Advice needed

[winnet]

I have a large phpBB forum: >6000 users, +200.000 posts, database exceed 150Mb, very slightly moded
I want to convert to SMF; that converters really works? I don't want to lose any of my posts, topics, etc.

Din anyone has any success or horror stories with similar forums?

how large it will be the database after? is any significant change in mysql load? cpu load?

[IchBin™]

Well my forum certainly wasn't as big as yours, but I just recently did what you would like to. I had about 275 users with  only about 10,000 posts. I didn't have any problems with it what so ever. It's always easy to do a test. If you have control over the server put in a test SMF forum. Then run the converter on your phpbb forum to your smf forum. This doesn't delete or replace anything on your phpbb forum so it's pretty safe. Of course, ALWAYS backup when doing anything like this.

[jerm]

went smooth for me

but you can always do a test run of the forum first before you do the "big move"

[Elijah Bliss]

I have a large phpBB forum: >6000 users, +200.000 posts, database exceed 150Mb, very slightly moded
I want to convert to SMF; that converters really works? I don't want to lose any of my posts, topics, etc.

Din anyone has any success or horror stories with similar forums?

how large it will be the database after? is any significant change in mysql load? cpu load?

I converted from YaBB with more posts that that and the conversion went as smooth as butter. Your database should be around the same size as it is now.

[Jerry]

SMF doesn't delete any of the phpBB stuff, so it is unlikely you will loose anything. Just make sure to make backups of everything before converting.

[winnet]

Is anyone here who has a forum this large?
just a link I need to see how it works on posting, reply, etc. no admin needed

I want to probe this smf forum before to convert my phpBB
Since now I like it, looks nice, a lot of features.
All I need is to find the functionality, the uptime, the comportament when it will be 100 users online, 1000post/day minim, etc.

thanks in advance, you probably will have another users of smf soon.

[Grudge]

Well, Ben S's forum is pretty big:

http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/

Obviously it does depend somewhat on the server. Are you dedicated hosted? (i.e not shared)

Also, you run > MySQL 4.0 I assume, as this will make a big difference (SMF is optimised for 4.x)

[[Unknown]]

Din anyone has any success or horror stories with similar forums?

This forum is bigger, we seem to do okay.  That said, this server is dedicated... I hope you're not on shared hosting?

how large it will be the database after? is any significant change in mysql load? cpu load?

Probably about the same size.  I would guess less, hopefully, depending on your MySQL and server configuration.  While we've had success stories with phpBB conversions - even large ones - no one has actually made measurements.

Come to think, would you be willing to do so?  I'd be more than happy to work with you to help make sure their accurate - both for phpBB and SMF.  No one likes inaccurate statistics.

Is anyone here who has a forum this large?
just a link I need to see how it works on posting, reply, etc. no admin needed

Okay, well, first - you're posting on one!  Don't blink!  Also:

http://www.redandwhitekop.com/ (as mentioned)
http://forum.msi.com.tw/
http://www.blaqboard.com/v2/Diesel/Edition/ (bling bling, Elijah Bliss .)
http://www.dubcc.com/forum/
http://www.chevyavalanchefanclub.com/cafcna/
http://www.tmlfans.ca/forums/
http://www.hfstival.com/yabbse/
http://board.win32asmcommunity.net/ (I know they converted, I think from phpBB)

There are a few tips for running a larger forum, especially if you're a Charter Member.

-[Unknown]

[Trekkie101]

did you miss out the biggest? http://www.40konline.com/community/index.php

[winnet]

thanks for the examples, some of them are really big, I take my time one or two days to navigate a little on those to see how are doing
in the mean time I`m working on a test forum to understand the admin panel and the features

One questions: I am pretty disappointed with search engine of phpBB so I want to know how the search engine works in smf? i want to not index a lot of common words, this generally goes to a very large table for wordsmatch, wordslist
is any possibilities to create the search tables starting from posts?  I am willing to empty those tables if it is possible to recreate them from posts and topics after a successfully convert operation
I made some prune on my forum and I reduce the number of posts to 100.000 more or less, but this is the minimum I can get
medium I have 1200 different visitors and around 30.000 views per day and it make 30-35Gb traffic per month so is not very loaded; more correct is a medium forum not a big one

