Id like to see you guys transfer over a forum that has 1000+ people on it in less amount of time.
Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt. 3-4 hours, no fancy gimmicks used (basic tools only), all alone and more than once. Coffee breaks included.
Do I get a cookie now?
Professionals? Guys who earn their money with it?
Live Migration.
- new Forum architecture is setup on a parallel Test Server
- Test server is configured, then synced and from that point on live-fed with converted Posts/Threads from live Server in the background (= live Test environment)
- Testing, Customization and debugging is performed on Test Server as required
- once ready to go live, an Internal IP is switched and the new Forum architecture is online. Within seconds (at worst requires a F5 Browser refresh and typically a new Login for Clients).
- really smart folks at this time keep the old Forum synced with converted Posts/Threads now running on the new Forum, a full rollback is then available virtually at the stroke of a key if things go terribly wrong
Of course you don't have to do it that way.
And maybe there's an extremely unusual Forum architecture in place here that's somehow riddled with deep dependencies and they're physically migrating to an entirely new Server Architecture or something like that.
Either way, 72hrs isn't shiny. Very, very far from it.