My story...
Many years ago I had a vBulletin forum. Not knowing anything about how it worked, I purchased the license and hired someone to install it, convert it from the simple and obscure board I was using, and keep it updated for me. A couple of years goes by and some guys across the street decide they want to put my board out of business so they hire my guy to set up an almost identical board for them. Although my guy felt he was perfectly justified in taking on the job while I was still paying him, I wasn't persuaded by his argument and fired him. When the backend of the board started notifying me of updates I realized I lacked the credentials to access my license. Not only did he create my competition, but he stole my license.
That's when I found SMF... and began learning how all this works.
I successfully converted my board from VBulletin to SMF and all was good. Years pass, social networking... facebook, etc. take their toll and my forum's activity diminished substantially. (I did put my competition out though). So... deciding the effort to keep the forum up was not worth the reward, I gave it to a member that had been a good supporter for a longtime. Months pass and he begins to use the board I gave him to infringe upon my other internet properties against our understanding. On top of that, my old members complain to me that they liked our board better than the one it had become and wanted me to start it back.
In order to take advantage of the newest and latest, I purchased a license for vBulletin4 because I have forever been fussing with the incompatibility of my CMS with the forum software. Finally!... a turnkey package that completely integrated my CMS with my forum... or so I thought...
Eight months have passed and I've shut down the CMS, blogging portion of vBulletin4, installed my old CMS again, and living with a forum software I despise... bloated, buggy, and missing many specific abilities I had grown to take for granted with SMF.
If I ever get back to SMF I swear I never switch again!
I've been working for several weeks to convert back to SMF, and have found several ways to do it successfully, with one caveat... passwords do not migrate. I get messages regularly from users who forget their passwords and think I have to reset it and send them a new one. The thought of everyone being required to set their own passwords is enough to make me forget the idea. I read frequently of people asking legitimate questions about how to do something and being told "why would you want to do that" or "it's easy for a member to just do so and so..." Maybe for other members of other boards, but I imagine most of the questions from board owners come from people similar to me... they may or may not know why... but regardless... they DO know that it is.
If there is never to be away to migrate the passwords, then there is never going to be an acceptable way for me to get back to SMF... period.
That said... here's what I've done...
migrated vb4 to phpBB, phpBB to smf
migrated vb4 to myBB, myBB to smf
migrated vb4 to vb3 (with passwords), vb3 to smf
migrated vb4 to smf (today) using the information in this thread
End result... all posts, members, etc. converted (save the attachment issue) but passwords all require reset.
The only option I have found that I haven't tried is buying a license for IPB and converting vb4 to IPB in the hopes the IPB will convert to smf with the passwords.
I apologize for being so lengthy, but my issue is one echoed on many boards of many months and too many people have been extolling their success of creating a converter that leaves this glaring problem unresolved and unmentioned.
So... my simple question is this... is a converter that includes the migration of the passwords an impossible task, or one that has not reached maturity?
Shall I continue to wait, or give up and lie in the bed I have already made?
