vBulletin 4 - Preparing your forum for it.

With all the work, custom themes, modifications, and other edits you've most likely made to the vBulletin 3 templates we currently have, you can't help but worry about the upgrade to vB 4, especially if you have a heavily modified custom theme for your forum.

Are you currently trying to prep for it for future changes to vBulletin as we (or our mods/themes) know it? Contacting your designers/technical administrators a little nervous about being able to update your site without any significant errors?

 

I don't plan on upgrading anything to vB 4 until well after its release mainly because there are so many internal changes (namely templates). This will render all current styles and modifications incompatible (as far as I know) so I will be giving mod and style authors plenty of time to upgrade their plugins and skins.

Since nobody knows exactly what the new structure is, you cannot completely prepare for it and have everything ready in advance. It will take time to update non-official parts of the code.

 

I wont be updating right away, but will as soon as styles and mods are updated and a good few patches have been released. The thoughts of all those edits needed are intimidating but are always fun and worth it in the end.

 

That's certainly true about it being intimidating. As for being fun... well, I think that gets old after doing it so many times. :p

If you upgrade too early, you may be in for a long road because since they are going with an iterative development plan, there will be substantial changes introduced in each version rather than the usual few feature additions.

 

I forgot to mention I will probably play with it for a while on my testboard before I bring it to any live forums.

 

What I have done is the past is get the new style which works with the next version and upload it as a new style on the current board and then make all edits needed to make it look right and then upgrade so there isnt much time messing around with the edits after the upgrade

After that Nick I am now dreading vbulletin 4

 

The thing is that vB 4.0's biggest rehaul (at this point, and in my opinion) is the style system. It has been stated that all current modifications and styles will be rendered completely incompatible. It will certainly be a project to upgrade everything.

 

Oh dear, this is bad news! I certainly wont be touching any upgrade until I know I can move from one to the other without a hitch. Has there ever been such a daunting upgrade needed in the history of vb?

 

I haven't been around before the 3.x branch, but I am sure 1.x to 2.x and 2.x to 3.x were all major rehauls. I also think 3.6 was another significant release. I'm not positive though.

 

I am hoping the upgrade wont be so painful lol as long as it is one upgrade and then it is done then I would be happy with that. I really couldnt be bothered with monthly updates to it :p

 

I plan on having at least one site running vBulletin 4 as soon as I get access to the Beta Code. Not really worried about template changes because the new style is great and easily malleable. Colors and images should carry forward or be easily reimplemented so not a big deal there.

Transparent PNG Gradients, On-Hover Information Display, CSS-based buttons and controls, List Based menuing systems, and better support for modern browsers all outweigh any template modifications that I might lose. Especially since going forward after 4.0, there will be the new diff-merge system which will automatically update most template changes when you upgrade to a new version.

 

I am looking forward to that.

 

my general opinion is that I am going to do nothing at all. We dont have to upgrade at all.

I always recommend waiting a while if possible to see what kinks there are, changes made, and how it all works with older versions from other people's experiences. You can usually get the info you need pretty quickly from watching the trials of others who have to test out the newest stuff right away.

 

New guy here,

Anyhow, I'm very pleased with vB 3.8.2 and don't really see a need to upgrade anytime soon. But who knows what the future holds.

 

Well 4.0 is a whole new branch so it is meant to be a massive update with substantial improvements. That alone makes me excited to upgrade. It's something new to play with. :p

 

I'll install it on my developement forum and play with it there for a while before upgrading my forums to it. But yes, I'm excited about it.

 

OIC, I was thinking it was a small basic update with a few extra things. I'll have to check it out and see what happens.

 

noooo 4.0 is anything but a small basic upgrade. It's gonna be a whole new ballgame.

 

The changes to the style system alone would merit it being called a major upgrade and that is just a portion of what is being changed.