Hey everyone, I hope someone can offer a little bit of advice/guidance on my situation. Heres where I'm at now:

One static html website consisting of about 230 pages on its own webserver account. Original layout was coded in about 2000, so everything is tables and theres no style sheets, or anything. Very oldschool. Some of the content will be copy and pasted, but most will be re-written completely. Has its own domain name and hosting account. I do not have root level access to this account.

One VB forum on its own separate domain and hosting account of about 15,000 members, extremely active, 10GB of attachments, modified, with the following:

I've got a mod to display threads by creation date (and not replies), Do not show whos online to guests, Eggdrop IRC manager, EWT User powered moderation (Does digg/youtube up or down votes for posts to bury them), Mass PM users, Miserable Users, Multiple Account detection and prevention, NoSpam!, User Rules And Agreement Hack, Webproxy re-direct, Zoints forum ban. The only ones that I'd even really like to keep (Not required) are the Eggdrop manager, Miserable Users, and the multiple account detector. Pretty much everything else I can live without. I do have root level access to this account.


What I want to do:

Install/Upgrade VB4 Suite onto server #2 (Currently my vb3 install).

Integrate the content gradually from server #1, into the new VB CMS, that will be on server #2. Eventually close server #1 hosting account.

Use the domain name that currently points to server #1, for server #2. (Does this complicate the licensing aspect? both are owned licenses)


Accomplish all of this as smoothly, and seamlessly as possible with minimal downtime, of course :)




I do not plan on moving anything until the package goes Gold. In the meantime, however, is there anything I can do in preparation of it as far as getting my existing vb3 install "ready" for it? Should I install vb4 on a new cpanel account just for experimentation? One of my chief concerns is that because of the mods I've installed, that there aren't additional mysql tables that will interfere/cause issues with the vb4 upgrade. I'm a little bit handy with using SSH and can maneuver my way around phpmyadmin if I need to, but I'm not a guru at it by any means.