FP - Considering buying a forum need a few questions answered first

[chockfactor]

Heya guys I am considering buying a forum, I found some guy where his auction ended unsold as far as I can tell.

Alright here is my questions:

1. The forum is running on vbulletin and I don't really feel like paying for a vbulletin license. Will the graphics created for the forum still be able to being used with myphbb(or what it is called)

2. Does myphbb have some decent monetization plugins? Like paid advertising and such?

3. How will I go about moving the members into the new forum? do you know a good reliable and cheap provider which would be able to do that for me?

[Luka]

VB is the best, why can't he give you the license? I think it's hard to transfer VB to MyPHBB, before there was a forum (med sized) and he tried to transfer to VB and he messed it all up, lost his forum).

[chockfactor]

VB is the best, why can't he give you the license? I think it's hard to transfer VB to MyPHBB, before there was a forum (med sized) and he tried to transfer to VB and he messed it all up, lost his forum).

I can buy the forum with vbulletin license(which obviously makes it more expensive), but quite frankly the forum isn't big enough and isn't making any money to justify getting a vbulletin license at that pricetag

[Bryan]

Is it using a nulled licence at the moment?

If not then you might want to inform the seller that each vbulletin licence is tied to a domain name, meaning that selling it to you without a licence at a cheaper price isn't going to do him any good as he'll be unable to use the licence for another forum.

As for migration from VB to either MyBB or PhpBB (MyphpBB mentioned above is simply an installation script + a pack of small extras for PhpBB), it's actually pretty easy - something called IMPEX should do the trick for you, although there's lots of other scripts for that. That's unless the forum is running VB4 in which case you're pretty much out of luck unless you want to migrate manually which is a heavy pain in the neck.

Templates, though, are a bit more tricky. All forum engines out there use different standards for their templates so if you want the forum to still look similar after the migration, you'll pretty much have to hire someone who will create a new MyBB/PhpBB template based on the current looks of the forum. Another thing you might want to consider is that after the change, the URL structure of the forum will change considerably, which can be extremely bad news when it comes to your search engine rankings.

All in all - I do suggest you to go with VB. Even if it's currently using a nulled version just buy the licence as it's only something like 100 bucks one-off fee but it will pay back bigtime. Basically - even if we say that the forum will be live for only a year, it'll need to make just above $8 per month to pay for the licence.

[chockfactor]

Is it using a nulled licence at the moment?

If not then you might want to inform the seller that each vbulletin licence is tied to a domain name, meaning that selling it to you without a licence at a cheaper price isn't going to do him any good as he'll be unable to use the licence for another forum.

As for migration from VB to either MyBB or PhpBB (MyphpBB mentioned above is simply an installation script + a pack of small extras for PhpBB), it's actually pretty easy - something called IMPEX should do the trick for you, although there's lots of other scripts for that. That's unless the forum is running VB4 in which case you're pretty much out of luck unless you want to migrate manually which is a heavy pain in the neck.

Templates, though, are a bit more tricky. All forum engines out there use different standards for their templates so if you want the forum to still look similar after the migration, you'll pretty much have to hire someone who will create a new MyBB/PhpBB template based on the current looks of the forum. Another thing you might want to consider is that after the change, the URL structure of the forum will change considerably, which can be extremely bad news when it comes to your search engine rankings.

All in all - I do suggest you to go with VB. Even if it's currently using a nulled version just buy the licence as it's only something like 100 bucks one-off fee but it will pay back bigtime. Basically - even if we say that the forum will be live for only a year, it'll need to make just above $8 per month to pay for the licence.

I actually don't know if it's using a nulled license I guess not, and he wan'ts 120 bucks extra because of the vbulletin license(I think I read it wron first time) but yeah that might be an idea Bryan. Btw is it the classic or the publishing suite you think of when you say 100 bucks for a vbulletin license

[Bryan]

My mistake - it was $195 not $100. And yeah I was talking about classic. IMO publishing suite is pretty much worthless .. have ranted about this in another thread.

[BrettM]

For my 2¢, what you describe in your first post may cost you more in time and headache then the actual license. Something to consider, but good luck either way!