[Forum] Is every update going to break a custom theme ?

[losedude]

I've got a custom theme installed on my vBulletin forum. It was coded for 4.0.0, was working perfectly and then 4.0.1 was released, I upgraded only to find that the theme was broken. I contacted my coder who "re-coded" the theme. Now I upgraded to 4.0.2 only to find the theme is broken again ! So now the theme has been re-re-coded. I honestly didn't expect this, there were no such problems in v3.

I'm no coder, but I need to know whether this is going to happen again and again as it's a big headache.

[darren1981]

Yes this will be the case.. as more stylevars are introduced and some corrected.. if you hard code the style rather than relying on stylevars options you will not need to edit as much, this is how we have been coding our premium vbulleitn styles on http://vb4style.com (customers seem to happy with this method).. at the same time, it's harder for the end user to change some settings.

"I'm no coder, but I need to know whether this is going to happen again and again as it's a big headache."

yes don't get to carried away.. or if you do make sure you document all your edits in a notepad and save them for future refference.

[alessai]

for now yes, though VB says that they released the Golden version right now its much like 4.0 RC2, 4.0.3 = RC3....etc

i suggest that you stay with 4.0.2 unless they release an important update you need (or a security fix).... i stayed with 4.0.0 2 months, and just upgraded to 4.0.2 yesterday

[Arkham]

I thought 4.0 had an auto-updater that made a 3-way comparison when templates were updated. Isn't that the case? If it's only a minor stylevar name replacement (instead of hardcoding), wouldn't that fall under the simpler template comparisons?

[Ramsesx]

I think stylevars and templates are two different things.

[Arkham]

But if the template contains a stylevar name that used to be, say, <font style="....">blahblah</font>, that'd be easy to change in the comparison. I remember reading that there were three levels of comparison made when auto-updating templates, and something like that, a straight replace, would be easy.

Of course, we don't know how complex his custom templates are, but it'd be interesting to see what has been 'breaking' each time he's upgraded.

losedude: Could you give us an example of what's been broken?

[darren1981]

Templates and stylevars are both called from your style..so yes they will be effected.. depending on how much work has been done will depend on what is effected after the 4.0.3 update.. it won't be anywhere near the extent of updating from 4.0.1 to 4.0.2

[losedude]

But if the template contains a stylevar name that used to be, say, <font style="....">blahblah</font>, that'd be easy to change in the comparison. I remember reading that there were three levels of comparison made when auto-updating templates, and something like that, a straight replace, would be easy.

Of course, we don't know how complex his custom templates are, but it'd be interesting to see what has been 'breaking' each time he's upgraded.

losedude: Could you give us an example of what's been broken?

The CMS wouldn't load with the template, it'd just revert to the default vB theme. The forum main home area, each category was misaligned and the images uses for each category weren't being used, a big mess.

[CBGrAFix]

the stylevar system is awful and too big a pain in the ass for actual web designers to use.

It would have been pretty much impossible for me to style this forum just relying on stylevars.

[losedude]

I can set the default theme to something else and then the CMS will show that default theme, But if I then try and change the theme via the theme changer at the bottom of the page, I'm unable to do so. Why ?