Thread

Hi all,

I’m using EE with vBulletin as my forum. I’ve thought a few times about dropping vBulletin (vB) and using EE’s forum. I have a few questions though…

vBulletin’s user management and thread management features are pretty good, especially for purging inactive users and old threads. For anyone who moved from vB to EE’s forum, what are your thoughts?

For my main site, I have about 15 users in EE that serve as staff (content writers/editors). I take it that if I use EE’s forum, all my forum users will be also listed with the main site’s users? Did that make sense? I suppose what I mean is… I like the fact that my staff would have one account for both forum and main site. But I’m not keen in having 1,000s of users from my forum (about 360 that are active) mixed in with my site’s staff. Or are users from the main EE install and forum kept in different db tables?

For those that switched from vB to EE’s forum, how do you rate the difference in performance (speed, searching, etc)?

Last time I checked, there was a possible round about way to move users from vBulletin to EE’s forum, but no one had yet to provide a working solution for migrating threads and posts. I suppose this is the main show stopper. Any news on this front?

Next, a tough question (maybe only the EE devs can answer). My forum currently has 6,198 Threads, 59,784 Posts and 1,198 Members. The vBulletin database requires 80MB. Pretty big. I’m wondering how “efficient” EE’s forum is? I notice that looking at the way posts and custom fields are set up in EE, some tables/data seemed a bit useful (ie all fields are present for every post, whether you use custom fields for each post of not, etc). I would hate to somehow migrate all my content to EE’s forum and then find out that I am now using 160MB. lol

Finally, is there a demo of the admin functions of the forum?

Kind Regards,

Carlos Camacho
iDevGames.com | iDevApps.com

The membership system is installation-wide, yes.  This is EE’s strength, really.  You can make however many membership groups you need in order to put your staff writers into groups with specialized permissions for posting and editing content.

Yes, there’s a demo.  You can see how the CP works through the CP Demo, but if you really want to dig in, then the hosted demo is the way to go.  As far as performance and speed - we have some pretty busy forums that you’re on right here.  It’s lightning fast for me. =)

The membership system is installation-wide, yes.  This is EE’s strength, really.  You can make however many membership groups you need in order to put your staff writers into groups with specialized permissions for posting and editing content.

That’s what I thought. I see it as good and bad.

Yes, there’s a demo.  You can see how the CP works through the CP Demo, but if you really want to dig in, then the hosted demo is the way to go.  As far as performance and speed - we have some pretty busy forums that you’re on right here.  It’s lightning fast for me. =)

I just had a quick look. Does this demo allow for viewing how forums/categories are made? My guess they are made the exact same way as regular categories in blogs, yes?

Any news to report on export / import / migration capability?

Thanks,

I’m not sure how it can be bad; if you want separate membership systems - then use vB. *winks*  What is it that you need to separate, specifically?

The hosted demo lets you do everything.  The CP demo should let you create categories - and it is done much differently than the weblogs are done.  You can add new forum categories here:

Modules ›  Discussion Forum ›  Test Forums ›  Forum Management

As far as import/migration, check out the last page of this thread - specifically Paul’s and Les’s responses.  We’ve had several people migrate quite successfully, and there is a PHPBB Import discussion on the wiki and in these forums.  If you need help wit it, you might consider hiring someone from the Pro Network or posting on the job board. =)