Converting from vB to Vanilla

Raize

Has anyone successfully transferred the posts/member accounts from their vBulletin forum to a new Vanilla installation? I run a student forum with about 2000 members that I would love to convert to Vanilla...but as of right now there seems to be no solution. A majority of large forums on the internet are running vBulletin, so if we want Vanilla usage to grow, there should be a way to help people transfer over to the obviously superior forum software. Discuss :)

SubJunk

Well it would be very easy to write a conversion script, because Vanilla solely relies on the database info (I mean, you can manually add users to the forum just with a insert statement) so it really wouldn't be hard at all.
I could write it as an extension for Vanilla after I am done with Notifi 2.0 (that is what I'm working on whenever I do Vanilla stuff).

Raize

Wow, that gives me a lot of confidence SubJunk...it would really help a lot of people switch to Vanilla and grow our community. Let me know if I can help in any way.

WallPhone

I used a conversion script that someone else wrote with success... user accounts won't work untill each user runs through the 'forgot password' routine since vBulletin uses a per-user hash password salt. An alternative is to program some kind of authenticatation module that plugs into vBulletin's routine. I'll link to it when I get home.

fmimoso

Be aware that if your existing vB forum is very busy and your Vanilla installation has several add-ons installed, you could face some perfomance problems... Furthermore, don't forget to ask your community if they want to change. Many were obligated to return to their previous solution upon community uproar...

WallPhone

Found it!

vB to Vanilla Importer # 1

IIRC, I had to make a pretty minor change to something simple like the table name or data type...

SubJunk

Looks good!