What's the easiest way to get a 'clean' installation?
 

We're thinking about upgrading our boards from 3.5.1 to the latest 3.6.+.

We've installed numerous templates, hacks, addons, etc, etc over the past two years. I'm not sure we even use most of the cruft.

If I backup my vbulletin and restore it to a test environment, is there some easy way to remove *everything* except posts, sigs, pictures, etc..... In other words, return the boards (all on the test environment at first, naturally) to a pristine "just installed from vBulletin" state, except that my content is there?

If I could do that, I think re-installing templates and plugins I want would be easier than trying to figure out which ones work with 3.6.+ and which don't.

I understand that if I've done some template custom editting (which we did), I'll lose that, but I think starting over would be easier than trying to find out which things work and which don't

I would use Impex to import your 3.5.1 DB to a clean installed 3.6.8 installation.

I did the very same thing and it worked like a charm. The downside is that the links to threads and posts will change so all you old links to posts etc will not work anymore., but in my case that was a minor downside.

^^ Yep that or check http://www.vbulletin.com/docs/html/upgrade for more info:

• Make a backup of everything
• Close your board via the ACP
• Revert any changed templates
• Remove old modification files
• Undo old database table edits
• Upload the original vB 3.6 files
• Run the vBulletin upgrade script

Does that mean if I have a post in a forum, which references another post, that reference will break?

Yeah. Like for example the link to this thread is:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=163032

After doing an import that link wouldn't work anymore and the threadid would change.

Yeah, I understand the links and ids and such (been doing SQL for years). I was just hoping I misunderstood the answer, but I didn't. :(

I think I'll just be unistalling things I know I don't use, reverting templates (but saving the originals.... for some things like sidecolumn addons, the hardest part was the custom HTML which won't change), finding updated templates (looks like 3.6.+ stuff exists for everything), and then I'll push the update button, and begin re-installing.

Makes me understand how a site like AVS Forums can be running such an old version.... inertia.