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

[ericholtman]

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

[aeturner89]

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.

[calorie]

^^ 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

[ericholtman]

Originally Posted by aeturner89

The downside is that the links to threads and posts will change so all you old links to posts etc will not work anymore.,

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

[aeturner89]

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.

[ericholtman]

Originally Posted by aeturner89

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.