OnyxZ32 is seeking quotes for a complex migration of 7 vBulletin forums with shared databases to Discourse. The forums have overlapping sections, such as classifieds, that can be viewed and replied to across all forums.
Forum Stats: 275,993 threads, 4,534,550 posts, 29,369 members.
codinghorror expressed concerns about accommodating the overlapping sections in Discourse.
OnyxZ32 suggested skinning individual categories differently, which zogstrip confirmed is possible using category slug classes.
rubydoob proposed customizing category visibility based on the website, with some categories visible across all websites.
OnyxZ32 confirmed that members have a single login for all forums and can access all of them, citing larger forum communities like www.bimmerpost.com as examples of successful multi-forum implementations.
Hi everyone, I’m looking for quotes on migrating our vBulletin forums to Discourse. However it’s a bit more complicated than your average form migration due to a bit of code we’re running that merges multiple forums. I’m not sure if Discourse can accommodate this. If it can, we’d much rather leave the migration to a professional familiar with Discourse.
Some details: We have several vB4 forums (7 in total, all with individual licenses) that share the same database. Each forum appears to the end user as a stand alone part, however there are areas of overlap with the broader network. For example there are classifieds sections that can be viewed and replied to no matter what forum you’re on.
Total forum stats: Threads: 275,993 Posts: 4,534,550 Members: 29,369
Please respond here with suggestions, recommendations or send me a private message! Thanks in advance!
PS: I’m going to go ahead and tag @codinghorror here because he seems to have a lot of technical answers
Sounds like you would have to customize the visibility of the categories based on the website.
Based on the website, you would hide/show a particular set of categories, with some of them visible for all websites.
Does a member of 1 forum automatically get access to the other 6?
Yes that’s exactly where I was going with my previous thought @rubydoob
And yes, each member has a single login for all forums and can access all of them.
There are several other much larger forum communities that do something similar to this, the www.bimmerpost.com forums come to mind. Individual forums appear as individual sites with different themes / skins / etc, but at the bottom there are sections like off-topic that are “universal” and appear on all forums allowing cross forum collaboration.
Obviously there are benefits to this from the standpoint of someone who runs multiple forums and for the communities at large as well.
