Customizeability and Upgradability

[RMS]

Well basically, although I do not need to be convinced that I want to buy a vb license, I have a few questions, and want to make sure it really can do what I hope it can, and how easily.
Price is not an issue, and I do believe that of all the boards availible, this offers the ability to have take the options I want out to the furthest point I have seen. Currently I run my community on phpbb for well, I dunno, a long time. It offers the basic stuff I need along with a whole bunch of other stuff, while many being cool, much of which I would rather trade for other stuff...so it makes the cutoff line but barely.

One of my board's highest priorities is as an RPG related place, and I have the need to have the most advanced abilities to employ shops, character and battle mods etc (and anything else associated). Phpbb does do this at a bare minimum and it's moving along, but I doubt it would catch up to vbulletin.

So, I'm wondering exactly how easy would it be for me to customize my board and then upgrade with all the hacks and other mods I have made all still in tact?
I am a decent artist so all the graphic stuff I want I can get, but since I'm just a beginning php programmer, on phpbb it's practically impossible to get anywhere in customizing just one slightly modified style before I have to upgrade and start all over, and for new versions, same goes for many of the hacks.

Now, regardless of my personal reasons, if I decide this is right for me, I must get this up and running wfor me to begin customizing it with one or two months from now. While I don't forsee this as a problem in itself, especially with this new version 3 that I don't know much about but is apparently filled with very different coding, I'm hoping that if I go through with completely giving my board a makeover with version 2, how easy would it be to upgrade?
Not even considering that, if say whenever it comes out, if I install vb 3 first, and then I just want to upgrade to a newer version of 3, would I have to pretty much recode everything again from the start?

Sorry if I probably got a bit carried away and said more than necessary, but hopefully someone can answer my questions. :bunny:

Thanks.

[Erwin]

If you completely hack your forums up with vB2, you would probably have to start from scratch for vB3 as the coding is very different as you say.

If you install vB3 first, then upgrades would be less cumbersome. But you need to realize that with every upgrade you will lose your hacks, and need to reapply, unless you manually upgrade with a file comparer.

[filburt1]

Actually you can hack your board to death for vB2 if you want so long as none of the hacks modify the database structure which is all vB3 needs for importing. Your hacks will be lost with the upgrade to 3.0.0 regardless.

[RMS]

Hmm, so then basically all of the hacks would also have to be recoded to work with the new version, right?
Assuming that there's tons of existing hacks, it would take a while to upgrade these so that basically I would have to wait for after version 3 is out and then even longer for the hacks?
Well I would be taking a gamble, but also assuming that all the major hacks are pretty well supported so there would be some conversion scripts for some that might work alright, since even the additional tables with data wouldn't necessarily have to be updated, so long as the core data and structure isn't changed, as you said, unless I'm mistaken on this.

Will version 2 hacks and mods still be supported though?

[filburt1]

We plan to support vB2 hacks for a while (exactly how long is TBD) after vB3 comes out. However those hacks will have to be recoded to work with vB3 because it is a near rewrite.

[RMS]

So then would you venture to say that it's not far off to say that many people would probably wait a while until a good deal of the mods they want are working again before even attempting to begin upgrading?

[filburt1]

Most people here, yes. However this isn't an accurate sample of most vB users (usually corporations and other organizations) and they'll likely upgrade soon after it comes out. I myself will wait for vB3 to go through several revisions before upgrading to get rid of security and bug problems.

[RMS]

Well I know this isn't something anyone can really know, so I would just have to hope that the most important hacks I wanted are supported so as that really I can first run vb 2 with the essentials for as long as necessary and then whenever those same ones are upgraded for the next version I can change things then..?

Oh, and I haven't bought my license yet nor have tried it before, but is there a good percentage of the hacks that are designed so I wouldn't need to extensively alter the standard files (as in not spend a lot of time changing things) so most things can be changed automatically or do many things have to be changed manually?

[filburt1]

Each hack and author is different. For example I have an install script now that does half the work for you. Some people have completely different methods for hacking than others.

[RMS]

Ok, I see.
Thanks for the help :)

[Erwin]

Bear in mind, a lot of popular hacks have been incorporated into vB3 in any case. :)

[RMS]

Oh, that's cool.
Would you happen to know if there's a list of some of them somewhere or something?

[Erwin]

Check out vBulletin.com. They are using vB3 and the vB3 forums will have a list of features.