ex vB users - how did it go?

• Did you mange to port your style over ok?
• How does the template system compare to vBs?
• How did the db import go? Lose any data? Passwords remain intact?
• How did it effect your SE results/page rank?
• And most importantly... what did you users think? Has it had an impact on how many log-on now?

Please also feel free to add anything else you may think is relevant.

 

Nope. I'm making a new one.

seems to be easier to work with.

no data loss at all. all passwords remain intact. Although it took a lot longer than I expected and had to do it several times.

The board I've converted is a private community so never checked it's SE before. but few days after conversion I gave it a shot and almost all old urls been replaced by new ones in google results!!!

That was (and is) my biggest challenge. some members missed some of features we had on vB ; most importantly Quot a post via Quick reply, find a member's posts in a topic, being able to delete their own posts within a time frame [ which will be added in 3.1]. Moderators miss some features as well ( IP lookup for example which in order to give them this ability I had to make them all global moderators). As administrator the only thing we miss is the ability to give a specific member access to a specific forum.

+
I have some issues that are I believe is not IPB's fault at all. In big topics (more than 20 pages) it takes a long time to redirect to topic after submitting a post sometimes it won't redirect atll and sometimes it sends the post several times! I get IPS driver error whenever someone leaves a profile comment!
these are most likely some dumb configs in server by myself.

All in all I've never been happier with my forum.

 

I thought we had a few more vB -> IP.Board converts around here?

 

I might be trying IPB for a new site I'm starting up as a favor to a friend.

I can already say though, I'm going to miss vBSEO, but probably not much else (I can have smaller modifications created for me).

 

Well im not converting from vB to IPB but im hoping to purchase IPB tomorrow.

 

I think I've answered most of these questions before, but let me have another go at it.

I didn't even bother trying to port the styles on my sites to IPB.

I quite like the IPB template system and find it very easy to work with.

The DB conversion presented no problems, with the exception that PM's appeared to be unread. That was the only problem encountered on four different conversions.

I played with some options, since I was converting vBSEO'ed sites. I was redirecting vBSEO'ed URLs to IPB's friendly URLs. I then tried MinervaSEO. It had a lot of gaps and holes that weren't being addressed, so I removed it and just went cold-turkey with IPB's FURLs.

My #1 keywords on all four sites are now indexed higher than they have ever been. Traffic is better than ever before. Revenue is higher than ever before.

I consider page rank to be a useless metric and pay zero attention to it, so I cannot relate if there were or were not any changes there. I've had higher traffic and revenue numbers at PR0 than at PR4, so there you go.

One of my sites is primarily made up of middle-age and older men. I had to do some hand-holding for about a week after converting that site. All of the other conversions were received well and I've since had several members comment on how they find IPB to be easier for them to use and understand.

My server loads dropped after the conversions, so that has been a bonus for me. (And before someone thinks that is down to the removal of vBSEO, let me state the upgrade from vB 3.6 to vB 3.7 caused higher loads than the installation of vBSEO.)

My one and only gripe with IPB is that I was too pig-headed to convert my sites earlier. It took about two days of use to get comfortable with IPB and now I find vB to be clumsy and cumbersome. On both the front and back ends. I don't see myself ever moving away from IPB, but I know vB will certainly not be an alternative if it ever happens.

Is there a 'perfect' forum package for everyone? I doubt that is possible. But I've found IPB to be a vast improvement over vB for my own situation. So much better that I purchased my 5th IPB license, my 5th IP.Content license and my 2nd IP.Blog license just yesterday.

From one end to the other, IPB has been a very positive step up for all my sites.

 

Thanks for the detailled feedback. It seems IPS is really paying off for those who switched.

I wonder if there are boards with over one million posts that have switched from vb to ips and I'd like to hear from them, too.

 

I'll let you know when my conversion is complete as I have 1m posts. My conversion is going a little slow going right now as IPS coders seem thin on the ground and I am trying to get to grips with the code base while being swamped at work.

 

Google has a vb forum?

:lol:

 

Im selling google.com off to fund the conversion. Interested?

 

Alas my checking account is not quite that large at the moment.

Besides, google is a fad, right?

:lol:

 

On a more serious note, did you buy a license?

My intention is to buy (rent) a 'Hosted Community' for 1-2 months starting tomorrow for development/evaluation. It appears you have been familiarizing yourself with IP for a while now, any input?

 

My board had (and still has) more than 1m posts.

 

Thanks for the replies all

Look forward to hearing more from anyone else - and of course the Geeks feedback when he gets round to it

 

Hey, there.
I was also a long time Vb user. I used Vb since 2001 when I moved away from UBB . I actually moved away from Vbulletin months before Kier made the announcement that he was leaving the company.

I really needed an official gallery solution for Vb, and Photopost pro wasn't enough which I had used for 3-ish years.
Naturally, I found IPB suitable for my needs with their IP.Gallery and, as a bonus, IP.Download.

In the end, I moved over to IPB on May 2008. I still had a second Vb license used for my other hobby site which I chose not to renew after the fiasco occurred.

1. Nope. Was too complicated for me, so instead of crushing my brain to bits to chew, I chose to create a new layout all together, which turned out to be much easier for me.

2. I still prefer Vb3 template system, but considering massive advantages IPB has over Vb (for me at least), it's a minor inconvenience.

3.When I imported, I had about 200k posts. It took about 10 minutes until conversion was complete. Passwords remained intact with IPB's "Vb login auth" plugin, but I eventually chose to disable it and let users regenerate passwords.

4. I don't care about SEO. My site's popularity comes from words of mouth and having been running it since 1998, I've plenty of links coming from all over without caring about SEO.

5. Some welcomed the change. Some did not. To be honest though, I could care less what my users' opinions. I needed to make the change and I was in charge, so I simply made the call.
Damage ? Not that I saw.

P.S. IP. Content is lovely. It took me only an hour to fully transfer my Joomla powered site to IP.C. I found it so much easier to deal with and more flexible.

 

What was the advantage of having all users regenerate new passwords?

 

No advantage I know of. I just felt like not wanting to rely on a password encryption mimicking plugin for too long.

After the conversion was over and dust settled down, I asked members to use lost password feature to reset their passwords.

 

We are attempting to convert now.

It is possible that we are doing it in a less than ideal manner because we are only allowed 1 database on the hosting account IPS is renting to us for evaluation.

Question: should the forum permissions be maintained? It appears that the Admin can see all forums in the AdminCP, but no one including the admin, cannot see the forums from out side the AdminCP..

 

No, IIRC from my test conversions by default there are no permissions set for the forums so no one can see them once you convert. You need to go back through and set this up after the conversion. Saying that, IPBs permission matrix is MUCH easier and faster to set than vB's.

Saying that, I did like how child forums inherited their perms in vB.