Switching from vBull to another BBS: how hard?

Is it as impossible as it seems to switch with old posts?

[picophd]

Greetings,

If a website is using a BBS like vBulletin, for instance, and at some point is interested in switching to another BBS, how hard is this if the website wanted to keep all the members' information intact and wanted to let everyone still login using their old login names and passwords and all?

And how hard is it to migrate or switch, then have all the old posts show just as they are, or with exchanging HTML tags for minimal style code tags, with their dates and everything, in the new BBS?

Thanks for anyone taking the time to help and give advice.

[Jenstar]

Some of the more popular forum programs out there offer conversion scripts so you can convert data from one style of forum to a new one. Others will have information on how to do this in their support forum. Check out the new BBS software you are looking at, and see if they offer any conversion scripts or assistance when converting from vBull.

[rogerd]

The most popular packages generally have scripts for converting from other packages. VBulletin is common enough that any major BBS should have an import script. Sometimes, the importer is written by a third party - as Jenstar suggests, check the feature list and/or discussion forum for the software you plan to switch to.

In the worst case, you should be able to get some data over by reading the vBB database and putting the data in the new database. Chances are, you can find someone to do this at the new BBS site - any MySQL person could do it, but someone familiar with the new software is more likely to populate the new database correctly.

[picophd]

Thank you very much, guys, this answers my question and is a lot of relief, indeed.

[Jenstar]

You can also test it out on a test server, and make sure it all works correctly (get a few of the members to take a test spin). Will save a lot of work and get the bugs out before you unleash it on unsuspecting members. I have used test servers a couple of times when doing major changes, to make sure it works as I think it will ;)

[picophd]

Thanks for the tip. Sure, that does make sense to test for a considerable while after such a change, especially after switching HTML tags to Simple Code tags and so, inside posts.