How was the xenforo upgrade?

Greebo

N9017H - C172M (1976)
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
10,976
Location
Baltimore, MD
Display Name

Display name:
Retired Evil Overlord
Hey guys,

I'm looking at migrating another site of mine from vBulletin 4 over to Xenforo. Since it's a new platform to me, and you guys did a successful migration - mind sharing any advice you might have? Any gotchas to look out for or "wish I'd known" situations?

We're planning to do a pair of dummy sites to prep - one for setting up theme and then based on a copy of the theme site, a second to test migration.

What was your migration experience like?

Thanks in advance!

Greebo - retired Overlord :)
 
I have a specific question about xenforo: On another forum I'm on (which recently converted to xenforo), their search doesn't allow searching for words 3 letters long (for example, "NXI"). I just tested it here and it works. Is POA using the standard xenforo search, and if so, how do you configure it to allow this?
 
Hey guys,

I'm looking at migrating another site of mine from vBulletin 4 over to Xenforo. Since it's a new platform to me, and you guys did a successful migration - mind sharing any advice you might have? Any gotchas to look out for or "wish I'd known" situations?

We're planning to do a pair of dummy sites to prep - one for setting up theme and then based on a copy of the theme site, a second to test migration.

What was your migration experience like?

Thanks in advance!

Greebo - retired Overlord :)
Xenforo questions should be directed to @jason, who was the technical expert. I like the Xenforo platform, especially on my phone.
 
I have a specific question about xenforo: On another forum I'm on (which recently converted to xenforo), their search doesn't allow searching for words 3 letters long (for example, "NXI"). I just tested it here and it works. Is POA using the standard xenforo search, and if so, how do you configure it to allow this?

I believe either @jason or @jesse hacked on it to fix that. Seems like that came up during the transition as a complaint, and they beat on it until it gave in. :)
 
Search limitation is generally caused by the minimum length setting in MySQL for full text searches.
 
In what language is NXI a word?

I believe either @jason or @jesse hacked on it to fix that. Seems like that came up during the transition as a complaint, and they beat on it until it gave in. :)

Search limitation is generally caused by the minimum length setting in MySQL for full text searches.

Yes. It was a limitation on the mysql side. We changed this limitation because airport identifiers are often three characters and we wanted them to work.

Here is a relevant thread...

https://xenforo.com/community/threads/xf-search-engine.1143/#post-129631

Here is what we did to fix it (on Ubunut)...

Code:
user@server:~$ cat /etc/mysql/conf.d/xf_myisam_3_char_search.cnf
[mysqld]
ft_min_word_len = 3

Once you make this config change and restart MySQL, you will have to rebuild your FULLTEXT indexes. See relevant instructions here...

https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/fulltext-fine-tuning.html
 
@Greebo Hey, Chuck...

It was a long process. But, overall, pretty straightforward. Somebody recently pinged me about this via PM asking me for "tips". Here is my reply to them.
Hello! Sorry. It's not a short answer.

1) I first transitioned the vB site to AWS so that I had more tools at my disposal. Once I could snapshot servers as backups and knew that I could recover pretty easily, it allowed me the confidence to know that I could forge ahead.

2) I installed Xenforo on a different server. That way I knew if things were working because of how I'd configured the server for Xenforo vs something that was in place for vB. It also allowed me to shut down and snapshot the old vB server when I was done and I don't have remnants of vB on the new server ongoing.

3) I practiced several times so that I knew exactly how long it would take. I'd end up tweaking something every time. The rewrite rules, for instance, that redirect old vB urls to their new Xenforo URL.

4) I had an image that I kept up on AWS of the configuration. Every time I would practice, I'd snapshot that image and start another from that one in order to practice the import. When I finally got everything right I made a snapshot of that image and knew that I could restart the import again from a new clean server if I needed to.

5) We invited a few of our regular users to preview the test install and help us tweak things before we cut over. They were invaluable in finding bugs and other things that would annoy the users. For instance, based on their feedback we completely disabled the Xenforo feature called "profile messages" because they couldn't figure out what they were for. Some profile messages were imported from vB on the initial test runs and I could tell that they'd be confusing...so I just didn't import them and disabled the feature completely.

6) Any time I did the same thing more than 2-3 times, I'd create a script for it. Those scripts are still around and used. One, for instance, sets all of the correct permissions on the Xenforo install after I update the core software.

Code:
<shared some code that I don't want to share publicly>

I wrote this one as the basis for how I update plugins. I have to update paths a little each time, but it leaves a trail for others to follow if they ever had to update things. That was important for me. "Set this thing up so that if I got hit by a bus, there are breadcrumb trails for somebody to follow"

Code:
<shared some code that I don't want to share publicly>

I then added a separate volume for attachments, so that if that ever filled up it wouldn't take the entire server offline. We used ubuntu, so I then turned on "unattended upgrades" so that the server would patch itself. I then implemented SSL. I then put a solid backup solution into place.

Those are what I have for you off the top of my head. Hope that helps!
 
Be sure to read about how to properly manage themes. It's easy to hack them, but we tried to pay attention to how they *should* be managed. For instance, we paid for ours...and then installed it...and then created a derivative theme for our color changes, etc. That way we can upgrade the base theme and or sub-theme just applies our custom changes as a kind of overlay. Not sure that makes sense...

See screenshot...
 

Attachments

  • Screenshot 2017-08-18 09.12.50.png
    Screenshot 2017-08-18 09.12.50.png
    194.6 KB · Views: 10
Back
Top