What was your upgrade experience?

[slinky]

So I'm considering converting our site to VB 4 for reasons, although I am extremely hesitant to do so as things work right now and may need some expert assistance in some areas. Some of the issues include the following and I'm hoping you can explain your experience:

(1) Skinning/Templating - I'm currently using a template where we made sure it has the same header/footer as a Wordpress blog we have running. How difficult was it to convert your template? I heard it isn't fun. We'll probably need to hire someone but how poor is the templating system? I've heard nightmare stories from designers, which explains why so few templates are available.

(2) SEO - Difficult to say. I know you can technically also get post subjects as the URL as well as having the number work as well but does this help/hurt or not make any difference for SEO/traffic?

(3) Upgrade of mods - I use experience (which won't be ported although not fatal), Thank you and all the CYB mods. As I suspected, this whole VB upgrading fiasco turned off numerous developers and I can't blame them. How were you guys able to transition to the new VB using these mods? Conversions? Replacements and alternatives?

I'm considering sticking with vb 3.8.5 indefinitely if it makes sense. I'm just worried also about integrating with other products, which may use vb 4 as a basis point solely because there are probably not too many new sites going up as 3.8.5 (even though I have many extra licenses!)

Would love to hear your experiences as we may try to do the change.

[Reeve of shinra]

3.8.5 works and works well... if your comfortable where you are at, then maybe you should hang out until 4.1 is released.

The template system hasn't changed much so that part is good.

The new stylevar system is a nightmare and I hate touching it. ITs complex, ugly to look at, needless complex, and its easier to find a needle in a haystack than the var you need to make a simple color change happen. If all you are changing is the header / footer, that shouldn't be too bad. For the rest, just find a design you like for 4.x and use that.

Mods -- didn't have too much issue finding the ones I want. Thankfully some of the 3.x mods still work.

Seo -- you can leave the url structure alone for now. I like the friendly urls and feel they help a bit myself.

Bigger question:

Are you going to switch from wordpress to the vb cms? That's another ballgame entirely and right now, I think wordpress is far better.

[slinky]

Reeve -

Thanks for sharing. I just found out that the header is a problem. Supposedly a two tiered nav bar is required and I think the login system and profile link are required to be in the header area. It looks like a disaster just trying to get the login out of my header area, which is uniform on my site.

The VB CMS was a good idea in theory. With URLs and directories in the forum it still makes the entire affair simply not viable. It's sad, really.

The experience mod doesn't work and some of the others seem to have the same issues.

You got me thinking. Perhaps seeing vbulletin.org still on 3.6 makes me think that I am really best off not changing a thing for now and perhaps for a while.