vB upgrade tips?

I'm about to upgrade my vB forums from various versions to current install. My fear is that I will have problems will all my mods and extensions. Does anyone have experience upgrading heavily modified vB forums? If so can you offer a journeyman admin any tips?

 

It's a fairly simple process - if you know what you are doing.

The mods that you have...did they modify any of the actual php files? Hopefully not. If they did not, simply overwrite your current php files with the new ones. Then run the upgrade script. Template changes will need to be made by hand, using a comparison script of some sort...or you can just revert the templates and reapply any edits that your mods have made to them.

This is all assuming you are using 3.5.x right now...If you are running vB 2 or 3.0.x...that's a completely different story. What are your current versions of vB? It's easier to explain when I know what version you're working with and what kind of mods you have in place

 

I'm running 3.5 on all of my forums. I have done a lot of changes to the template with my mods. These are what I'm most concerned about.

I'm using mods like, ucash, recent visitors, hellcat page compressor, v3 arcade.

 

Jawinn, since I too use lots of mods, I always patch until a major version. That is, whenever an update is released, you can choose between downloading a full update or just a security patch. I just slap up the security patches, and will do so until 4.0.0 Gold.

 

That's why I have the best bulletin board software going, to ignore the fixes and funtionality additions.

Yeah, good idea.

Well. OK. I know this can work, but it's a bit more effort then you explain to have a properly runnning forum IMO.

You may as well just do the upgrades one at a time, when released, so you don't have 50 templates in 5 styles each to deal with later.

 

Howdy jawinn,

I don't know what's considered "heavily" modded but I have at least a half dozen hacks on PC101. Honestly, I don't fiddled much with all that stuff as I leave that to my Tech Admin. If you don't find the answer here, PM me and I'll give you his contact info.

Lyte

EDIT: Hacks/Mods = Chat, Arcade, Rotating Banners, Sponsers, YPN, Gallery... and a couple others I won't divulge!

 

Agreed.

Major version upgrades are released once every, what...year? Maybe even less often than that. Not only would you be missing out on a lot of new features, but upgrading at those times is going to be a nightmare.

Now, upgrading for the regular maintenance/security updates is not bad at all. with the 3.5 series, Jelsoft introduced the great plugin system...which means that the majority of mods will go from version to version untouched and unnoticed. You will be glad you remain updated, trust me...dont wait until vB 4.x comes out to upgrade...it will be a nightmare. This is of course, unless you dont have any mods/hacks...but you've already stated that you have or will have plenty.