I know it would be faster on the server - that doesn't mean it will appear faster to the user if they have a slow internet connection - which is most often the case.
As far as I can tell the switch would only take a few minutes but I plan to have the board down for a few hours - possibly as long as a day as 'insurance'. As I understand the importer it takes all the old messages, forums, member details and such and imports them into the wwwthreads database - so I would expect topics and such to stay the same. Supposedly even the members database is carried over - but that might be a problem as many people ask the software to memorize their password in a cookie - and thus don't remember what it actually is.
Of course, that's in a perfect world. I've migrated enough data in the last 25 years to know imports (migration) seldom go as planned.
The idea is to stop using UBB if the migration works. The plan is to end up with the same content - just a different program.
One of the features that really turned me into a believer is the option for 'members' to attach a file to a post. That would (could) end all the "...e-mail me a copy of that, too..."
There are a couple of trade-offs, but that's the way it is with all software. One program does something one way, another program does it another way, etc.
One last thing I like a lot is anyone who posts to an existing thread can get an e-mail when the thread is replied to. With UltimateBB only the forum moderator and the originator of the topic can get e-mails of responses.
Well, we'll see. If I do change over, I will probably do it this coming week.
