Moving to 4.2 from a Joomla-based system (repost - my original post never showed up)
 

Greetings.

We're currently using Joomla, with 3rd party modules for forum and blogs, as well as custom developed modules for some of our specialized user applications. Nothing is very well integrated. The forum module is no longer being supported / produced, and it's very non-friendly. We can't upgrade our core Joomla because of this.

We're looking at vBulletin, and it seems like 4.2 is where we should be looking.

-Can we somehow get a demo of 4.2?

-If we purchase a 5.0 license, can we install the 4.2 version on a server to which only our admin team has access, by IP address only, to test, develop, and migrate? Then, we would remove the software from that test server, install on our production server, and complete the live migration there.

-Can we import our existing forum data into vBulletin fairly easily? If not, are there any big "gotchas" in running the appropriate SQL scripts to import?

-Is there an API to integrate some of our custom code into the blog, so that if a user executes one of our custom applications, he can export this to a blog by clicking a button? If not an API, is there db documentation so that we know what columns we need to populate?

-Does each user in 4.2 get a blog automatically when they register?

-Can we somehow develop a Single Sign on so that we create a Joomla user account, and this automatically creates a vBulletin user account? I see there are "bridges" available for some of this, do they work?


Thanks

BobW

EDIT: I should also add that we have a library of about 1,000 articles that we wish to manage, and we actively publish articles on a monthly basis. Can the CMS in 4.2 handle this, and give us search functionality, etc., and integration with the forum for article discussion?