منتدى استراحات زايد - Various Migration Questions

Hi guys*

Im a vBulletin virgin* iv just bought my 4.0 license* migrating an emerging SMF forum across to VB Publisher 4 on release.

Im planning my migration now* and have so far had a few hits and misses with importing my existing data. Iv managed to solve them one by one* how ever I still have a few more issues.

I would like to ask for advice though on the best course of action for migrating with minimal down time to users. Heres a few key points though

Im starting from scratch. Ill need to design a new theme and customize the whole forum. I don’t use default themes or freebie themes. I only use unique designs for my forums. Occasionally I might buy a premium theme and modify it* wheres the best place to keep a lookout for high quality* premium themes for VB 4 ? (when they’re released) .. Paid themes.

Theres significantly more to configure on the backend of VB then there is for SMF . Is there a way to configure the forum on an offline development version* and export the config for later import into my production environment ? I saw a config export in the admincp although it appeared to also take server settings like attachment paths* which would be different .. I guess I could just modify the XML before importing it ?

The transition its self is going to be tricky … Im thinking I might build up the forum in a sub directory from the current root (something like http://domain.com/vbdev and then when the day comes to migrate * Ill move all the SMF files to a backup dir * move everything from /vbdev into the root * update the paths in VB and re-run the IMPEX tool again to update any lost data? is this a feasible solution ? Anything I need to know about updating paths ?

Is there any indication when the impex tool for 4.0 will be released ? I would much prefer to do a clean 4.0 install rather than migrate my SMF data to a 3.8 install and then upgrade it to 4.0 …

Any other tips you guys have for a smooth migration ?

Cheers * thanks
Cheyne