Do Mods cause problems with Upgrades?
 

I have never put a mod on my forum yet, I'm actually scared that I'll mess things up. My concern is that vBulletin has frequent upgrades and I'm kind of paranoid about putting mods into my forum as I'm not sure if it will cause a disaster when upgrading.

Also, I've never upgraded my vBulletin since I got it... I'm on 3.6.8 and waiting for 3.7 Gold before I do anything.

I want to put FlashChat onto my system once 3.7 Gold comes out or.. Do I have to wait? That's my main question... once I put mods on my system, will I be stuck with the current version of vBulletin as upgrading with mods will cause major problems?

If anyone could give me advice, links to threads to help clear up my confusion, give me steps on what would work for me for installing a chat system like flashchat and upgrading advice I would be very grateful.

Flash chat has never given me a problem :) You will have to revert the navbar template which means you will have add your link to flash chat back but thats it.. ITs almost stand alone and Paul M's integration is all done by plug in so Ive never had problems with upgrades concerning flashchat. :) Not saying it wont have a problem just think its unlikely.

Paul is SUPER fast about updating his mods too.

So if its just flash chat you want... I'd say your safe!

Most hacks any more are products so other than the occasional template edits, no files ever get touched. That is where the real headaches used to be, editing all the files for the various hacks. And quite a few of the 3.7 hacks released so far work on 3.6.8 so those shouldn't be a problem in the upgrade.

I have no idea how to do this.

I'll have to figure out how to do this install flashchat thing. Can anyone guide me to a thread that talks about this.

Most modifications should not even affect the upgrades. That's because as said, most don't require code edits any more, and most from version 3.6 are also compatible with 3.7. And I know this from experience, as after about 5 upgrades since version 3.7 beta 2, I've never had to disable a single modification.

I've been running Flashchat from 3.5x all the way to RC1 with no problems, so you're good to go.

Is Flashchat $5 for those of you who have it? Someone on the demo in flashchat told me it was $405. Is that true? Seems strange to me.

I'm thinking of downloading 3.7 vbulletin soon and adding flashchat then... it's just that I have no clue how to do upgrades or anything, and scared of messing up my forum.

Hopefully it's easy to install.

Yeah, $5. I run it inside a Webtemplate as well:

http://www.sevenstring.org/chris/flashchat_i.jpg

Install's a piece of cake. Take the plunge, modding is addictive. :D

should I close my forum down while I add it? Is it simply a plug in? I don't need to know coding etc?

What you should do is setup a test site. Practice the install there, make sure things work and then you do the install live.