Professional Installation service Questions

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  • gabrielzero
    New Member
    • Oct 2009
    • 4

    Professional Installation service Questions

    Last night I purchased the professional installation service and I was wondering if anyone else has done this? I am totally new to the world of vBulletin forums and I am very inexperienced with this sort of thing. Any pointers of advise that can be given would be extremely grateful. I did create a few support tickets and I have been looking over the manual all morning.



    I am in a bit of a rush to move my community from Zetaboards to vBulletin, so I sincerely felt that this was the best thing for my forum. I purchased the owners license and I should have my forum up by tomorrow or Tuesday. While I am waiting I just feel anxious and I am eager to set up my community similar to my previous one.

    I do own a domain name and my hosting is already paid for. I have contacted the support over at Hostmonster and they walked me through all the information I need to provide. So I already feel like I'm "half way there", even though I'm nervous and excited at the same time. I honestly feel like this is going to open up so many doors for my community.

    It's much more important to me to "own" my boards, rather then sacrifice that freedom for a free board. I have devoted myself heart and soul to my community, and I believe this is something a community Admin should be responsible for. It has bugged me for a long time that I didn't have that control over my board, I rather look after my community's existence, then leave it in the hands of a complete stranger. That is why the price for the license sounded wonderful to me.

    I did have a few questions I wanted to toss out to the open public of this community.

    1. The Professional Installation doesn't include the transfer of posts and topics. I was wondering how difficult would it be for me to do that. I have a hard time following some of these instructions and I believe I have to wait until my forum is already up before the transfer can begin. But I have to ask if the transfer of data from a zetaboard forum to a vBulletin one is even possible.

    2. What version of vBulletin does the Professional Installation include? I read over the provided information a few times, but I am assuming it's the latest version. However I just wanted to be sure that my assumption was the correct one.

    3. Will I be able to match most of my forum's "look" and "feel" that I have now? I'm looking to transfer the layout, the style, and all the post buttons. If anyone here has ever transferred from a free board, I would really love to hear similar conversion situations and stories.
  • Alteran Ancient
    Senior Member
    • May 2005
    • 333
    • 3.8.x

    #2
    Originally posted by gabrielzero
    1. The Professional Installation doesn't include the transfer of posts and topics. I was wondering how difficult would it be for me to do that. I have a hard time following some of these instructions and I believe I have to wait until my forum is already up before the transfer can begin. But I have to ask if the transfer of data from a zetaboard forum to a vBulletin one is even possible.
    Last time I checked, Zetaboards (previously known as InvisionFree) had a habit of charging people for a dump of their own database. Before, it was relatively easy to transfer, as InvisionFree was based-off IPB1.3. Once you've got a copy of the database, it shouldn't be too hard to import the threads and posts (assuming they've not changed the way the database stores this info.)

    Originally posted by gabrielzero
    2. What version of vBulletin does the Professional Installation include? I read over the provided information a few times, but I am assuming it's the latest version. However I just wanted to be sure that my assumption was the correct one.
    A professional installation will always be the latest available version; at this time of posting, the latest version of vB 3.8.4 PL 1.

    Originally posted by gabrielzero
    3. Will I be able to match most of my forum's "look" and "feel" that I have now? I'm looking to transfer the layout, the style, and all the post buttons. If anyone here has ever transferred from a free board, I would really love to hear similar conversion situations and stories.
    You will want to retain the basic design of the default vBulletin template, but you should pretty easily be able to replace things like button images, colours, images, and other style elements. Also, to retain the sidebar-style homepage, you might wish to try a third-party modification such as vBAdvanced CMPS. Personally, I hate it, but everyone continues to use it as a homepage/portal for their forums. vBulletin 4 will come with a suite of tools and a CMPS system of it's own.
    -- David.

    If I spend much more time browsing these forums, I could be subjected to: 1. Burnt retinas, 2. Angry customers, 3. Lack of moderation, 4. Arguments.
    This used to be a nice place; what the hell's gone wrong?

    Comment

    • NicolasZN
      New Member
      • Oct 2009
      • 1

      #3
      Originally posted by Alteran Ancient
      Last time I checked, Zetaboards (previously known as InvisionFree) had a habit of charging people for a dump of their own database. Before, it was relatively easy to transfer, as InvisionFree was based-off IPB1.3. Once you've got a copy of the database, it shouldn't be too hard to import the threads and posts (assuming they've not changed the way the database stores this info.)
      Wrong. First, InvisionFree is still an operating service which is a modified version of IPB1.3, and there is a fee for a database dump. So you are correct in that respect.
      However, you are incorrect in several other respects - the chief of these being that "ZetaBoards" was not previously known as InvisionFree (like you had claimed). ZetaBoards is a new, entirely separate, forum software - hosted by the same company, yes, but it has not replaced InvisionFree and is not a modified version of IPB.
      That having been said, the tools are not available at this time to make a database dump from a ZetaBoards forum to be put on a vBulletin board.

      I hope that clears some things up in that area.
      Last edited by NicolasZN; Mon 12 Oct '09, 12:26pm. Reason: Clarification

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