How much trouble can I get myself into?

[tanster]

I am new to vBulletin and PHP, and I have kind of a general philosophical question:

How much trouble can I get into by tweaking pages once a new version of vBulletin comes out and I want to upgrade?

- I have installed various hacks from www.vbulletin.org.
- I have changed colors, table cellpadding, etc.
- I have moved elements around on pages (like moving birthdays from bottom to top on the forums home page, and moving the calendar controls from bottom to top).
- I've reworded stuff.
- I've removed and rearranged nav buttons.

...you get the idea.

With all the changes I've made, will I put myself through a painstaking upgrade process once a new version of vBulletin comes out? Should I stop changing things with reckless abandon, and become much more selective? Are some types of changes worse than others when it comes to upgrading?

Thanks!
Jennie

[Joe Gronlund]

the templates wont change, but any hacks made to the php files will need to be redone.

when vB 3.0 comes out that version will have template changes that will likely overwrite all your hacks.