Considering upgrade from Infopop Ubb to vBulletin...

[ubbuser]

Hello everybody,

I have a board running Infopop's UBB version 5.47e on Linux. I have some hacks in it, namely Avatar "hack" (adds avatars for users), rate topic, and private messaging.

After all these hacks and a few more, each member file for the members in this board has about 16 lines with values for name, email, password, avatar choice, signature etc.

My question is:

1. Does Jelsoft have any special pricing for users migrating from Infopop's ubb?

2. Can I cleanly move all my members info and their messages (there are about 20,000) to vBulletin format? Can I import my color/style settings for each user from my UBB to vBulletin? This is the most important factor that'll help me make my decision

3. Ubb has this neat hack that writes the top (editable by the root) 50 articles ie latest articles neatly formatted in a table structure with only their topics show (links) onto a file that I can call via SHTML code on any page, like the frontpage of the web site. Does vBulletin have this feature or a hack available?

4. Does vBulletin have compression installed? If it is inbuilt (gzip compression to lower the bandwidth usage), do I have to install anything extra on the server hosting this bulletin board?

5. Does vBulletin have the following features built in? :

a. Avatars (and user uploaded avatars)
b. Custom Titles (for users above certain # of posts and so on..)
c. Private Messaging
d. Topic Rating (number out of say a total of 5, and stars)
e. User Polls within each forum
f. Ability to add dynamically, smilies?
g. Can I turn off all the fancy features like calendars, members that I see on vbulletin via the admin cp?

6. What security features does vBulletin have to prevent hacking etc.? Say, users try to post some scripts or weird cgi code into their messages to hack the site as an example...?

7. I have linux 2.0.36 running php 4.0.6 and mysql ver. 3.23.36. How do I know my PHP has zlib compression option on?


I have some other detailed questions, but I will post them after some of these most imp. ones are answered.

I hope to hear from vBulletin sales folks here Thanks!

Rick

[JamesUS]

1. Not at this time

2. Yes you can move all members/posts/forums, etc. I'm pretty sure colors are imported as well.

3. If you mean the 50 latest threads/posts, then this is available as a hack from http://www.vbulletin.org

4. Yes we have a GZIP compression feature. To use this you need to have mod_gzip installed on the server and compiled into PHP. There are instructions for this in the server configuration forum (and I think in the vB Manual as well)

5. Yes to all those For your last point (g), while every feature does not necessarily have an on/off switch (though many do), you can change anything you want by taking the links to it out of the HTML through the admin control panel. If you tell us what you want to disable we will give you instructions for this.

6. You can choose whether to allow HTML code in posts. If you do enable this, javascript and other dangerous tags are still not allowed. No PHP code can be executed through a post and we have regular security audits to confirm that the product is as secure as possible.

7. You need to make a blank PHP page containing the following:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Upload that to your web server called 'phpinfo.php' and view it in a browser. Search the page for any mention of gzip. Or if you prefer you can make the page, tell us the URL and we will check it out for you

Hope that answers your questions, please feel free to post any more you have

[ubbuser]

Hmm..

Hi JamesUS,

Thanks for the reply.

I have 5.47e version and not version 6.x. I have read posts about the import utility only working with 6.x versions? Is that true or incorrect?

If true, the utility will import user info files and the messages? Again version 5.47e Ubb

[JamesUS]

There are two versions of the UBB importer - one for 6.x and one for 5.x Both import users, threads, posts, forums, etc.

[ubbuser]

Hmm, well my memberlist file for each member is not as the default member list files for version 5.x ubb cause it was modified by me. There are extra lines that point to avatar info, gender etc. Would these be ignored?

Also I couldn't find a top 50 active title hack on vbulletin.org. Any help would be appreciated re: this.

Also about Custom titles. I would like settings such as:

above 1000 posts = some standard title 1 + some graphic file
above 2000 posts = some standard title 2 + some graphic file
And so on...

Then users can also have the option to request custom title after 1000 posts. Would vBulletin do this off the package or I have to add some hack to it?

Thanks again!

[Freddie Bingham]

vBulletin will handle all of that and more.

As for the hack, there are many "active/hot/most recent" thread hacks at vbulletin.org. You will have to find them yourself though as we do not support hacked forums (which you should be used to).

As for the import, the fields you added will be ignored. Also there is always the chance that the member's import might put data in the wrong place but you won't know that until you try it. We can give you no guarantees on modified data files.

[ubbuser]

Hmm.. on the member import, it seems that there is a chance the fields might not correspond to the new member (vbulletin) file after the import. My question is, (since I do not know how the import script works) can I redo this import and map the appropriate user fields (each line that is, in Ubb member file) to the appropriate user fields in the vBulletin member file?

Does the import facilty sort of lets you map fields manually or it just goes in and assumes some defaults and maps stuff automatically? Thx again!

[ubbuser]

Also, I have been having a hard time getting Apache to recompile with mod_zlib, or even dynamic module support. So I am looking at getting gzip compression support via PHP.

Could you guys please post the php compile time configuration command that'll add support for gzip/ zlib? That would be greatly appreciated since I did some web searches and couldn't find any configuration help for PHP installation and gzip/mod_zlib support.

[nuno]

http://i4net.tv/marticle/get.php?action=getarticle&articleid=12

[ubbuser]

I was hoping someone here could give me some details on how the import function of members and their messages works with vbulletin and Infopop's UBB version 5.47e ? Thanks again.

[ubbuser]

customizations.....

Also, re: modifications can I take out the "folder icon" column that is display along with each topic header and a smilie? Can I hide the moderator list from the main forum display page (where all the forums/categories are listed), can I remove the Last Post By xyz next to each date for each topic listed? Thanks!