Just testing a full database import into the test instance now based on current vB data. I plan to do some more severe pruning before we actually get to doing this live over the weekend.
So, initial tests on importing have gone ahead successfully. A little heads-up on some of the impacts you're likely to see:
Social Groups / Social Forums will largely disappear. There's no built-in compatible functionality for them. There's two or three Social Forums that have received a fair bit of input and their content will survive in one form or another but they may rejoin the main board or, if necessary, be changed into some sort of private forum for specific members.
Titles: we've been using these little userbars for titles for a bit but they'll all break on import. There's an alternative approach that may be possible for them but this may take a bit of time to get up and running.
Passwords: just a reminder that ALL passwords will be scrubbed and you'll need to use the "forgot my password" functionality on the new forum to reset it. This will require that your email address is up to date. If it's not, fix that now.
User profile fields: some profile fields won't translate well or duplicate those in Xenforo but don't merge with them. I'll be purging those fields before migration. Gender is one. Biography is another.
Permissions: vBulletin and Xenforo think about permissions a bit differently. We're going to try to keep it simple but if you've lost access to something you think you should be able to see it either has been deleted, merged with another forum, or we've just not fixed that bit yet.
Forums: we anticipate some heavy purging and merging of existing forums to simplify the migration process and also help this place feel a bit more lively by being a bit (lot?) more compact. You can make your requests for stuff to keep here. Be advised that I'll be migrating based on what makes it relatively easy, so this is one area you may have to lump it if you don't like it.
Smilies: expect smilie meanings to change in old posts because Xenforo translates them a bit differently at times. Just be advised.
In-forum links: some (many?) links are going to break between threads. I think it'll happen more in my heavily cross-linked wall-o-text posts. Just know it's going to happen, I guess.
That's all I've got for now. Happy for questions, though if it comes to "making things work" or "answer lots of questions" I'm going to concentrate on the former rather than the later over the next few days while we get this migration out of the way.
Oh, finally:
This instance of THN will be closing down Friday night sometime. You'll see a password request dialog before you can even visit it and you can't have the password because it's there to protect the forum while I decommission and prepare for final migration on Saturday.
An archive will be available at:
http://archive.thehavennet.org.uk
You'll be able to log in and such but functionality is not guaranteed and anything new you do on there will be lost. That URL is temporary and everything in it will be purged once I've verified that we've migrated successfully.
Post migration, we'll be back at this URL just like always.
http://games.thehavennet.org.uk
I reckon you've got around 22 hours of vBulletin left...
