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Migrating to Xenforo
- Thread starter arn
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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
thank GOODNESS! I have a copy I'm not using if you need it, I wasted $140 on it for my defunct Minecraft server. vBulletin sucks.
Some sites purge their membership roster every six months, others do it more like every year. In a situation such as this one, I'd say that two years would be a reasonable time frame to set for purging the membership roster prior to making the transition to the new forum software. The parameters have to be set so that only those who have NOT looked in on the site OR posted in two years or more would be purged; that way, those who lurk here on a regular basis wouldn't be removed. IF someone's membership is removed and they want to re-establish it, they could simply re-register. On MacRumors when one wants to post and participate is when it is important to be a registered member; otherwise, not so much so, as people can read this site without being registered at all, they just cannot make posts.
Notional time-based purging and subsequent re-self-registration
Thanks
With the same username?
Thanks
With the same username?
What happens to their threads and posts? We here at MacRumors have not archived or locked old threads and some have bubbled back to the top for one reason or another.
One concern I have from this change. Another site I frequent is PriusChat which uses the Xenforo software. I agree that it is much more modern than vbulletin. The problem is that all those modern features consume a huge amount of bandwidth, even with the tab mostly just sitting idle and open. If I leave a PriusChat tab open in my browser at all times, the way I do with most sites I frequent, I inevitably show up in our firewall logs as one of the heaviest bandwidth users with a huge number of hits. As a result, I now rarely go to PriusChat other than to check in, then close the tab down. This means that instead of reading and participating several times per day, I check in once or twice every week or two.
Hopefully this is something specific to PriusChat rather than Xenforo.
Hopefully this is something specific to PriusChat rather than Xenforo.
Good question, one to which I don't have the answer. Usually, though, those members who are purged are those who maybe posted once or twice and were last seen on the site years ago, that kind of thing. I believe the posts and threads would still remain in place in the data tables, with perhaps something like "Guest" in place of the user name which had started or participated in the thread.
Graham: If someone were purged who had last been on the site four years ago but who happened to pop in one day and try to post and discovered he or she was no longer a registered member, he or she could try contacting the Admin team. If the member has been totally purged, then, I am not sure if they'd be able to try registering again with the same user name since it is no longer a valid one in the system. ?? I suspect that they would need to create a new user name. I am really not sure -- that's above my pay grade!
Are you certain of this? Xenforo has a lot of features that keep the tab always up to date without refreshing. I have assumed that it's that kind of stuff that have kept so much data flowing. If it's coded poorly, it could easily consume a lot of bandwidth.
Hi Clix Pix.
What's the purpose of purging long-absent users? Their user accounts take negligible space. We wouldn't want to remove their posts since they might still be of interest to other users. Profile pages already show when a user was last active, if anyone cares to check. And we wouldn't reuse user names or user numbers anyway. What would we gain?
What's the purpose of purging long-absent users? Their user accounts take negligible space. We wouldn't want to remove their posts since they might still be of interest to other users. Profile pages already show when a user was last active, if anyone cares to check. And we wouldn't reuse user names or user numbers anyway. What would we gain?
Bandwidth space? I'm not sure if that is as crucial an issue now as it used to be in the past and whether or not it makes a difference if a forum is using its own server(s) or is on someone else's server(s) and either has dedicated service or shared service. I would guess that when the forum has its own server(s) then the bandwidth thing isn't quite as much of an issue?
For the most part on another site with which I am familiar (which does have its own server), those who are purged are not actually genuine users of the site; they are the ones who are spambots with weird names who never even posted or they are the ones who maybe posted one time nine years ago to ask a question and never returned.....that kind of situation. I agree that certainly it is not a good idea to remove anyone who actually seems to be a legitimate member, even if it has been a while since they have been around!
I'm also familiar with another site (which actually is operating on a shared server) which has never purged their membership roster and, well, it's pretty weird to look at their list (which is visible to members and at one time was even visible to non-members). They claim to have something like 5500 members.....but when one actually looks at the member roster it quickly becomes clear that many "members" are spambots with weird names -- spammers which never got zapped in the beginning -- and others are someone who might have looked in on the site once many years ago and hasn't returned since.
