We have two plugins that are outdated and have no modern equivalent. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience in removing plugins from vbb after install? I don't want to have these phantom fields in the database mess up the new vbb install.
Plugins or "Products"? The later ones should come with unintall code but no guaranty it'll run properly, plugins usually don't alter the DB (must be done maually AFAIK). In the end I'd say it's about looking at the intall code of the plugin/product and see what it alters and then check if everything is gone after uninstall.
Not if the vB Import/Export is used, that one only fetches the data it needs (posts, threads, users....) and feeds it into the new DB. However that'll leave out any other *wanted* data from extensions....