Questions about Databases and Merging Databases

I have a few questions please if anyone would be so kind as to help answer them.

• If I wanted to merge a database with our forum, http://www.theproductforum.com. How would I do it?
  
• Is it possible to merge a database from a forum with different software to ours, which is vB.
  
• Would the members registered at the merged database be registered with our forum?
• What would happen to things like passwords, etc?

 

depends on your forum script (VB) , other forum's script ; their versions AND the merge system you have. if you
have legit VB license then its better to try for official support from VB as merging with VB is much complicated !!

 

If it's a different software, i doubt it would be possible until you converted it into a VB database using IMPEX. Merging would be another nightmare in and of itself because you would have so many conflicts.

 

Thanks for the reply, so even with IMPEX, it would be problematic would it?

 

No. Impex does not truncate previous posts, so it will import the data from the other forum into the current vBulletin forum.

Do a backup first, though.

 

So IMPEX would allow it to run smoothly?

 

It should. Though it's good practice to just make a duplicate of your forum and keep the second one as your test one. Then try to do the imports there a few times and be sure to backup as much as you can.