Converting from modified UBB 5.45c

[kerpen]

I have a large, active UBB 5.45c with several hacks running at forums.cross-x.com. I need to move to a SQL-based solution and am considering vBulletin.

There are two fields added to the member files-- one for avatar and one for AIM nick.

There is a forum where posts do not count in postcounts.

The topic threads have an icon added for AIM.

How easy would it be to convert my board to vBulletin? Do you you provide custom conversion scripts or would I be responsible for writing one?

Also, if you could point me to some head to head comparisons with the other similar options--phpbb2 and yabbse, I would appreciate it. I tend to prefer commercial software but I have heard strong arguments for all of the choices.

Thanks.

[Steve Machol]

I upgrade from UBB 5.45c to vB last year without any problems. Of course I really didn't have any hacks to speak of either.

Obviously an import script cannot take into account all of the possible hacks one could add to their board. Therefore it is, by necessity, only written to import from a substantially unmodified forum. You could try the import script and in all likelihood you'd get a functional forum (minus the hacked features.) However there's no way to know for sure because the script expects an unmodified forum and cannot account for possible changes.

[kerpen]

Can I look at the conversion script before buying to see how easily it can be modified to suit my needs?

[Steve Machol]

Normally no. But you can send and email to [email protected] and ask.

[ubbuser]

I think the Avatar hack adds an extra profile field for each member file in the /Members directory in UBB, which may cause problems with the import script or maybe not.

What I did was run the script from UBBdev.com that would strip out the extra profile lines and make each member file into a standard default UBB 5.4x member file.

After that I did a successful import. Then all the members did was to go back to the settings section and re select their avatars in vb. Very simple process.