Converting from vBulletin 4.2.2

[Black Tiger]

Hello everybody.

I'm going to convert my friends forum from vBulletin 4.2.2. to Invision 4.x, the latest one I believe.
Ofcourse I already discovered the conversion wiki, but since some of you might already have been there and done this, just a couple of questions to be sure I follow the correct steps.
Conversion will be on the same domain on the same hosting account, but other directory, only forums, no pages or something else yet.

1.) Install a default fresh version of Invision (with conversiontools included) in another directory then the vB forum.

2.) Install the convertors as shown in the wiki.

3.) Start the converstion as shown.

My questions are:

a.) Are the above steps correct or am I forgetting something?

b.) Is there anything else I have to take into account or keep notice of before or during the conversion? Especially since they got a very huge attachment directory which also needs to be included/converted? Or did anyone run into some issue when converting vB 4.2.2?

c.) Can the same attachment directory be used / be kept in place, or will all attachments be moved to another directory during conversion?

d.) When I do a fresh Invision install, I presume also an admin account will be generated. Will this be merged during conversion or overwritten by the existing one in vB?

e.) Can it be done via every browser, or is there some advise that a certain browser best can be used (for whatever reason)?
 

edit: f.) The wiki says, things to do before conversion, one of them is:

Quote

Set up groups, profile groups etc - During the conversion, you will be asked to map your current usergroups, profile fields etc over to the relevant fields in the IPS software, so ensure you have these set up ready for you to just map them.

I'm not native English so I don't fully understand this. Don't understand what mapping means in this case. Do I have to create all usergroups used in vBulletin also in Invision forum prior to conversion? Is that what this means?
 

[AlexWright]

4 hours ago, Black Tiger said:

Hello everybody.

I'm going to convert my friends forum from vBulletin 4.2.2. to Invision 4.x, the latest one I believe.
Ofcourse I already discovered the conversion wiki, but since some of you might already have been there and done this, just a couple of questions to be sure I follow the correct steps.
Conversion will be on the same domain on the same hosting account, but other directory, only forums, no pages or something else yet.

1.) Install a default fresh version of Invision (with conversiontools included) in another directory then the vB forum.

2.) Install the convertors as shown in the wiki.

3.) Start the converstion as shown.

My questions are:

a.) Are the above steps correct or am I forgetting something?

b.) Is there anything else I have to take into account or keep notice of before or during the conversion? Especially since they got a very huge attachment directory which also needs to be included/converted? Or did anyone run into some issue when converting vB 4.2.2?

c.) Can the same attachment directory be used / be kept in place, or will all attachments be moved to another directory during conversion?

d.) When I do a fresh Invision install, I presume also an admin account will be generated. Will this be merged during conversion or overwritten by the existing one in vB?

e.) Can it be done via every browser, or is there some advise that a certain browser best can be used (for whatever reason)?
 

edit: f.) The wiki says, things to do before conversion, one of them is:

I'm not native English so I don't fully understand this. Don't understand what mapping means in this case. Do I have to create all usergroups used in vBulletin also in Invision forum prior to conversion? Is that what this means?
 

I can only answer F (and maybe D) here. Yes, your Invision install will not automatically copy the Groups and the Permissions from vB. You will have to do that manually before the import. Then during conversion you are asked to "map" (IE: Members are placed in "Members" in Invision, "Mods" are placed in "Moderators" etc etc). You can setup the membergroups before hand, do the conversion and import, then finish redoing permissions after the conversion is done. That might be the easiest way to do it, tbh.

As far as D is concerned, yes Invision will generate User 1 (Admin). I am unsure if it is converted or overwritten by the conversion.

B has me a little concerned as well. How large is the attachment directory? How is your hosting? You might need a decent host to be able to perform the full conversion. Or if your hosting is sub par, if you can download the entire vB database and have all the other files for it, you might want to do this on a local machine using WAMP or XAMPP localhost server.

Maybe someone else can answer where I cannot. I've not ever needed to perform a conversion. These are just from what I've learned around the forum while running a community or two.

[bfarber]

15 hours ago, Black Tiger said:

Hello everybody.

I'm going to convert my friends forum from vBulletin 4.2.2. to Invision 4.x, the latest one I believe.
Ofcourse I already discovered the conversion wiki, but since some of you might already have been there and done this, just a couple of questions to be sure I follow the correct steps.
Conversion will be on the same domain on the same hosting account, but other directory, only forums, no pages or something else yet.

