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Migrating to Xenforo

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arn

arn

macrumors god
Original poster
Staff member
Apr 9, 2001
16,363
5,795
Hi all,

This is a bit of an early heads up, but we are going to be migrating our forums from vBulletin to Xenforo software in the near future. There are a lot of moving parts with a migration like this, so I can't say for sure when it will happen, just that we are actively working on it.

Absolute earliest would be sometime in December, but there's a good chance it could get pushed into Jan/Feb or even later depending on what obstacles we hit.

I wanted to mention it early, so people can get used to the idea before we make the switchover. I'm sure it will be somewhat traumatic for many. :) Along with the transition will be the long-in-coming theme redesign.

- All existing posts and users will be imported
- Style/Theme will change (this is being worked on now)

Why?

vBulletin is on its last legs and has no future. The version we are on (v3) is many years old and has been End of Lifed (no more updates). Even migrating to vB 4 or 5 doesn't offer a clear path after that.

Xenforo is in active development, and has a pretty strong community behind it. It's also somewhat similar to vBulletin in behavior/feel. There are some less-traditional forums out there, but we wanted to keep a general feel of it as is.

Some benefits:

- Much better Notification system
- Better Thread/Forum "Watch" system
- Faster / Responsive design
- Stronger password hashing
- Security updates

But there are also a lot of backend/technical benefits for us to move to it.

arn
 
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B

bevo

macrumors regular
Jul 19, 2002
238
12
Looking forward to it and good luck! Appreciate all the hard work that goes into maintaining this website.
 
MacDawg

MacDawg

Moderator emeritus
Mar 20, 2004
19,823
4,503
"Between the Hedges"
Will be interested to see the results
I know it will be a massive undertaking, but there should be some solid benefits

Thanks for all you and the MR team does
 
Aetles

Aetles

macrumors regular
Nov 13, 2002
186
216
Sweden
Interesting. I worked on a transition from vB to Xenforo this summer and the end result was mostly satisfying. Most users appreciated the change and improvements. Most of the critique was about visual changes since we started out with the default theme in Xenforo and tried our best to transform it to something similar to our old vB forum.
 
theSeb

theSeb

macrumors 604
Aug 10, 2010
7,466
1,893
none
I am excited about this. Xenforo is the best forum software I have come across. It makes vbulletin look like it's from another era. The notifications and the tagging features alone make life so much easier.
 
firedept

firedept

macrumors 603
Jul 8, 2011
6,277
1,130
Somewhere!
Looking forward to seeing the new design. Hope it all goes smoothly or as smooth as it can possibly go. Can only imagine how big an adventure this is.
 
Y

yg17

macrumors Pentium
Aug 1, 2004
15,027
3,002
St. Louis, MO
So is the vB product dead? I remember when it was the gold standard of Internet forum software. How the mighty have fallen.
 
Clix Pix

Clix Pix

macrumors Core
Oct 9, 2005
20,702
45,796
8 miles from the Apple Store at Tysons (VA)
YAYYYY!!!!!! Another forum where I spend a fair amount of time made the switch from vB to Xenforo several months ago, and I would say that for all parties the change was well worth it. Easier for admins/mods to manage certain functions and features, easier for members to find their way around. It's different, no question about that, but it really takes surprisingly little time to which to become adjusted. Kudos to you for taking this plunge! :)
 
Aetles

Aetles

macrumors regular
Nov 13, 2002
186
216
Sweden
yg17 said:
So is the vB product dead? I remember when it was the gold standard of Internet forum software. How the mighty have fallen.
Click to expand...

Xenforo was created by the lead developer of vB, he and others from the team left vB and created Xenforo when they did not agree with the new owners of vB on how to do vB 4.0. So in a sense Xenforo is the continuation of the same gold standard as vB once was (but it had to mature first).
 
scottct1

scottct1

macrumors 6502
Jun 7, 2012
311
611
Connecticut USA
Good move,

I move SatelliteGuys from vBulletin 4 to XenForo back in May and am not regretting that I didn't do it sooner.

About the only thing I don't like about it is the permissions system. It takes awhile to figure out. And I don't like the fact I needed to make each moderator an admin just so they could ban people. I feel that should be a usergroup option.

You are correct vBulletin is dead, its too bad they hide their Licensed Customers feedback forum so that people could see what's really going on as on the rest of the site they make it look like its business as usual which is NOT the case at all.
 
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Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,132
15,595
California
scottct1 said:
I move SatelliteGuys from vBulletin 4 to XenForo back in May and am not regretting that I didn't do it sooner.
Click to expand...

Just browsed around your forums a bit and the change from VB (from an end user viewpoint) does not look that much different at all. I'm guessing with the right options and theme it would be a pretty seamless transition for users.

Looking forward to the update.
 
T

three

Cancelled
Jan 22, 2008
1,484
1,225
XenForo is a great forum software. I'm excited for the "new beginnings" for the MacRumors Forums. Good luck with the transition Arn.
 
arn

arn

macrumors god
Original poster
Staff member
Apr 9, 2001
16,363
5,795
thanks for the positive feedback. I'm excited about the transition.

arn
 
J

JackieInCo

Suspended
Jul 18, 2013
5,178
1,601
Colorado
What makes you think that Xenforo is the forums software for this site?

I tried it about six months ago just to see how easy it was to import a vB site into Xenforo. That was one of the easiest things to do. As far as the admin panel settings, I thought several things were lacking such as the ability to be able to prune users posts especially if they went on a spamming session.

In the end, I went with IPB because it's well established now and it's really grow and headed into the direction I wish vB would have went.

It's sad that vB is dying and their support forums are just about deserted. I was a long time user of their forums going back to 2000.

Good luck with everything. I know it will be a difficult task but Xenforo will help quite a bit with that.
 
arn

arn

macrumors god
Original poster
Staff member
Apr 9, 2001
16,363
5,795
JackieInCo said:
What makes you think that Xenforo is the forums software for this site?

I tried it about six months ago just to see how easy it was to import a vB site into Xenforo. That was one of the easiest things to do. As far as the admin panel settings, I thought several things were lacking such as the ability to be able to prune users posts especially if they went on a spamming session.

In the end, I went with IPB because it's well established now and it's really grow and headed into the direction I wish vB would have went.

It's sad that vB is dying and their support forums are just about deserted. I was a long time user of their forums going back to 2000.

Good luck with everything. I know it will be a difficult task but Xenforo will help quite a bit with that.
Click to expand...

Thanks!

I looked a bit at IPB a while back, but several other forum owners I'm friendly with have had bad experiences with IPB and recommended I avoid it. Besides IPB4 was in the wings then and is in Beta now, so wouldn't be a realistic migration option at this point.

Xenforo had the right combination of stability, features we needed, features we wanted, and a good developer/support community around it.

arn
 
M

Moshe1010

macrumors 6502a
Jun 27, 2010
874
99
Good luck arn. Don't forget to overload with Caffeine at the day of the migration, and sleep well few days before it since you'll need it :D
Users will complain about minor things, don't take it personally - you won't be able to make everybody happy. In a few weeks after the migration people will calm down and get use to the new software. Just don't use the white, stock, background of XF since this is the most common complain forum owners encounter during the transition (it's just too bright, especially on Retina displays (or those that have Samsung panels)).
 
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