Upcoming forum migration [15/10/2016 @15:30 CEST]

After about 3 years of torturing myself and others with vB, the time has come to move to a better forum software.

What?
I will be migrating over the entire forum over to xenForo again, the same system we had in 2012/2013.

Included:
- All threads/posts
- Members (including Steam links)
- Liked content (table structure is thankfully very similar)
- Forms
- Friends/contacts (will be converted into followers)
- Profile posts (will be converted into status updates)
- Private messages
- Everything else which is standard for a forum (thread prefixes, ranks, sections, ...)

However, the following areas/functions will not be present anymore:
- Shoutbox: barely anyone uses it, not really willing to pay $30 if it's only used for 10 messages a day. Replaced by Discord.
- Social groups: nobody really used them for their original purpose either, so may as well leave them out.
- Albums: unused entirely
- Calenders: only used for birthdays

Everything else should be available. Please keep in mind that migrating a forum isn't a easy task, hence why some features may be missing at the start.

Why?
There are numerous reasons why I have decided for a switch.
Main ones are:
- Low performance: often, vB takes a good 3-4 seconds to load fully, while a moderately sized xF installation only takes up to 1 second.
- No possibility to assign moderator permissions to a usergroup per-forum: even after all those years, the vB team still hasn't managed to implement such a trivial feature.
- Horrendous admin/mod UI: looks like from the '90s
- Questionable design choices: why, to this day, is it still not possible to properly position the ranks under a user's name?
I had to actually modify the table as well as the PHP code itself to get this feature.

Along with some other, smaller issues. Switching over should improve the experience for most people.

When?
Planned start is this Saturday, October 15 2016 at 15:30 CEST (GMT+2), projected end about 20:00.
Most of the time will be spent properly setting up the permissions (again) as well as verifying (sample-like) that there aren't any encoding issues/missing data.

How?
When the migration is starting, the current forums will set into maintenance mode, while the new ones will be installed on a seperate subdomain.
After everything is finished on the new system, the old installation will be moved to a seperate folder/subdomain (something like forums-old) and the new installation will take its place.
By going into maintenance I can make sure that no posts/threads will be missed out while migrating.

Once finished, a thread will be posted in the announcement section - please make sure to report any issues you have there (will note that there again).
In case that the migration is finished earlier, everything will be back online before the planned end (as always).