awesome tutorial nakkid...

but what if it goes wrong.. i have numerous hacks installed and all those long lines of $DB QUERY(..... 's could go wrong?

- miSt

The worst that can happen is that you have some parse errors and maybe a few DB errors. I upgraded a 2.2.6 board to 2.2.8 with a fair amount of hacks installed and there was one error, which I knew there would be.

With the $DB_site->query's just check whats being added, if its not in the origional one then add it to it, just make sure you don't overwrite the ones with initval in the new 2.2.8 files with the varibles without it in the old files as this is a security risk :D

i successfully upgraded..

took me 4 hours though lol!

Thanks for this useful tutorial Nakkid :D

Regards

- miSt

How are you supposed to know what you changed versus what was changed for the upgrade?

read again the first post. i made it more clear. :)
cheers.

What of in the case where you have not the resources for a test board? How do you go about upgrading a heavily-hacked forum without causing errors that can result in downtime of your site?

I've tried both Araxis Merge and Beyond Compare, and have had nothing but trouble with both resulting in numerous errors. And no, I'm not computer illiterate.

Besides, both AM and BC are evaluation only, which means a purchase is required to continue using them. I certainly don't have the money available to pay for extra purchases such as these, and there was never anything mentioned when I signed up for vBulletin about requiring to purchase extra software in order to upgrade my forums.

I still say the easiest thing for all involved would be for the makers of vBulletin to release to registered members a manual list of changes from one version to the next. That way, people could upgrade their forums without fear of them screwing up.

You should properly comment the changes you make in all files, that when you will find upgrading alot easier. vB do say on there site that they do not support hacked boards so I expect its unlikly they will do anything to make it "easier".

NTLDR is right. Plus they don't want to make it easy for pirated boards to upgrade as well without needing to download the files.

Yes I realize vBulletin don't support hacked boards (which honestly makes me wonder the point of making hacks at all if the makers of the software won't support it), but they can still make something like what I'm suggesting available only to members, just like they make the files available only to members.

And I do properly comment all the files, but it doesn't help when entire sections of code are changed making a hack completely inoperable until an upgraded version of the hack is issued (if at all).

Ok, wait, so I put the vbNEW on the left, and the vbOLD on the right side and I just click that little arrow to move the code from the NEW on the left to the OLD on the right? So I'm adding in the new code to my old version instead of adding in the old code to the new version right?

Sorry I am so lost. Is this a wise move to do from 2.2.4 to 2.2.8?

What about templates? Will I need to change all those too?

Thanks