looks like i'll be going with VB!
 

my current host pointed out that my Ikonboard3 forum is utilizing "average 50% of the CPU power of a server hosting well over 150 sites... This very board brought the server to a halt this afternoon." best part is this has been going on for about 4-6 months now.

they've suggested both phpBB and VB, and after looking through things it looks like i'm starting to sway towards the VB forums. With over 500 members and over 50,000 posts, i'd like to keep things just they way they are.

My plans are to pick up VB tomorrow night, shut down and back up my existing IB files (fortunately SQL), delete the existing IB files, and install VB.

My questions are regarding the existing posts and users. After the installation of VB, what am I looking at to get these transfered?

I've seen talk of converters and such and am wondering how much of this will be necessary and if so what type of work is involved with this? Are the converters run locally on my backups?

Guess i'm looking for a lil manual, but nothing too specific...

TIA...
~isaac

This is from vBulletin.com:

So there is an official converter that you can download. :)

right, not to sound rude, but i've seen that a million times. My questions are more concerned about how these scripts are run... are they run server-side or locally? Is the process i mentioned above the correct way to make the swap?

I don't want to go through the back up and deletion of my existing forms to find that i've screwed myself.

Instructions come with the converter. You run it in your browser.