Upgrading to vb4 - your ideas?

[DarkArmada]

Hi all - I'd appreciate your feedback on this, I've decided to take the plunge and want to ask what you all think would be the best way to get my site to vb4.

Current layout - Running Joomla 1.5 CMS in the root, Tufat Flashchat in /chat and vb3.8 in /forums. We've got jfusion running the user tables between Joom and vb.

Ideal layout - Scrap Joomla and move to vb4 in the root with Flashchat running inside of vb instead.

Besides pulling down the entire site, making the change and putting it back up again, would anyone have any suggestions as to a different way I could get vb4 installed in the root with minimal impact to my members? Including what I should do with the tables for the site etc.

Any feedback would be great as this will be the biggest change to the site since it's beginning. FYI site = http://www.thegamevine.com. Thanks

~DA (Much appreciated!)

[Attitude5ire]

Iv always found having too many backends bridged together is often a recipe for disaster because you are restricted and often nagging issues come if some tweakin or updates happen and the whole system goes haywire. Personally im not a gr8 fan of vB4 CMS, its still new and the gestation period would be about 12-24 mnths before it comes any close to challenging big CMS engines but i support it because its part of a Suite. Suite has CMS, Blog and Forums all integrated under one common DB. Needs no bridging and is very dynamic.

For you to decide you just need to see whats your site's USP. Is it the content or the community. If its both i would suggest vB4 Suite because does a good job in that. Its very highly customizable, the suite is very secure and good community for Mods and Styles. Many features which often you have to add-in as a Mod or Extensions in Joomla.

[DarkArmada]

Thanks Attitude! We will definitely be going with the Suite (obv including both the CMS and the forum software), for me it's just about HOW we would make the move.