Almost ready to pull the trigger in Invision

[Arcade King]

Hi guys, great community you have here.

I've been running Aussie Arcade (Arcade and Pinball community) for well over 16 years now with Vbulletin as the forum software of choice. A year and a half ago I upgraded to VB5 thinking it had matured enough.....how wrong was I and my users have been struggling with the site ever since especially with navigation, attachments and the clunky user interface and the Calendar is a joke.

Like many others I'm finally fed up and ready to jump ship. I've had several questions I sent to Invision a few days ago with no response, maybe I'll have better luck here?
First of all the options "apps" you can buy, is there a description of what each one contains? Most are self explanatory but I don't need things like Blogs and not sure what Pages is? I'm not sure what my site needs.
How was the migration process for everyone? I've migrated through all the Vbulltin versions myself with little issue. My plan is to set up a test site along size the main one with a copy of the database and do a trial run.

Lastly yes I considered Xenforo but really like the feel on Invision especially being able to drag and drop multiple attachments into the editor. I's rather have these sort of features out of the box rather than installing several plugins to achieve the same thing.
Cheers
Travis

 

[Joel R]

1. Waiting multiple days for a response from their customer service is fairly typical. To be clear, nobody thinks that's good, but there have been steady history of complaints.

Their support is much better, usually a tier 1 response within a couple of hours.

2. Yes, you can view all of the apps:

Invision Community features - powerful community apps to delight users

invisioncommunity.com

You want Pages. Even if you don't understand it. Just buy it. It helps you build a website around your forum with static pages, blocks, templates, and infinitely-customizable directories.

3. Their migration from vBulletin is very, very, very stable at this point.

 

[Arcade King]

Thanks Joel for the reply. This is a VERY important decision for me that could either hurt the site further and bring it back to its glory days.
I'm very impressed with Invision's very clean look, by comparison VB5 looks like a antique.

Sorry for the typos in the first thread, I couldn't edit them out.

 

[K730]

I've been running Aussie Arcade (Arcade and Pinball community) for well over 16 years now with Vbulletin as the forum software of choice. A year and a half ago I upgraded to VB5 thinking it had matured enough.....how wrong was I and my users have been struggling with the site ever since especially with navigation, attachments and the clunky user interface and the Calendar is a joke.

One of my communities on IPS is around the same age (couple of years older) with around 2.2M posts and 30,000 members. During its life I've purchased a couple of other communities and merged them in, each time they find the new interface overall easier to use that includes coming from vB which were the last 2 imports.

Exception to that experience is the Gallery, it's the ugly duckling of the IPS suite and is the only area I've found severely lacking in creating user contributions.

First of all the options "apps" you can buy, is there a description of what each one contains? Most are self explanatory but I don't need things like Blogs and not sure what Pages is? I'm not sure what my site needs.

Looking at your website go with Forum and Pages. Explaining Pages to someone that has never used it is really hard because it's just so flexible. The closest thing I can quickly think of is wordpress meets form builder, you can create any content pages on your website that you want or you can create forms where when your users submit content those pages are created within categories for example.

For me Pages provides a reviews system with over 1600 user submitted reviews and a records system that holds global records.

In your case, you could create your whole Wiki content in Pages then when a user searches your site those results include your Wiki. You can have nice little blocks on the sides of forums that pull pages/wiki articles in to your side bar that match relevant keywords to that forum. I do this with my reviews, if you're in Forum A then any reviews related to Forum A appear in the sidebar.

How was the migration process for everyone? I've migrated through all the Vbulltin versions myself with little issue.
My plan is to set up a test site along size the main one with a copy of the database and do a trial run.

100% setup a test site first, this will give you an indicator of how long it'll take to convert and what you'll need to do after it to get the site to where you'll want your live site to be.

Lastly yes I considered Xenforo but really like the feel on Invision especially being able to drag and drop multiple attachments into the editor. I's rather have these sort of features out of the box rather than installing several plugins to achieve the same thing.

XF had its following because it was always the progression of VB, however years ago it needed to improve its offering. Unfortunately when you have a fan club that would extol bottled cats piss if it was labelled XF then you exist in an echo chamber and don't improve. They probably looked over their shoulder and were surprised Myspace didn't exist anymore. But hey the XF Apologists Guild needs to justify its existence, taz can thank me later for the extra page views.

