[Forum] From 3.6.8 to latest V4?

[dc3dreamer]

Can I upgrade from 3.6.8 to the latest version of vBulletin? I am willing to ditch all of the plugins, skins, and customizations, but I desperately need the messages (including threading), attachments, and users to be preserved.

[Mark.B]

Can I upgrade from 3.6.8 to the latest version of vBulletin? I am willing to ditch all of the plugins, skins, and customizations, but I desperately need the messages (including threading), attachments, and users to be preserved.

Yes you can go straight to 4.1.10 from where you are. Attachments, users, messages are all preserved.

However there's no need to lose modifications either - many vB3 mods have had vB4 versions released. many simpler mods just work anyway, especially those with no template changes.
Styles are harder, BUT, the style converter will attempt to preserve you vB3 colours and put those into vb4. So although any layout changes won't port across, you should at least get the basics of your colour schemes to build on.

Good advice would be to create a test "mirror" of your live site and upgrade that first, to get an idea of what will happen. You can then work on that mirror to make it how you want before upgrading the live site.

[dc3dreamer]

Nice. Thanks. The problem wiith vB is that I don't work on it for many months to years at a time (bigger fish to fry) then when an update or whatever happens I look at all the little edits to templates, plugins, etc are needed and just shrink away. I foolishly burned a ton of time getting the Email Integration package molded into something that my customers liked and could use, and then the usage tailed off to nothing. PHP programming is right at the bottom of my long list :-)))

I'm going to start fresh, migrating the database, stripping out the tables and column add-ons that have collected in mine over the years.

Anyway, thanks. I'll tackle it one of these days.

[Spada_FMC]

I just did this myself. I created a test site, upgraded it.. added all the plugins I wanted, reset the theme/look and feel and spent time updating it. (It was a great help in the end since I just exported the theme and imported it directly into the live site upgrade saving me many hours of tweaking.

Overall the experience has been good. There are little issues (mostly graphical) or minor functionality changes that I'm trying to correct. It also seems that VB4 is more java driven which has surfaced some issues with IE and compatibility mode and such but overall I would say it's been 98% a pleasant experience.

[dc3dreamer]

The instructions that come with 4.0.8 say yo have to first upgrade to 3.8.

Before upgrading to vBulletin 4.0, you will need to download the files to upgrade to vBulletin 3.8.4. Once your community is running on vBulletin 3.8.4, then you can upload the vBulletin 4.0 files and perform the upgrade to this version. If you need assistance with this, contact vBulletin Support.

Is this wrong?

[Ramsesx]

If the instructions are like that, just follow them.

[dc3dreamer]

Um, well the other guys said they were able to go from 3.6, and that's what I want to do. I was just making sure that they were able to do it.

[dc3dreamer]

Success! I did it as a test by duplicating the database and installing V4 in a folder off the side of the main forum web root. It was time consuming, but it went OK from 3.6.8 through every version including alpha and beta and release candidate for many versions. No errors.

Thanks guys.