Website migration to Xenforo

TransAmDan

TransAmDan

Forum Admin
Staff member
Trying to write down the justification for a possible move. I'm sure I will edit this post as comments come in.

What is up with the current forum?
  • We are running VBulletin V4.2.3, this is not the latest, but an upgrade will cause more bugs than fixes.
  • Security Patches are out dated.
  • Cannot upload multiple files to the photo album, one at a time just takes too long.
  • Things have become flaky, crashing due to session table not getting cleared.
  • Scheduled tasks playing up.
  • I got a error 403 forbidden on any page I visited from my laptop(11/09/2019) but was fine on phone and other browsers.
  • People complain its hard to use from a phone.
  • The forum isn't really as phone/tablet friendly as some of the newer alternatives.
  • Cannot add newer aged vehicles to the garage.
  • Is there anything else.......?

What we like on the current forum/website?
  • Calendar is very useful for planning events.
  • Photos gallery to browse photos from a show and to share on social media to try and get people to visit the website.
  • Inserting images in posts.
  • Inserting Videos in posts.
  • Viewing who has the most posts, as a incentive to post more.
  • RSS feeds give a little more extra to read, making things look a bit more active.
  • anything else?

What we don't want to loose.
  • We don't want to loose the vast amount of threads already posted, these would need to be migrated.
  • We don't want to loose the image gallery, all photo galleries need to come across.
  • We don't want to loose the Calendar feature, but not to fussed if we need to recreate items currently in there.
  • We don't want to loose users/passwords, all the users need to be migrated. We can weed out the ones with no posts.

What would be nice to gain?
  • Extra features/buttons to share posts on social media in hope to bring more visitors in.
  • Being able to upload multiple images at a time to the photo gallery.
  • More difficult for robots to sign up and spam. Captcha for the registration process.
  • To be able to customize the site to make it look like the Renegades website.

What can XenForo offer?
  • The forum threads can be imported in from our current site.
  • The Image gallery can be imported.
  • Calendar feature is an add-on.
  • Users will be imported in.
  • Images can be inserted into posts.
  • Videos can be inserted into posts.
  • There is a post incentive where you get awards for when you post over certain milestones.
  • RSS feeds work.
  • Buttons for social media sharing for forum posts and photo galleries.
  • Forum colours can change and logo added, and even re-skinning the whole site.
 
Last edited:
What we like on the current forum/website?

Calendar is very useful for planning events.
Photos gallery to browse photos from a show and to share on social media to try and get people to visit the website.
Inserting images in posts.
Inserting Videos in posts.
Viewing who has the most posts, as a incentive to post more.
anything else?



What we don't want to loose.

We don't want to loose the vast amount of threads already posted, these would need to be migrated.
We don't want to loose the image gallery, all photo galleries need to come across.
We don't want to loose the Calendar feature, but not to fussed if we need to recreate items currently in there.
We don't want to loose users/passwords, all the users need to be migrated. We can weed out the ones with no posts.



What would be nice to gain?

Extra features/buttons to share posts on social media in hope to bring more visitors in.
Being able to upload multiple images at a time to the photo gallery.
More difficult for robots to sign up and spam. Captcha for the registration process.
To be able to customize the site to make it look like the Renegades website.
Click to expand...


:thumb::thumb::thumb::thumb:
 
Not seen Claire and Dave for a bit, hopefully the website hasn't locked them out like it locked me out yesterday. Seems to be less users online, perhaps the swamp attempt has stopped for now.
 
I must admit I haven’t been on the last couple of day as much as should have been (bad me!). Work is extremely busy and I’ve had to do overtime to keep the work from piling up :(
 
Test site is de-activated after 8pm on Saturday (end of the free trial, I could start a new free trial)

On the test site I've added the logo, and tried photo uploads. the RSS stuff is working, forum threads are easily created.
 
Last edited:
Got some of the Facebook users to try the demo, uploading photos etc.. The demo is only a default trial, mo customisations. The users likes how easy it was to upload photos and ease of use on a mobile. They said they would use the website more.
This is great news, we should get a better flow of core people coming back and posting.
I'm happy with this being a path forward so far.
I'm going to get a better demo going so we on here can decide. We will be gaining users from the dark side, I don't want to be loosing users that keep coming back as it is now.
 
How about this for the test....

Solent Renegade
A copy of the current forum from last night is on there. Feel free to have a play. I will organise the Show picture categories if we go this route as I'll do another copy of this website. Took around 4 hours, due to the 50k images on here. :)
 
I read somewhere Xenforo was created by many of the creators of Vbulletin. Vbulletin got a bit bloated and slow, they have trimmed it down for Vbulletin5. I beleive the team split in two, one created VB5 the other Xenforo.

The import facility is very good, bringing in our current forum content. The test will need to be deleted and start again to bring in our latest forum posts from here.
 
Dave think he’s locked out of here again as he can’t get on.
 
an88fiero said:
Dave think he’s locked out of here again as he can’t get on.
Click to expand...

Chriscoupe having issues too. Try clearing cookies for this site.
 
Nope still can’t get on :(
 
Still ok . not seen any difference
 
Chriscoupe having the same trouble. I'll let him know to clear cookies.
I will look into this. As the demo site copied data from this one as a migration type arrangement, it may be trying to use the same cookie name. I'll get to the bottom of it. Sorry for the lockout.
 
Its odd that this issue happend after the sub-domain was created. Looking at what is created from the Xenforo

The main cookies we set during normal operation of the software.

xf_csrf
Stores a token, unique to you, which is used to verify that the actions you perform on this site were intended to be performed by you.
xf_session
Stores the current ID of your session.
xf_user
Stores a key, unique to you, which allows us to keep you logged in to the software as you navigate from page to page.

Nothing conflicting with the SR forum.
 
Been trying out more features of the new one.

I am liking this a lot. You can create a calendar event from a forum thread. This can be viewed in the calendar, and also calendar entries come up on the right hand side. Clicking on the event takes you right to the forum thread.
screenshot_xenforo.jpg
Created the season closer event.
 
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