Website forums crash course....

[Slowdive]

A forum in one of my niche is closing down and it may be very possible that it will be offered to me free of charge. Obviously its in a sad state else it would not be up for free but it still has thousands of posts and a few hundred users who could be coaxed back to life. The catch its a currently a keyword.activeboard address and I have no clue about forums....
What I would ultimately like to do is get the forum to be mydomain.com/forums .....which I am sure active board would be happy to help me with if I stay with them? So next question is activeboard a decent forum software and if not how complicated to move the forum to Vbulletin?

I am probably not even asking the right questions right now but just thought I would throw these out while I was researching options.
Thanks

[petertdavis]

If activeboard allows you to download a copy of the database, it should be just a matter of whether vBulletin's Impex supports conversions from the data format they use. If not, you could hire a dba to help you convert it, but it may not be worth the cost. Whether activeboard would do a redirect from the old forum url to your new domain would also be important. Ask them about those two items, it may be worth it to you even if they charge a fee.

[Clinton]

Peter, if activeboards won't play ball, would it make sense to use a something like HTTrack to copy the entire sub-forum and recreate it on a new URL with vB?

And is that a violation of some law or activeboards' terms?

[petertdavis]

I personally wouldn't do that. But, then, if the forum is really dead and none of the members are going to return then it could be used to create a zombie forum.

[Slowdive]

Just a quick update, I am waiting for the current owner to decide what they wish to do with it. I will doubtless be back with more questions or at worst an update when and if I actually get forum in hand.
Thanks for advice, I am already pestering active boards.