How do your users get transfered if you change hosts?

[tcpip]

So as a new member here wanting to start my own forum, I've been reading lots of posts, and a common concern seems to be portability. I was wondering how the user base(nicks and passwords) get transferred if you switch forums.
From what I understand so far, there are some free hosts(I'm not going to be hosting) that will let you transfer a data base of information from their site. Does this data base contain all the nicks and passwords as well as all the posts etc..?
Is there a standard format amongst all boards of the same type(eg invision phpbb3 etc..) or even boards of different types, so that the user lists/passes can easily be imported?
If you had to do this with a converter or by some script you wrote yourself to harvest the data could you still do it?

 

[Lisa]

Most free forum hosted solutions (not self-hosted) will charge you if you decide you want to move to a different software - usually self-hosted. And, from what I've heard, it's not cheap.

The database does generally hold all the information from your site, including threads, posts, members, passwords, images. And most self-hosted solutions do provide a conversion tool to help convert from one forum type to theirs.

If you are already considering the future possibility of moving to a self-hosted solution, i would give serious consideration to starting that way now. It will probably cost you less to get yourself some hosting and use a free software like MyBB, phpBB or SMF to start with and then, if you want to, convert to a paid one - XenForo, vB, IPB - later on. You will already own the database yourself and won't have to pay to get a copy of it, like you would with a third-party hosted solution.

 

[arma358]

^^ I'd have a agree with Azh. The free forum companies do like to charge an arm and a leg to transfer a database over. Generally speaking, it's probably not worth the hassle, and you'd save that money by going self-hosted.

 

[gogoblender]

So as a new member here wanting to start my own forum, I've been reading lots of posts, and a common concern seems to be portability. I was wondering how the user base(nicks and passwords) get transferred if you switch forums.
From what I understand so far, there are some free hosts(I'm not going to be hosting) that will let you transfer a data base of information from their site. Does this data base contain all the nicks and passwords as well as all the posts etc..?
Is there a standard format amongst all boards of the same type(eg invision phpbb3 etc..) or even boards of different types, so that the user lists/passes can easily be imported?
If you had to do this with a converter or by some script you wrote yourself to harvest the data could you still do it?

I think our dbase was closing in on almost 7 or 8 k posts when we decided to make the split and leave invision free for ipb hosting...hugely expensive but they really spoiled us.

You're best to ask who you're hosting with what the rates are for moving...invision free was pretty reasonable with us... think it was like 10 bux or something? But there is a person here who actually had a massive big board that she had grown up on invision free, and they were charging her a few hundred bux for the move for everything... which, if you think about, what are charges for buying software, renewing, buying url, renewing, hosting, and so on and so on... if you're a busy forum the free hosting site has to handle all this, while we get to post away freely with no worries... we have sometimes wondered about staying at invisionfree, I knew we debated it a lot before we made the decision...never a worry about bills to pay!



gogo