1.) Install a default fresh version of Invision (with conversiontools included) in another directory then the vB forum.

2.) Install the convertors as shown in the wiki.

3.) Start the converstion as shown.

My questions are:

a.) Are the above steps correct or am I forgetting something?

b.) Is there anything else I have to take into account or keep notice of before or during the conversion? Especially since they got a very huge attachment directory which also needs to be included/converted? Or did anyone run into some issue when converting vB 4.2.2?

c.) Can the same attachment directory be used / be kept in place, or will all attachments be moved to another directory during conversion?

d.) When I do a fresh Invision install, I presume also an admin account will be generated. Will this be merged during conversion or overwritten by the existing one in vB?

e.) Can it be done via every browser, or is there some advise that a certain browser best can be used (for whatever reason)?
 

edit: f.) The wiki says, things to do before conversion, one of them is:

I'm not native English so I don't fully understand this. Don't understand what mapping means in this case. Do I have to create all usergroups used in vBulletin also in Invision forum prior to conversion? Is that what this means?
 

a) Yes those are generally the correct steps.

b) The attachments need to be available to the Invision Community software during the conversion (files are copied/moved as appropriate), but otherwise no. The only thing I might suggest is that if you intend to use S3 to set that up before you convert. Otherwise the converters will (1) copy the files to the local Invision uploads folder and then (2) have to move them to S3. By setting up S3 before hand you skip one of those steps, speeding up the overall process.

c) Attachments are copied to a new location.

d) The account will be merged (if an account with the same email exists in the conversion database).

e) Any browser is fine (although I wouldn't recommend trying to do it via mobile as you need to leave the browser open).

f) During the conversion, you have the option of (1) mapping your groups from vBulletin to groups that already exist in Invision Community, or (2) creating new groups in Invision Community based on the ones in vBulletin. You can optionally set up your groups in advance on the new site, or you can just convert over what you have from vBulletin. It doesn't really matter in the end.

[Black Tiger]

Thank you both for answering. I have to check my Invision settings because I got notifications here, but not per email. Where can I configure this here? (figured it out).

b.) @bfarber

At this moment the attachment are present in a folder below public_html, like /home/user/attachments. I do have the fresh Invision set up momentarily, but could not yet find the place where I can setup where the attachment directory for Invision should be.

Can you also explain what S3 is? We only have forum, no commercial stuff, amazon or whatever, the attachments are just images users uploaded. Do I need that S3 in that case then?

c.) Which will be done by the converter as I read from b.). In that case it's good my friend has unlimited diskspace on his account. Could take up some time then, we're talking 4.58 GB in 62.131 files (both images and thumbnails).
Which reminds me to ask. Do all images and thumbnails attachments get converted and replaced, or only image attachments?

e.) I was planning to use Firefox, then I don't need to worry.

f.) We got about 8 or 10 groups in vBulletin but by default only 3 in Invision I've seen. I will add them before conversion manually then, that would make life a bit easier I guess. I'm just confused about creating profile options, like birthday and privacy options, profile options and such, but maybe they are configured somewhere else in the admincp of Invision.

Just an additional thing. In vBulletin by default there is a seperate usergroup for "Users awaiting e-mail confirmation" and "Coppa users awaiting moderation".
We don't use Coppa here, but where does Invision store users which did not have their account confirmed yet by default? And is this configurable somehow?
Because it's nice if you can see how many users have not validated yet and if needed can be removed/deleted manually. But a fresh Invision install only shows Administrators, Moderators and Members as usergroups.

[bfarber]

b) You configure your storage location in AdminCP > Overview > Files > Storage Settings. The files need to be in a web-accessible folder.

S3 is a file storage service provided by Amazon. You don't need S3 at all, I only mentioned it in case you intended to use S3 ultimately.

c) I'm not positive what you mean when you say "all images". Attachments are converted, as are user profile photos. Other images depend upon where and how they're used.

f) Birthday is a default field, you don't need to add that one.

 

Invision Community does not need to store users awaiting validation in a special group, and as such no special group is created. Subsequently, you can either (1) convert those groups if you wish, or (2) just remap them to your normal member's group so that any users currently in those groups end up in your member's group following the conversion.

