Have you ever moved your forum from one software to another?

[cpvr]

vBulletin is quite deprecated nowadays and no longer maintained.

It's still actively being maintained. They're on version 6 now. The software isn't highly used like it used to be, but it's still available for forum owners that would rather use it. That's the best thing about having the power of choice and options. You don't have to stick to just one software. The only software that isn't actively maintained right now is Mybb. It hasn't been updated for a year now. Their last major release was 1.8.38, which was on April 30th 2024.

https://mybb.com/versions/

vBulletin 6.1.1 is now available. - vBulletin Community Forum

<h1>vBulletin 6.1.1 Changes and Updates</h1> <p>vBulletin 6.1.1 is now available to download. In the upcoming weeks, vBulletin Cloud customers will be automatically upgraded to the new version.</p> <h2>Front End Changes</h2> <h3>Forum Card View</h3> <p>Administrators can

forum.vbulletin.com

in fact, vBulletin 6.1.1 was just released on March 25th.

 

[Black Angel]

Yes.

2005: MANUALLY migrated my tiny forum to IF. 2,514 posts

2008: MANUALLY migrated my not so tiny forum to Jcink: 6,083 posts

2014: Migrated my much bigger forum to MyBB: 77,123 posts

2024/5: Manually migrated my late brother's animation content to my forum off of Tapatalk to MyBB: roughly 3,000 posts

2025: After successfully and manually migrating my brother's content, I decided to reach out to Tapatalk, told them the situation and got the db for our forum, and now I am literally having a HELL of a time (NOT in a good way, but literally) trying to convert this content with the threads and post titles in tact from Tapatalk's ancient version of PhpBB to a version of PhpBB that will be compatible with MyBB's conversion/merge tool so that I can then merge it with my forum: 89,104 posts

Currently my forum is offline because I had to switch to a version of PHP that breaks my main forum in order to deal with this PhPBB/Tapatalk db.

 

[Bryn]

Was going to before, but bottled it. In fact I wouldn't be able to do it... 😕

 

[Ravenfreak]

Was going to before, but bottled it. In fact I wouldn't be able to do it... 😕

It's possible to convert Jcink to a self hosted forum. I've done so about a year ago. I know you just installed a new theme on your Jcink forum though so you'd be losing that if you were to convert to something else.

 

[Black Angel]

It's possible to convert Jcink to a self hosted forum. I've done so about a year ago. I know you just installed a new theme on your Jcink forum though so you'd be losing that if you were to convert to something else.

Can confirm, my 2014 migration was from Jcink to MyBB.. I had help from an admin of mine who had just moved his forum to MyBB months earlier..

 

[Felly]

Never personally done it, but I have been on other sites that have done it. I always ended up preferring the old hosting compared to the new, but that was probably because I was used to it lol.

 

[Bryn]

I know you just installed a new theme on your Jcink forum though so you'd be losing that if you were to convert to something else.

That's exactly what I'm thinking... 🙁 And I doubt it would be recreated under a new platform either, unless you can give me some reassurance about that.

 

[Senkusha]

Yes, kind of.

For years, I ran SMF. I created a new forum in 2020, it flopped. And I began looking for possible causes. One of the points that was mentioned to me was how dated the software I was using looked. So, I began taking notice of all the different forums I was visiting. XenForo was everywhere. But before I made the switch, I did test out a few other forums before finally settling on XenForo. Of the premium software options available, it's one of the least expensive.

Shortly before I migrated, I did set up a new SMF site. I got the board structure the way I wanted, some topics started, created a few test accounts. Only to migrate a couple of weeks later. I had to redesign most of the graphic, scrap the member groups ladder, invent other mechanics, and research what modifications I preferred. But the migration itself wasn't too painful. It only took a couple of hours, and most of that was me figuring out where everything was, me being like a fish flopping around on a sandy shoreline.

 

[Maya]

I haven’t. I have a forum on phpbb and some day I would like to move to Xenforo, if it grows.

 

[DaniWeb]

DaniWeb started in 2002 with phpBB. As the site grew, we switched to vBulletin. Then when vB was purchased by Internet Brands, switching to Xenforo seemed really daunting because there were just soooo many mods and add-ons that needed to be ported. Instead, I decided it would probably take the same amount of time to write a forum system from scratch perfectly suited to my needs, so that's what I did. Then after another bunch of years, I rewrote our forum system all over again, and that's where DaniWeb currently lives.

 

[Nomad]

I have moved phpBB and SMF to Xenforo. I had some issues with moving SMF because of the version issue.