How to Change an SMF Forum to vBulletin
Choosing the right forum software for your online community is important for making your site successful. When you start an online community, you might choose free forum software like phpBB or SMF, but as your community grows, you might find a need for additional functionality. VBulletin has free ImpEx forum conversion utility available to registered users that lets you convert your SMF or other forum to a vBulletin forum and retain all members, posts, sub-forums and other features.
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Instructions
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Log in to your SMF forum Administration Center. Click “Forum Maintenance,” then click “Backup Database.”
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Upload and install the vBulletin forum software on your server. Install the software in a different directory than your SMF forum.
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Log in to the Members Area at vbulletin.com. Click “Download ImpEx,” then click “Download Latest Version.” Click the “Agree” check box for the License Agreement, then click “Download ImpEx.”
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Extract the ImpEx ZIP file. Open the “Upload” directory in the extracted file, then open the “ImpEx” directory. Rename “ImpExConfig.php.new” to “ImpExConfig.php.”
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Open “ImpExConfig.php” in Notepad or another text editor. Enter “mysql” as the database type, “localhost” as the server, your vBulletin database username and password, the vBulletin database name and the table prefix of your vBulletin tables in the target database section of the configuration file.
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Enter “true” after “$impexconfig['sourceexists']” in the source database section of the configuration file. Enter the database type, server, username and password, database name and table prefix of your SMF database. Save “ImpExConfig.php.”
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Open an FTP program and upload the “impex” and “includes” directories to the directory on your Web server where vBulletin is installed.
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Log in to the Admin Control Panel of your vBulletin forum. Click “Import,” then click “Import” and “SMF” or “SMF2," depending on the version of your SMF forum.
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Click each import module on the page, starting with “Check and Update Database.” Wait until the page updates to click the next module. When you have run all of the modules, the conversion is complete.
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Tips & Warnings
Check forum and usergroup permissions after conversion to ensure that all forums and users have the same permissions as in your SMF forum.
Click “Users” and “Send Email to Users.” Send a message to your users that they must reset their password for use in the new forum.
