For any of that that are interested in the changes that are to come? here are some updates.
Our old Forums were running on a modified version of SMF (Simple Machines Forum) that sucked according to rob? He mentioned VBulletin and when he?s right, he?s right! After some research and "testing" we both decided that the forum?s future will be with VBulletin.
So far, I managed to get a copy of VBulletin 3.7.0 to try the conversion and merge from the SMF, but I ran into trouble because of our current host, the SMF database was locked and hidden away under a master username and password, after getting around that ?obstacle?, I managed to connect to the SMF database through some PHP scripts. The import was only for an earlier version of the VBulletin, so after some tweaking the import worked and some of the posts showed up and LOTS of bugs (avatars, images, smileys not showing up). So the plan is to run another test merge tonight with an earlier version of Vbulletin (3.6.0) and then attempting an upgrade of the frontend to 3.7.0. Then I will move the entire new working DB to the new host that is much faster and allows for unlimited bandwith and monthly transfers. At the same time I will initiate a domain name transfer for the main website.
The scheduled backup of the SMF DB will happen on Friday sometime after 12:00 so if you are posting after 12:00pm (central) your posts might not show up in the new forum. You have been warned?
The website and forums might be buggy for the first couple of days while the DNS records are replicating but everything should be back to normal by Wednesday next week.
~ Helper Monkey...
Our old Forums were running on a modified version of SMF (Simple Machines Forum) that sucked according to rob? He mentioned VBulletin and when he?s right, he?s right! After some research and "testing" we both decided that the forum?s future will be with VBulletin.
So far, I managed to get a copy of VBulletin 3.7.0 to try the conversion and merge from the SMF, but I ran into trouble because of our current host, the SMF database was locked and hidden away under a master username and password, after getting around that ?obstacle?, I managed to connect to the SMF database through some PHP scripts. The import was only for an earlier version of the VBulletin, so after some tweaking the import worked and some of the posts showed up and LOTS of bugs (avatars, images, smileys not showing up). So the plan is to run another test merge tonight with an earlier version of Vbulletin (3.6.0) and then attempting an upgrade of the frontend to 3.7.0. Then I will move the entire new working DB to the new host that is much faster and allows for unlimited bandwith and monthly transfers. At the same time I will initiate a domain name transfer for the main website.
The scheduled backup of the SMF DB will happen on Friday sometime after 12:00 so if you are posting after 12:00pm (central) your posts might not show up in the new forum. You have been warned?
The website and forums might be buggy for the first couple of days while the DNS records are replicating but everything should be back to normal by Wednesday next week.
~ Helper Monkey...
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