PS1: the hosting server is a dual Xenon 3Ghz, 1Mb cache each CPU, 4GB RAM,
running apache 1.3.33, php 4.3.10, mySQL 4.1.10a-standard hope it`s OK

PS2:if there is any posibilities to do some statistics, I will do it for you and for others interested peoples. I administrate my site from a cpanel interface, I dont have other access to server, so if you have some monitoring stuff that I can put them to work from there ok, will talk about

[Trekkie101]

PS1: the hosting server is a dual Xenon 3Ghz, 1Mb cache each CPU, 4GB RAM,
running apache 1.3.33, php 4.3.10, mySQL 4.1.10a-standard hope it`s OK

OMG!

Is that a dedicated server?

[winnet]

PS1: the hosting server is a dual Xenon 3Ghz, 1Mb cache each CPU, 4GB RAM,
running apache 1.3.33, php 4.3.10, mySQL 4.1.10a-standard hope it`s OK

OMG!

Is that a dedicated server?

what do you understand as dedicated server? if it runs only this domain?
no, actually it runs more domanis, but this one is the bigest, others are mostly html, little php, the medium load is around 15%

[[Unknown]]

One questions: I am pretty disappointed with search engine of phpBB so I want to know how the search engine works in smf? i want to not index a lot of common words, this generally goes to a very large table for wordsmatch, wordslist

SMF does not do this.  However, 1.1 will have an option to use MySQL's (better anyway) fulltext search functionality, which is what you'll want.  Charter Members are getting 1.1 Beta 1 very soon.  Very.  Emphasis on very.

is any possibilities to create the search tables starting from posts?  I am willing to empty those tables if it is possible to recreate them from posts and topics after a successfully convert operation

Of course.  Fulltext indexes, in MySQL, can be added and removed and optionally used.

medium I have 1200 different visitors and around 30.000 views per day and it make 30-35Gb traffic per month so is not very loaded; more correct is a medium forum not a big one

We pull 45 gigabytes, as I may have mentioned, here.. but there is SMF for download, which is a good size chunk of it.  The server is a Celeron 1700Mhz with 512 megs of ram.  In comparison with your server, simplemachines.org's (which also runs yabbse.org) is a... not an ant, but like a squirrel.  MySQL 4.1 is very okay .

PS2:if there is any possibilities to do some statistics, I will do it for you and for others interested peoples. I administrate my site from a cpanel interface, I dont have other access to server, so if you have some monitoring stuff that I can put them to work from there ok, will talk about

Glad to hear it .  You don't have any ssh access though?  That should be fine, but it makes it easier.

I would suggest sampling load averages over a period before the conversion, once every hour to try to grab any peak times.  A quick top or ps could grab cpu and memory usage.  Then, the same after the conversion and we get a comparison.  To make it fair, though, is the harder part: we want to make sure the comparison is equal, that emails are getting sent for both in the same way, etc... which should still be easy .

Thanks very much for both the interest and the willingness to look into statistics.  Please pm me if/when you've decided on the conversion with the date so I can help you more directly arrange the benchmarking (should you still be willing and interested.)

-[Unknown]

[Ben_S]

Your forum should fly on that server, I push approx 10GB / day on a busy day, over 100,000 page views /day  on the forum and 400,000 - 500,000 page views / day across the entire site (all SMF SSI.php based) with no problems on a server significantly less powerfull than yours (P4 3GHz 1.5GB ram SATA hard disk).

did you miss out the biggest? http://www.40konline.com/community/index.php

Biggest by number of members, not in terms of number of posts these days though

Oh and another large board is www.craftster.org (idk's), thats very high traffic.

[scottb]

Perhaps one of the most active SMF forums to date though its in Thai. Its cleaned out regularly but they get roughly  5,500 posts a day.

http://rcweb.net/forums/