You can see the member's currently awaiting validation from the AdminCP Members listing by clicking the appropriate filter button:

[Joel R]

B. You can leave your attachments there on the server.  

Amazon S3 is the simple storage option provided by Amazon Web Serviced for websites needing large, off-site storage of files and media and images.  You have to pay for the usage.  You can always explore that option later.  

[Black Tiger]

B.) Oke, since we won't use S3, that looks alright. I see only an uploads directory is used. Will Invision create subdirectory's itself in /uploads, like "emojis", "icons" and "attachments" or will it only be 1 big complete upload directory with everything in it by default? Because that's what it looks like in the Admincp.

C.) In this case, the attachments are images and thumbnails which were posted in postings on the forums. As far as I've seen it works the same here, except for that in Invision the users can easily drag and drop images in a post and it will be an attachment automatically and in vBulletin older then 5, the users need to upload it as attachment.

F.) Oke thank you, any custom field which are broadly used you or somebody else know about which is nice to use, like users website, or is this also present by default? Is there a list which is present by default? Because I was looking where I could set up some things they we could force users to fill in, but can't find where to configure them.

As for the membergroups, that's a good explanation. If Invision does not make use of a "awaiting email confirmation" group, there is no need for conversion as normally this group should not contain any users, or only for a rather short period.
It's good you explained where we can find those users, that's fine for us, thank you for explaining!

B. You can leave your attachments there on the server. 

How do you mean? Leave it in /home/user/attachment and the point to it in the Invision admincp? Will this not give issues on converting? My idea was to leave it there, use another one for Invision and if all is converted well, delete the original one.

Or do you mean something else? A better way?
 

[bfarber]

23 hours ago, Black Tiger said:

B.) Oke, since we won't use S3, that looks alright. I see only an uploads directory is used. Will Invision create subdirectory's itself in /uploads, like "emojis", "icons" and "attachments" or will it only be 1 big complete upload directory with everything in it by default? Because that's what it looks like in the Admincp.

Subdirectories are created. Example from my local installation:

23 hours ago, Black Tiger said:

C.) In this case, the attachments are images and thumbnails which were posted in postings on the forums. As far as I've seen it works the same here, except for that in Invision the users can easily drag and drop images in a post and it will be an attachment automatically and in vBulletin older then 5, the users need to upload it as attachment.

Attachment images will indeed be converted.

23 hours ago, Black Tiger said:

F.) Oke thank you, any custom field which are broadly used you or somebody else know about which is nice to use, like users website, or is this also present by default? Is there a list which is present by default? Because I was looking where I could set up some things they we could force users to fill in, but can't find where to configure them.

As for the membergroups, that's a good explanation. If Invision does not make use of a "awaiting email confirmation" group, there is no need for conversion as normally this group should not contain any users, or only for a rather short period.
It's good you explained where we can find those users, that's fine for us, thank you for explaining!
 

Birthday is really the only field I can think of that you may have set up as "custom" in another software but is built in with ours. We try to keep the number of "core" built in fields low since you can just create custom ones to suit your needs.

23 hours ago, Black Tiger said:

 

How do you mean? Leave it in /home/user/attachment and the point to it in the Invision admincp? Will this not give issues on converting? My idea was to leave it there, use another one for Invision and if all is converted well, delete the original one.

Or do you mean something else? A better way?
 

He just meant you aren't forced to use S3. You can store files locally on your server (i.e. in the uploads folder, which is the default configuration). Regardless, files will be copied/renamed during the conversion process.

[Black Tiger]

Thank you again, for your fast and clear answers! Looks to me like my initial questions are all answered.

However, they brought up some additional questions.

As for the upload directory's I see subdirectory's are made, but it's no problem if I create some myself and point to them, correct?

Then I just thought of another question. At this moment we got a couple of banned users. Since Invision does not have a banned usergroup and we want to use the Invision default system as much as possible, I can't point to the "banned members group" because it does not exist and we won't create it because we like to keep this default.

What is the best way to work with this? Just map them to the default members group? But how does that now they are banned users in that case?
Or what is the best way to keep those users banned when converting them to the Invision system?

[Joel R]

6 minutes ago, Black Tiger said:

As for the upload directory's I see subdirectory's are made, but it's no problem if I create some myself and point to them, correct?

No problem.  I'm assuming you're self hosted so you can create the directories as you wish. Just make sure your permissions are set correctly.  

