His first stop was . It was modern, fast, and gorgeous. But it was built for Docker, and getting it to play nice with Windows IIS was notoriously difficult. He reluctantly crossed it off.
But he wanted to be sure. He looked at , which was native ASP.NET. While powerful, it was a full CMS, and he only needed a forum. Forum Software For Windows
He meticulously set the permissions on the internal_data and data folders, allowing IIS_IUSRS read/write access. His first stop was
Finally, he looked at . It was sleek, but he preferred the threaded structure of XenForo for technical support. Phase 2: The Setup He reluctantly crossed it off
He spent the next three nights coding custom migration scripts. He had to map the old, messy user tables to the clean, structured XenForo user table. He had to convert old [b] tags to [b] tags. The office was quiet save for the click of his keyboard.
He navigated to localhost/install , and the sleek installer appeared. He entered the SQL credentials, and within minutes, the core files were indexed. Phase 3: The Migration Disaster