4.0 upgrade - DON'T DO IT if you have any Mods - and probably, don't do it period!
 

I was running 3.8.4 on two forums.

One of the forums gets a LOT of traffic, the other not so much yet.

I decided to try the 4.0 upgrade on the lesser traveled forum (fortunately). My forum immediately went kaput - couldn't even access the forum front page or admin control panel. This was on December 24th.

Eventually vbulletin tech support suggested that I edit my vBulletin config.php file currently on the server by adding the following line after the <?php line:

define('DISABLE_HOOKS', true);

to disable all mods.

Forum is still dead. No matter which forum I click on, I get the error: Invalid Forum specified. The blog is completely dead too - evidently vbulletin never thought to provide a free blog update for those of us who paid for both forum and blog.

Anyway, my forum has been dead for four days now. In my tech support thread, someone appears to have promised to revert my forum to 3.8.4, but nothing has been done yet. Still waiting.

Well, if you followed everyone's instructions/advice about upgrading to vBulletin 4, you probably wouldn't have had any problems. We have mentioned in NUMEROUS threads that most if not all modifications and styles will NOT work with vBulletin 4 and you should disable and/or uninstall them prior to upgrading (including deleting the files associated with the modifications).

I had 20-something modifications on my site, and upgraded just fine

I had a similar problem upgrading. I tried to do the disable all modifications numerous time but that always left failures in the upgrade process and tons of problems.

After I manually removed them one at a time, (plugins and products) reran the upgrade script order was restored.

Why would you want to run 4.0 with no Mods? 4.0 with no Mods is inferior to 3.8.4 with Mods, especially if you have a lot of Mods.

And if one deletes all the Mods, and then ends up hating the plain Jane 4.0, you are really stuck with a harder return path to 3.8.4

Because upgrading your modded site to 4.0, since none of the 3.6, 3.7, or 3.8 mod will work, will just break things

So be it

--------------- Added [DATE]1261938467[/DATE] at [TIME]1261938467[/TIME] ---------------

And btw, its just a matter of time before all/most/some of the 3.6/3.7/3.8 modifications are upgraded to work with 4.0, if the creator chooses to do so. And there are already plenty of useful modifications in the 4.0 section already

That sucks, you definitely should of backed up your files before upgrading. That way you can just upload it with ease if something ended up broken. I have two 3.8 forums, still not sure if I'm going to make the upgrade.

I always open up the "READ ME" html file and look there. I noticed some steps were missing from the 3.x series to the 4.0 series, but nothing major. I thought for sure their directions were "gold" by now! :)
**EDIT**

Well, it failed, couldn't even run the upgrade script, I'll re-up the 3.8x and remove the extras. :) Glad I ran across this thread.

I have two forums up and running now.

One is the 3.8.4 with mods, the other is the pretty much Plain Jane 4.0

I prefer the 3.8.4 for functionality, but another thing I cannot understand is:

both are running on the same hosting company, same plan, and my host states that there are no server issues AND YET 4.0 seems to run a lot slower than 3.8.4

Anyone else notice this?

Well for me and the forum we run we are very happy with vbull 4 and the upgrade from our 3.8.4 board which was very heavy in terms of mods in fact 50 plus were installed,went smooth as we were helped in the process by TheLastSuperman!!(might be worth speaking with him if you are thinking about having someone do your upgrade)
Mike aka TheLastSuperman has some great info here on upgrading and makes a worthwhile read for any doing the upgrade!

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=227933

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?335689-

I've updated a number of sites to 4.0 and never had a problem that wasn't resolved in less then 5 mins.
Follow the correct steps and read advice that others have posted, and you should NEVER have a problem upgrading. ;)

Let's not all forget, upgrading a live site with no backups is a pure rookie mistake. Any competent admin will attempt the upgrade on his sandbox first. If you don't use a sandbox, then at least have a backup plan.
Come on "MDawg" this is administrative 101. If your upgrade didn't go as planned, you only have yourself to blame.

I as well was running 3.8.4 and decided to go with the upgrade I did do a backup yet all my old threads and user info was lost! I tried to restore but nada! Other then some small issues my members that have RE-JOINED are loving the new upgrades and are patiently awaiting for those old mods we had to be upgraded to work on our site

I had 3.6 before, I did a fresh install of 4.0, used Impex to import all users and posts, and I installed new mods and tweaked the new styles, everything is great now.

But, 4.0 does seem to run a little slower. =(

Rule #1

Copy your database, copy your forum folder.
rename the new forum folder to forum2
in the config, point the database of the forum2 to the copied database.

You now have a clone of your site. Do all upgrades on it. If all goes well, just rename your forum2 to forum or whatever the old one was and youre done.

If it all goes kaput, you have nothing to worry since it wasnt your original.

Yes, I find it a lot slower...I mean a lot!!!! strange!!!?? anyone know why this is?

The upgrade process was pretty smooth for me. I removed all products, I cloned my database, and worked off the original database with the cloned copy as a backup. Then I moved the 3.8.4 forum directory to another folder within my file system, and rooted the new CMS over top. After that I upgraded via the install scripts. Went well for me.