I recently took over a forum based on PHP Nuke with phpbb as the forum software. I find the whole thing very slow and clunky, not to mention ugly. But before I invest time and energy in a new design for it, what are my best options for switching to a different software package? The forum already has over 800 members and 6,000 posts, so I imagine switching will be a huge deal. Has anyone successfully dealt with this problem?

Thanks for any advice you can offer!

well for the ugl factor you could get a new skin

and you can get converters thats what AF did they had IPB and a couple weeks ago the switched to vB

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Will Stumpf - TalkNikon
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Are you wishing to switch the PHP-Nuke, the phpBB, or both?

If you are moving from phpBB, you will more than likely have to switch from PHP-Nuke, as it relies on your forums right now. If you are moving from PHP-Nuke to something else (but want to keep phpBB), then you just need to look at different options as far as portals and CMS's that run on phpBB.

Don't let your high number of members and posts discourage you...as will said, we just recently moved from IPB to vB here at AdminFusion - we had about 140 members and 2,400 posts at the time if I remember correctly and it was not too much of a problem...it does take a bit of work though.

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Your conversion route will probably go php-nuke+phpbb -> stand alone phpbb then whatever other conversion you want to do. If you don't do the step of going to stand alone phpbb ur gonna have trouble converting to any other forum package.

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Just thought I'd update with what I ended up doing. The situation with phpNuke was quickly getting critical; pages were taking forever to load, posting dropped like a rock, and I could sense I was on the verge of a mutiny. I decided to port everything back to plain old phpBB and tore my hair out getting the conversion done (why don't these things ever work on the first try?), but eventually got it working and added SubDreamer Lite.

I still have a lot of work to do: I have to hack on a gallery, design a new skin, and add the Able2Know mod_rewrite mod. Revenue has gone down as I haven't yet optimized for AdSense, but at least the members are happy with the load time. Posting is up a bit and new members continue to join, so things are looking up.

eek, sorry the switch was so rough, but at least there seem to be a few signs of picking back up. Good luck with the continued work

Have you thought about or tried to sell to individual advertisers instead of click campaigns (Adsense)...because of the very low click through rate for forums, many forums find individual advertisers to be much more "rewarding", per se

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I have converted to phpBB standalone .. took 10 hours, but it's OK now ... It's possible and there are some scripts to change the tables extensions. Make sure you modify the permissions in MYSQL too, since otherwise you'll be a mod on your phpBB and the users will have admin level

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Yep, I did indeed have that problem with the permissions dojo; fortunately I was doing all this before pointing the DNS to the new server, so the members never got to experience the power and glory of admin status.

Ryan, I do plan to look into selling ad space to individual advertisers eventually, but that will have to wait at least until I get the new template done. I did add the Able2Know SEO mod a few days ago with no real problems, so hopefully Google is busy re-indexing.