[HMBeaty]

Ok, so only MAJOR questions that need answered are these:

1.) Will our site go down during the upgrade?

You may want to turn your board off, yes. But other than that, it shouldn't

2.) Will we be able to keep our smilies and avatars?

Yes, nothing will happen to those.

3.) What should I tell my members to expect during the upgrade?

Just that your site MAY be down for about 30-45 minutes.

4.) How will the board change after the upgrade? What are the perks?

More functionality.

5.) I don't think we'll need the vBadvanced, is this correct that the new upgrade has something like that I can add in?

No, at least not to my knowledge. You'd have to download the NEWEST version of the vbadvanced and reinstall/upgrade that.

6.) Will our ads go down? We're using AdPeeps, which has been super easy.

It's possible, yes. There will be alot of templates that need to be reverted in order for alot of features to work correctly.