I have a large Classic board. 10,450 members and 65 forums.

My two biggest fears:

1. The import process will run, and then half-way through I'll run into an issue. I realize it takes time, but do issues usually surface right away, or could they pop up at any time? I dread being stuck with a non-working board.

2. I really want to match the look of my Classic board. I plan to take screen grabs of my current style sheet settings so I know for sure what I'm using. Any tips or tricks to remember before I make the jump?

Really, I'm just looking for some words of encouragement so that I pick a weekend and finally make the upgrade.

Generally, they surface right away; look at it like this, if it fails, your classic forum is still there, so you won't have a non-working forum.

You could have someone (:ahem:) redo your style for you, numerous people (:ahem:) do style work rather cheap ($30/hr) for UBB.threads.

I've moved over a few classic boards; they take the longest to move over, but you'll definately appreciate how much faster threads is compared.

Thanks Gizmo.

I normally do at least one import a day. It's rare that I've encountered any problems when importing a classic forum. The only times I've had a problem is when someone handed me a classic board to import that was having issues while running under classic.

I have issues when running period... But my forums run fine

Rick, thanks for the encouraging words.

Mitch, do a dry run first. Then do the styles, taking all the time you need because this is just a dry run. Make the styles the way you want, tinker all you need. Then save them for when you do the real thing. Remember the import doesn't write to your classic board, so you can do as many test runs as you need. Nobody will even see them but you.

Can my classic board remain open when I'm importing?

I wouldn't recommend it... It won't break anything, but it could cause some problems with the import, or at least missing data should anything be posted...

I must have done half a dozen imports before going live.
Usually late evenings as it was faster.

Each time I made notes about the settings I was using in the control panel.

Finally I bit the bullet - and I'm really pleased I did.
I'm very happy with my much faster boards.

I normally have a question or two to ask every day here.
They are always answered and usually within an hour or two as I'm sure you're aware.

Go for it - you won't regret it

I done 2 tests into databases which i kept one and dumped the latter, as that's now my test forum.

But i done as you did prepared everything and went for it.

Still had lots of tweaks to make,
but its so much better that i did.

Well done.

lol I probably did 30 imports; which is odd cas the one i went live with took forever to import over lol...

I'm really pleased with it, I've seen a LOT of restored resources on the machine (I'm anal retentive about resource usage, so I monitor it regularly).