JaiKai

Time to push the button. Just prepping some stuff and i will start the migration to the new platform. Hopefully it will all go fine, worst case i just restore the files and turn this old site back on. So can everyone give their condolences to the old site and take some screen shots if they want of how it looks for old time sake.

I still need an address for every invoice created to make a subscription. looking at the database tables i might have a way to create a custom script that makes invoices, and subscriptions based on previous users details. i don't know whos everyones address is but i'm sure i can create a dummy address just to allow the script to run.

I can understand why. Managed to find a way to do it. I have to create a new invoice for every premium member then mark it as paid, then edit ti to match the subscription dates.

It's perfectly fine for new users, it's just the current ones I can't add

I can migrate all premium members as a group. The issue after is that there is no subscription linked to the group.

No idea, And searching support forums tells me nothing. You cant even easily create a subscription either as it required billing information.

Everything is now fully operational and functional. only thing that needs sorted is how the hell we migrate the current subscriptions. Seems no easy way to do it and even by a manual process its near impossible.

New theme installed on the test site.

We need to purchase a new theme as the default one is a bit bland. What do you guys think of this : https://invisioncommunity.com/files/file/8141-elegant-ipsfocus/ Its very similar in style to what we have but looks much more crisp and updated. This one also allows the members to select the overall theme colour so they can change it to what they prefer. A working demo of this theme is below : https://ipsfocus.net/4x/

Last update before we decide on when we start moving :) The test board has succesfully moved all content including the attachments. The whole process takes about 4 hours; however after that there is a lot of background processes involved to rebuild the search index, rebuild the topic, post and images aswell as a whole lot of other stuff. All in i think it may take 24 - 48 hours all in to get a stable system again after we push to convert button.

I havent done anything to it yet. like i said previously; this is an untouched theme. And its just testing to ensure that i can import everything we have.

The test conversion is going well at 38%. i've left the forum live so anyone can log in to see what its like. https://www.300zxownersclub.com/

I remember moving to vBulletin 4 and the issues that caused. Although i also remember we had to move 2 weeks sooner than we wanted as another club copied our theme.

An eCheque can also take over a week to clear. But i do not understand why they are trying to send it via paypal if you dont own a paypal account.

Seperately from the conversion process we are going to lose a few things as follows : Gallery / Garage The new system has a gallery feature but i'm finding it hard to import these as the garage sytem is not a vbulletin product so the conversion script doesnt know about it and will not import any current garages setup. Thanks / Like / WTF Our favourite buttons to like are wtf a post wont be available instantly, there is the same feature but its horrible emoji icons in a drop box. good news is i'm sure this is a theme oriented change so we can look to change this at a later date. Premium Member Subscriptions The subscription system is completely different so these are not transferable; but don't worry Premium Members will be placed in a premium Group with access to all the features and privleges the paid for as part of the subscriptions. It simply means i may have to manually create 170 or so new subscriptions with the new system manually and add them to each account. Top Navigation Bar This may be a bit mixed up untill we get the sections sorted out to be in a known order, the default links are completely different as is the way the new system works so it may just take a while to get to grips with the new design. Classifieds Again this is a third party plugin for vBulletin so we need to create a new way to change the selling status and colours on each thread. We may have to do this manually until a selling plugin can be installed.

A little update. Testing is going good with a few false starts here and there. The trickiest part is importing everything in one go as if that process fails and need to wipe the files and database and start again. I'm doing one further test at the moment which is a full import with attachments and if that works we can do a full conversion.

That's it, but you need to be on the other test site and change it

Your phone must be defaulting it to desktop mode. On chrome there is a setting to uncheck desktop mode.

Have you tried loading it on your phone ?

This is taking forever and its at 62% I've setup the test site at if anyone wants to give it a try : https://www.300zxownersclub.com/ Just remember this is the default theme and not customised yet. Also the database is still converting so not all posts may be available and there may be errors.

Well, managed to screw that one up. Managed to import all the threads and posts but it left the members and pictures out. I think this may take a few attempts to get 100% correct.

Its now converting posts 7.5% complete (completed 12000 of 1744916 Posts)

There is a lot of prep work needing done first. The default theme is great and we could work on the features as we go but if we move soon as we know it works it may confuse alot of people. The issue is the test system is just that - a test system, so anything i do to set that up and customise; needs to be done again on the real site. The permissions for each user group will need to be setup as does the subscriptions as they may need to be set manually at first.