Getting back online
 

I took my vB off line last month and decided to go a different route with my website. At that time I was running version 4.2.2

Since then I have updated my server and we are now running PHP version 7.0.26 and MySQL 5.6.38

I know my version of vB wont run on PHP 7 and need to be upgraded to the latest version. When I took the forum offline I made a site back up via cPanel.

What would be the best process to getting the site back online and upgrading to the latest version of vB?

Any help appreciated.

All you need to do is overwrite the old forum files with the new forum files from vbulletin.com, then run the upgrade script.

So reinstall my back and then drop the new files into the forum directory and then run the upgrade script via the admin panel?

Will it let me access the admin panel even though im on the wrong version of php?

I would first put everything back under the old PHP version to make sure it works to begin with.
Once that works, overwrite the files with the new vBulletin files, then change the PHP version to PHP 7, then run the upgrade script.

I've done it this way many times without any issues. If you have a large forum (millions of posts), I would run the upgrade script through SSH.

Just throwing in a what of scenario here.

what if my host says I cannot downgrade my version of PHP. Is there another way around it?

Possibly. You could try a new installation of 4.2.5 with your current PHP version since it supports PHP 7.1. Then you could try overwriting the new "empty" database with your backup. No one here can guarantee that this would work in your particular case. There are a lot of variables. Is your backup database heavily loaded with add ons and modifications? That makes a difference.

Thanks for the help guys. All sorted