A question or two...

[lomac]

Please forgive me if this has been brought up in the past. I've tried searching both through this section and in the FAQ and failed to find an answer I was looking for.

I currently help run a forum that's running vb2.3.0. There are over 45,000 registered members and literally millions of posts (4.5 million last time I checked). Because our version is so old, we have to hack certain features we require into the coding (warning points, quick quote/reply, etc). I'm looking to upgrade to 3.6 but have a couple of concerns...

If/when I upgrade, how will it affect threads and posts already created? Will they be unaffected? Will I have to reset certain things like who moderates specific forums? Also, will my Usergroups stay as they are now? ie... will banned members stay banned and custom usergroups stay in their custom group?

I would like to upgrade to a newer version but because we have customized our current version so much with various things such as different usergroups, new smilies, and custom styles (among other things), it will be a gigantic pain to redo all of it.

Thanks for listening.

[nexialys]

1- the existing content will be protected, there is nothing done to it...
2- some structural changes were done between versions, so yes you may have to verify the permissions, moderation levels etc, as the 2.x version was missing a lot of the new features.
3- your old hacks, make a list of them, and compare with the new version to see if you need to re-hack your board after update... because all these hacks are now outdated..
4- smilies are untouched...
5- the database structure will now let you choose to store the attachments in database OR files...
6- your custom styles are all outdated, will have to be redesigned... that's one of the worst part in upgrading...

that's it i think!