big boarders who went from 3.0.x to 3.5.x how did ya do it?

[sross]

I would love to hear some examples of how you big board folks did your major upgrade from 3.0.x to 3.5.x

My board is not quite "big board" yet but it's getting close, and I am faced with upgrading to 3.5 with minimal disruption. As you can imagine my 3.0.6 board over the years has been hacked and modded quite a bit.

Thanks for any tips!

[Kevlar]

It was fairly easy for me ... the installation steps all works as advertised. I just had to remodify all my templates. A few of the installation steps bombed out, but refreshing the install script picked up right where it left of.

[Erwin]

I didn't plan mine very well and had 4 days downtime. :) But 3.5 is working well.

[Andreas]

It was a nightmare ^.^

The upgrade itself went smooth with only 2 errors (due to modified schema which I had overlooked), but getting all the hacks working again ...

Also, I accidently killed the whole database ... and restorig some 60 million recorsds from a dump and doing the upgrade process again caused approx 1/2 day downtime.
So in fact it was down for almost 2 days, instead of the one that was planned.

[Paul M]

Down for about 10/15 minutes, had it all planned out, and did all the software and template changes on our test forum first, so just had to copy them over.

[Canelo_Kid]

Like Paul_M I practiced first on test forums but I still spent over 20 hours if you include the test forums. Basically none of the old hacks worked but the good news is there are new plugin hacks to replace them. I had also changed many of the templates and with the new features in 3.5.X I had to start over with most of the templates re-adding the changes. I use several different styles so it was time consuming.

Our site is also integrated into vBulletin so I had to change a lot of the code I was using addressing the database. More good news is 3.5.X code is much better if you are using vBulletin as a backbone for your site. Again most of my templates had to be upgraded before 3.5.X would work properly.

With the addition of hooks and plugins vBulletin is a lot easier to alter and debug. The ajax features alone are worth the upgrade not to mention all the other enhancements.

[Xenon]

Same as paul, just down for 4 hours because of rebuilding all counters...

everything should be done on a testboard first

[BaselineAce]

Made the template on a test forum installation, then upgraded everything.

[Carnage]

i'm still working on my test boards; far too meny hacks to port/reinstall and get working before i can do the upgrade...

[Andreas]

everything should be done on a testboard first
Sure, so did I - but just the upgrade scripts took approx. 2h + 1/2 h for building FULLTEXT + 1/2h to dump, gzip & tar the DB + .. +

[Xenon]

well, noone said that it will go in five minutes all in all ^^

[Reeve of shinra]

I dont have quite the mega board that Erwin and Kirby have but my upgrade went smooth. I just winged it on the live db and kept my fingers crossed that all would go well. It did for the most part except for an issue with a custom hack we are using. D'oh.

[Xajel]

We're still working with the test forum doing templates and almost finish just doing some templates upgrade from 3.5.1 to 3.5.4 and thats it

hacks are not a big deal as they will be available later already

we have 26k members + 770k posts and a frontpage PHPNuke portal

[boske]

Oh my...i had a double whammy

I had to convert my board from phpBB, and upgrade it to VB 3.5

The conversion would crash sometimes halfway through, and would have to restart it...

Took about 24 hours to complete the whole thing

[Gunshot]

Practiced on a test server for a week....till I got it down to about 2 hours

then installed a mirror site on the same domain and did the upgrade at 2am
finished around 4:30am and renamed the mirror to the original. very few issues other than a few broken paths......and some of the old templates had to be manually edited to get a few of the 3.5.4 features working

only lost a handfull of posts and no one was the wiser

[Xenon]

only lost a handfull of posts and no one was the wiser

that sounds like a good plan ^^

[Alex_]

Preparing in test forum and 7 hours downtime cause of recount, thumbnailing and a bit testing
I was having a guestbook-like script running to entertain the people while updating... they always panic when the sites not fully online ;)

I now have made several diffs to patch a new version with my (php)code hacks - so the update from 3.5.3 to 3.5.4 was done in 30 seconds :)

[Erwin]

Preparing in test forum and 7 hours downtime cause of recount, thumbnailing and a bit testing
I was having a guestbook-like script running to entertain the people while updating... they always panic when the sites not fully online ;)

I now have made several diffs to patch a new version with my (php)code hacks - so the update from 3.5.3 to 3.5.4 was done in 30 seconds :)
That's a record!

