Considering vBulletin + vBSeo

I see, thank you for explaining the differences between soft and hard delete.

I've printed the Stuff to do to get started topic and will be reading that on the way home.

Is there anything I should know/do when installing vBulletin initially? That is, I have been reading the Impex doc and it says, for instance,

Ensure that you have your storage type set up how you would like it if it is a fresh install, i.e. if you don't want your attachments in the database set vBulletin to use the file system before the import.

ImpEx will import using what ever the current settings for you board is.

Does this or any other decision at the initial vb install have any consequence for vbseo or seo in general? Which is the better route, attachments in the database or file system?

Should vbseo be installed before or after I import my site's database, or is it of no consequence?

Thanks!

When you import your data first import the to database. It is easier that way. When you are done you should move them to filesystem as keeping them inside database increase database size a lot which may cause problems during backups.

vBSEO should be installed after vBulletin installation as vBSEO needs vBulletin to run.

I just purchased vBulletin and am installing it. vbseo is next. I have to decide whether or not to use a prefix for the vBulletin tables. Does using a prefix or not have any effect/impact on the ease of configuring vBseo? Is it generally a good idea to specify a table prefix, or no? Waiting to hear back before proceeding. Thanks!

its good to use vb3_ as a prefix or something similar. Its just easier organizational wise, though it has no effect unless for whatever reason you'd need to install two copies of vBulletin on the same database (very rare for this need)

Thanks for the quick response, FightRice!

Originally Posted by Johnny5

Thanks for the quick response, FightRice!

Hi Johnny5, I am in the same boat as you are - have a PHPBB3 forum and just started installing SEO mods, but wondering if I should switch to the vBulletin - what is your initial impression?

I prefer the interface of PHPBB much better, but if the SEO is working, then it may be worth it.

Thanks!

Hi dhunt, comparing the month preceding my switch to vb + vbseo, September, 2008, with January, 2009, visits are up +78.35% and page views are up +74.88%. (Wow, it did that in 4 months?) The site was up for a few years before I switched to vb + vbseo, so it's very unlikely the natural passage of time accounts for all this. In my opinion, spending your time cultivating a community without vb + vbseo is like pissing in the wind, and I'll never do it again. Of course, your mileage may vary.

Wow - impressive. Congratulations.

Thank you for the reply. How long was the site down during the transition from phpBB to vBulletin?

Thank you. I had some difficulty with the import tool but eventually I got it all to work.

I've converted both phpbb2 and phpbb3 boards. One thing to note - and this may have changed since but I wouldn't know - is that vb's impex tool (the tool that does the migration) could not import phpbb3 passwords at the time. That made for quite a headache initially but was well worth it. If you do decide to go ahead with vb + vbseo, and if it is still the case that impex can't import passwords from phpbb3, you may want to let your users know ahead of time to avoid confusion.

I should probably answer the question you asked while I'm at it. :-P It took me about a day since I had a fairly large board to import and had to run the import utility several times.

Thank you for your feedback and help with this.

I have about 50K users and 500K posts. I will be researching the whole thing for a little while to build a checklist. So far it is quite a bit overwhelming but I assume vBulletin guys have a standard phpBB migration path (or I am counting on that).

I suspect you'll do quite well if you're bringing all that into vb + vbseo. Impex does handle phpbb2 and phpbb3. That's a good idea to read as much as you can on how to make the migration go smoothly. I've seen a number of threads around to that end. Good luck!