Just a suggestion, but it would be nice to keep topic ids when importing from vbulletin. So for 4.0, maybe you guys can work that in. The redirect is not good enough if you really want to preserve your urls.

Reference:

 

It has been suggested many times, however it's not an option I'm afraid or it would have been done already. 

That's too bad, I think you would get more Vbulletin converts, or at least those who care about their SEO.

That's too bad, I think you would get more Vbulletin converts, or at least those who care about their SEO.

​

While SEO is 80% opinion, this is not really an issue, links are re-directed and in time everything get's re-indexed just fine. 

We did try this at one point, however it caused more issues than it solved. A lot of content can be converted over to IP.Board, so it is not always just a straight 1-1 import. Preserving ID's also removes the ability to merge multiple communities into one.

That being said, it's something we can explore again for the 4.0 Converters, which can be built with this in mind from the start.

Makes sense if you are merging to not duplicate content, but how many people actually merge vs just changing platforms?  Just saying that if a vbulletin owner has a busy established board, they may think twice if they cant replicate their urls or keep their ids at least. Thanks for the quick responses and explanation.

Makes sense if you are merging to not duplicate content, but how many people actually merge vs just changing platforms?  Just saying that if a vbulletin owner has a busy established board, they may think twice if they cant replicate their urls or keep their ids at least. Thanks for the quick responses and explanation.

​More people merge than you would think.

Please make this an option for the 4.0 converter, it sounds like urls are customizable in 4.0, but if we can't keep the ids, the urls change anyway. This would of course be for anyone NOT merging boards and just converting straight to IPB.

This is exactly what prevents me to move my board from VB to IPB.

If IDs would be kept I would know what I can do with IPB and I would buy the same day or faster!
From all I know, many VB board owners would do exactly the same. Most of us are stuck with VBSEO type of links and we want to be able to match them. 

I really liked what I saw on the demo, I really want to switch but not without a good converter solution for my VBSEO custom links.

On another note: I have never seen in my entire life as webmaster a single very successful community "merging" with another. I understand the logic though of course. However I've seen dozens of very popular forums switching software.

If you give us the option to keep IDs, in my opinion, you won't regret it - I think that it would be a game changer for all of those who are looking for VB alternatives and are currently stuck with a single option out: Xenforo.

If I may be so bold.... Isn't 'merge' a bit out of scope for a converter application? There is a fair amount of additional logic there that has nothing to do with converting from another software(much less the fact the ability to 'convert' an IPB to an IPB seems very much against the grain of the application's purpose).

 I'd argue 'merge' should likely be a separate app and need not be provided by IPS directly.... My 2 cents.