 

[Arcade King]

Thanks yes I'm familiar with Wordpress, I have it set up on my sever hosting a simple business page. I basically have it set up to bridge posts from Facebook which make life easy so thats give me an idea what Pages is all about. Thank you.

Most of the users on my site would be in the 35-60 age group, don't like change and wouldn't have utilize 1/4 of the forums features like Blogs, Galleries and Articles which is why ease of use is paramount especially when it comes to the posting interface.
The current attachment system VB5 uses is a nightmare and confuses my users to insanity! it took a bunch of us complaining just a to get the 2 attachment systems using light boxes and that seems to be the last major update VB5 got before Christmas with no updates this year what so ever

Thanks for the time to respond. I'm actually getting excited

 

[Matt M]

I've just had a peek in sales tickets and I don't think I can see any unassigned from you. PM me the ticket ID and I'll chase it up.

Thanks

 

[Arcade King]

Hi Matt
I think I've got all the answers I need from this thread and I've been playing around with the demo...very very impressed and you've got a customer.
Will there be any issues running a test site under the same domain as my main forum? I just hope the migration goes smoothly.

 

[Matt M]

No, no issues as long as it is in its own directory. Don't forget to use the -TESTINSTALL suffix on the license key. Let me know if you need anything else.

 

[Tracy Perry]

Late to the game, but Pages is VERY powerful. I'm a neophyte with it and have used it to make up several simple reviews areas and a directory on a low volume site I run (just don't have time to get traction with it and run it more for my enjoyment than anything).

Accessory Reviews

Pipe and tobacco accessory reviews

thepipestand.com

Tobacco Reviews

thepipestand.com

Vendor Reviews

thepipestand.com

and a directory

Directory - The Pipe Stand

thepipestand.com

 

[Arcade King]

Trigger pulled and paid for, I'll report back as to how I go

 

[Arcade King]

Installation of the test forum went buttery smooth although before I go ahead with a test migration can somebody confirm if the original VB5 attachment and custom avatar folder gets modified during the conversion? I don't want to disrupt the main forum.

Aussie Arcade

Cheers
Travis

 

[K730]

Installation of the test forum went buttery smooth although before I go ahead with a test migration can somebody confirm if the original VB5 attachment and custom avatar folder gets modified during the conversion? I don't want to disrupt the main forum.

Aussie Arcade

Cheers
Travis

I haven't converted VB5 only earlier versions, however copy the folders then just use those copied folders as the source when it asks for file paths/locations.

 

[Arcade King]

Everything went smooth and importer did a better job than Vbulletins own importer from VB4 to 5 :/ Only issues we've noticed is passwords are not working for our users and they have to reset them?

 

[Bionic Rooster]

Arcade King I'm trying to register on your site, have received an email to validate but it just sits there spinning its wheels without completing account

 

[Arcade King]

Ok that's interesting. I've manually enabled it anyway.

Edit:
Says this in the log
User registered. Spam Defense checked and returned score 1.

 

[Bionic Rooster]

Thanks, that worked

 

[Bionic Rooster]

Edit:
Says this in the log
User registered. Spam Defense checked and returned score 1.

What's score 1 mean? Odd that the log says I was registered but it kept kicking me back to the validate email message, and on the off chance I tried going to the main page but was denied due to the validation not happening. Might just be a one off but keep an eye on it just in case. Great site

 

[Arcade King]

Thanks.
Yeah last thing I need is registration issues.

 

[zappaDPJ]

Having both sites available to compare is quite an eye opener. I don't dislike the look and feel of vB5 (I just despise the 3k+ worth of bugs still present!) but I'm quite surprised how dated vB5 looks sitting side by side with the Invision Community platform.

Your migration looks really good, I hope your users appreciate the move to what is clearly a superior platform

[Edit] The speed at which Invision Community renders a new page is head and shoulders above vB5. That alone is a huge improvement.

 

[DanielF]

Is there a ticket about the password problem? I handled one few days ago and am waiting for the clients reply. It seems that they changed the encryption with vBulletin 5.6.2