The interesting thing is when one actually looks at that forum as it is now and sees just who is participating and how many.....and the reality is rather sad: they have maybe 100 people who participate there regularly, with probably another 50-75 who pop in every now and then. Now that's sad. I suspect that the reason they don't purge their membership roster is because they'd rather have people think that they have 5500 active members rather than be aware of the reality, which is maybe 200 at the most....... All that said,though, it is a very different type of forum and topic of interest than we have here at MacRumors, and that, too, needs to be taken into consideration. The first forum to which I referred is a little closer to MR in the fact that it is dealing with technology and such. The owner there used to prune the member roster once a year and then the site changed owners and I believe it is more frequently done now. Also, they did make the switch to Xenforo some months ago, and prior to doing that they did go through once again and purge their member roster so that they were starting out fresh and clean once on board with Xenforo.
Just my (limited) experience and thoughts.....
Migrating but not (yet) purging members
If a purge is to happen: please, let's not make it a complication around the time of migration. Allow at least a few weeks after migration has completed, then it'll be easier to see what (if anything) should be purged.
Some human chose weird usernames then read but never post.
I had an opportunity to moderate a forum where I suspected hundreds of non-posting spambots. The reality was, at the time, it was simplest to ignore their presence. YMMV.
If there's to be a purge from MacRumors then IMHO there should be a forewarning via e-mail to each affected member four months, four weeks, four days and one day prior to removal. And so on.
A separate topic maybe? Talk of purging could be lengthy, contentious and unexpectedly complex …
If a purge is to happen: please, let's not make it a complication around the time of migration. Allow at least a few weeks after migration has completed, then it'll be easier to see what (if anything) should be purged.
Some human chose weird usernames then read but never post.
I had an opportunity to moderate a forum where I suspected hundreds of non-posting spambots. The reality was, at the time, it was simplest to ignore their presence. YMMV.
If there's to be a purge from MacRumors then IMHO there should be a forewarning via e-mail to each affected member four months, four weeks, four days and one day prior to removal. And so on.
A separate topic maybe? Talk of purging could be lengthy, contentious and unexpectedly complex …
I think arn already mentioned that purging the system of legacy data is not in the works. I don't know if we need another thread to discuss how to implement the purge and its ramifications if he's not planning on doing it.
No "Guest" nickname in xenForo. If users are deleted their usernames will be visible but not clickable on their old posts.
Quite certain; I have some tabs for the Unity engine forums open now (they use XenForo), and Activity Monitor is showing mostly 0 bytes. My "lovely" internet connection is known for dropping to dial-up speeds sometimes, but I never have any problem loading those forums even then.
--Eric
Hy Arn, I was just thinking... Are PMs being migrated too? I know a lot of people send serial numbers and the lot when doing exchanges in the marketplace. Would be a good idea to get people to do the backups.
Hey Arn and team,
I would like to make a simple suggestion for the theme of the new forums. If you would like a classy, simple theme, then look no further than my "Public Profile" right here on Macrumors. Hopefully this assists in leading you to a great looking theme.
On another note, will the custom user pages like mine hold or be trashed with the migration?
Thanks.
I would like to make a simple suggestion for the theme of the new forums. If you would like a classy, simple theme, then look no further than my "Public Profile" right here on Macrumors. Hopefully this assists in leading you to a great looking theme.
On another note, will the custom user pages like mine hold or be trashed with the migration?
Thanks.
Profile page customisations and migration from vBulletin to XenForo
Without knowing XenForo … I suspect, that degree of customisation won't easily migrate from vBulletin.
In XenForo Community
Custom profile fields
– but that's probably not close to what fun173 has in mind.
Customizable User Profiles
– that was 2010, I have no idea whether that opinion reflects the current situation.
Without knowing XenForo … I suspect, that degree of customisation won't easily migrate from vBulletin.
In XenForo Community
Custom profile fields
– but that's probably not close to what fun173 has in mind.
Customizable User Profiles
– that was 2010, I have no idea whether that opinion reflects the current situation.
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