[Alex_]

Preparing the patches took much longer ;)

But that's one time work of which you will profit for quite a while...

[Paul M]

That's a record!Hmm, I doubt you could actually run the upgrade script in 30 seconds, let alone change the files. Methinks 30 seconds is not quite accurate. ;)

[Mark.B]

I'm still working intermittently on a test board that I upgraded a while ago, I'm about two thirds through but have loads of hacks so it's not easy.

I am in no hurry though. I still cannot see what 3.5 does for my users that 3.0 does not.

[Alex_]

Hmm, I doubt you could actually run the upgrade script in 30 seconds, let alone change the files. Methinks 30 seconds is not quite accurate. ;)

I talked about 3.5.3 to 3.5.4 - the other update took 7 hours with recounting.

But let it be a minute if you want ;)
Copy files - patch with my diffs - running the update script.

But I am eager to try out that template patch (side by side thing) hack that was posted here cause I found it still uncomfortable to patch/update the templates.
A working diff option in the admincp between two templates would be fasten bigger updates a lot.

[Digma]

I keep postponing it. I've got a testforum running, but haven't finalized a move back to main yet.

[Krofh]

Took 15 hours for us... we did it through ImpEx though. We had set up a test forum where we designed new styles, installed a whole ton of hacks, etc., so we didn't want to do the standard upgrade system... Sadly, ImpEx doesn't care about postids, userids, threadids, etc., it just puts them into the first available slot. So, I had to write my own custom script to adjust the userids so everything stayed correct. After getting all that worked out, it took 15 hours in all, 9 am to 1 am. Now our site's running awesomely, and we're not looking forward at all to the possibility of a vBulletin 4.

[ramprage]

I'm not even a smidge the size of some of these guys forums but I'm planning on doing an upgrade from 3.07 to 3.54 with 7k members. Thinking of trying this on a duplicate site first to see how it goes then do it on the real one. Any suggestions for this?

I've got a bunch of custom hacks with 3.0x installed and photopost... any tips for making a smooth transition to 3.54? Will the upgrade remove all the old hacks? If so I'd just like to use the plugins feature for 3.5 for new ones. Hopefully that will work..

[sross]

I'm not even a smidge the size of some of these guys forums but I'm planning on doing an upgrade from 3.07 to 3.54 with 7k members. Thinking of trying this on a duplicate site first to see how it goes then do it on the real one. Any suggestions for this?

I've got a bunch of custom hacks with 3.0x installed and photopost... any tips for making a smooth transition to 3.54? Will the upgrade remove all the old hacks? If so I'd just like to use the plugins feature for 3.5 for new ones. Hopefully that will work..
Hey, I'm in the same boat.. 3.0.6 and upgrading to 3.5.4 in June about 12,500 members. When are you going to go for it? If it's before me please post your experience. My current plan is to rebuild the design on a test forum, then lock my prod forum and do an upgrade, then import my new design. At this point all my hacks will be gone so I'll just leave the site down while I get a few hacks re-installed, test it all out, then open the site. Then just tell my members we are open but are still finishing some upgrades. My only real fear is that the upgrade will bomb, however if this happens I can always revert to a backup which I plan to take beforehand..

[Erwin]

Why not install the hacks on the test site, export them as products and reimport the product?

[sross]

Why not install the hacks on the test site, export them as products and reimport the product?

I didn't know I could do that lol. I most definitely will then :)

[Multani]

It took 2 hours and was easier than I expected.

[Wifey]

I paid to have it done and the guy was awesome that did it -- it went off without a hitch.

Until I got a hold of it, LOL. I tried installing a hack that locked down my server so three hours earlier today was spent at work working on things I'm paid to do and corresponding e-mail with my hosting!

[Thomas P]

Dunno if we qualify as a big board, whatever:

Worked well, we had ~4 hours downtime.

1. Reverted and rehacked the templates on our testing board -> some custom templates and some custom phrases.
2. Closed Live forums
3. Backup of db (mysqldump)
4. Upgrade process (upgrade.php)
5. Import templates from testing board (custom templates)
6. Import language file from testing board (custom phrases)
7. Create Plugins (Mods we need)
8. Backup of db (mysqldump)
9. Re-open Forums