 

[Black Tiger]

Yep, it's selfhosted and permissions are no problem either, it's mod_ruid2 or php-fpm so modern style and 755 is sufficient, but thank you for the tip and for answering.

Only remains the banned users question. Maybe bfarber can explain that or somebody else.

[AndyF]

7 minutes ago, Black Tiger said:

Only remains the banned users question. Maybe bfarber can explain that or somebody else.

If it is only a small number then it may be quicker/easier to simply make a note of their names etc then use the regular member group for them during the conversion, then immediately ban them via the ACP afterwards before opening the community again. This would be practical if there are say < about 20 of them.

[Nathan Explosion]

9 hours ago, Black Tiger said:

Only remains the banned users question. Maybe bfarber can explain that or somebody else.

Create a banned group, migrate the users to the group, when they are migrated check if they have the 'Banned' flag on their account - if they do, delete the group. If they don't, then ban them again and then delete the group.

[Black Tiger]

Thank you both for answering.

I've was looking at the wrong group and thought it were more then > 40, but I checked again just to be user, and it's only 6 of them, so in that case we will write down the names, convert them into the regular members group and then ban them again before reopening the forum.

 

[Stuart Silvester]

42 minutes ago, Black Tiger said:

Thank you both for answering.

I've was looking at the wrong group and thought it were more then > 40, but I checked again just to be user, and it's only 6 of them, so in that case we will write down the names, convert them into the regular members group and then ban them again before reopening the forum.

 

Bans will be converted, you shouldn't need to do anything there 🙂

[Black Tiger]

Oh that's even better, thank you!

[Black Tiger]

On 1/26/2019 at 6:34 PM, Stuart Silvester said:

Bans will be converted, you shouldn't need to do anything there 🙂

Just converted and I was asked to which group the banned users group should be taken. I choose "none" and still a banned usergroup was created.
Same for Coppa Users and Users awaiting email confirmation. So I just deleted these banned, coppa and awaiting groups afterwards. That is OK?

And one other question. I can't use html code in the forum title, correct?

Other strange thing is that after the conversion, editting the forums and permissions is very slow, is that normal?

[Ramsesx]

46 minutes ago, Black Tiger said:

Other strange thing is that after the conversion, editting the forums and permissions is very slow, is that normal?

Re-indexing in the background is very server intensive and can slow down all activities, that's a normal behavior after conversion. 

[Black Tiger]

Ah oke. Unfortunately we have an bunch of other problems. The most important one is that attachments are not visible.

I have to send in a ticket.

[Ramsesx]

4 minutes ago, Black Tiger said:

Ah oke. Unfortunately we have an bunch of other problems. The most important one is that attachments are not visible.

After my vBulletin conversion I had the same issues and thought everything is broken, but when the re-indexing was complete most was fine. My attachments were broken because I had selected the wrong storage place. 

[Black Tiger]

Several banned users even show op in the administrators group. :(
 

[Black Tiger]

Attachment seem to appear now so that could be indexing.

But color and size statements in messages and signatures are not recognized. And banned users are mixed everywhere. I even have banned users in the admin list.
Did you have that too?

[Ramsesx]

4 minutes ago, Black Tiger said:

But color and size statements in messages and signatures are not recognized.

Not sure about this exactly but maybe it is also because of the re-indexing process. Except banner attachments, in vB3 it was done by [sigpic] [/sigpic], this wasn't converted.

I had no issues with wrong assignment of the usergroups, all banned users were in the banned users group.

[Black Tiger]

Seems indeed a lot of things are because the reindexing. I did not experienced this reindexing before with other forums.
Just have a couple of other things left, support is already helping me and that's quick.

As for banned members, Invision is not using a banned membergroup. Members who are banned are just given a ban flag in the current usergroup and they are banned.
I did not convert to a banned group. So that's why I don't have them in there, wanted to use the default way Invision worked with.
Although a seperate banned members group is less confusing and more clear.

Maybe we can put them all in a seperate group later with some command when the reindexing is finished.

[Ramsesx]

2 minutes ago, Black Tiger said:

Seems indeed a lot of things are because the reindexing. I did not experienced this reindexing before with other forums.

Indeed, a conversion is no fun at all and you might be faced with more smaller or bigger issues. Next will be how your users accept the changes in style and usability, hopefully all will be fine at the end.