if such a thing IS possible, I would like to toss that into the debate.

I'll get to importing the old database of discussions (currently in a very non standard format) later!

Bob

[BirdOPrey5]

Hello,

There is software called Impex which is currently open source, which would allow you to import say a spreadsheet of usernames, email addresses, and passwords into vBulletin 4.x. You could then stay on VB 4.x or upgrade to VB 5.x if you wanted.

Please note that unless your current passwords are stored in plain text (which would be bad practice) you likely cannot decrypt the passwords saved on your existing site so the users will need to setup a new password but they will at least be registered and you can email them.

For more info on Impex see here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum...re-to-download