Hello All ... we want to migrate our sites current forum (proprietary built) to a newer, more modern (feature rich) platform. I've been looking around at the available options and have narrowed it down to vBulletin, Vanilla or Phorum (unless you have another suggestion ?). I hope someone here can give me some feedback on their experiences either migrating to a new forum or working deeply with one. The current forum we have has approx 2.2 million threads in it and is contained in a MySQL database. Data Migration is obviously the first issue, is one of the major Forum vendors better or worse in this regard ? The software needs to be able to be clustered and cached to ensure availability and performance. We want it to be PHP based and store it's data in MySQL. The code needs to be open to allow us to highly customise the software both to strip out a lot of stuff and be able to integrate our sites features. A lot of the forums I've looked at have a lot of duplicate features to our main site, in particular member management, profiles etc. I realise we'll have to do a good bit of development in removing these and tieing it all back to the main site so we want to find a platform that makes this kind of integration as easy as possible. Finally I guess if 'future proofing' the forum (as best as possible) given the above. Which platform will allow us to customise it but also allow us to keep instep with upgrades. Which forum software has the best track record for bringing online new features in a timely manner ? etc. etc. I know it's a big question but if anyone here has any experience in some or all of the above I'd be very grateful. - David
I suggest using IPB as thats what I use and I love it. With VB4 failing a bit, I think IPB is on a better track now.
IPB certainetly looks to have taken the lead after further reading but atm I'm leaning to either Vanilla or Phorum as they appear to be lighter weight and more designed to be highly customised and integrated. The price of the platform really isn't important as this is a *major* part of our site we just want to get the base platform right ya know.
Alright. If it was up to me, I'd recommend MyBB or IPB, but obviously, neither will have a converter from your forum script (I don't know if the MyBB guys will have the time to help you, to be perfectly honest). IPB, however, I know might be able to look at your database and perhaps give you a custom quote to convert your forum to IPB. I can't say the same with what vBulletin can do for you, but as it stands, they can barely convert passwords in even the mainstream software for crying out loud. Just give IPS a message and such, and maybe they'll let you know what they think. http://www.invisionpower.com/company/contact.php IPB's customer service and support has been excellent and non-judgemental (even when I realized it was clearly my fault).
Are those threads? Does this mean you have 10 or 20 million posts? What's DB size total? Personally if you're already custom I'd stay custom. With any solution you're going to have to do a lot of custom coding anyways so why not stay proprietary. Given you want something lightweight I do suggest Vanilla. It's a tried and true forum software that's extremely lightweight and well supported. I have an 8 million post forum so I'm aware of big-board problems. I myself run MyBB and would never recommend VB or PHPBB as a solution. IPB is a maybe. You should be able to talk with their support team to see if indeed they can cover the features you require.