What was your upgrade experience?

[slinky]

So I'm considering converting our site to VB 4 for reasons, although I am extremely hesitant to do so as things work right now and may need some expert assistance in some areas. Some of the issues include the following and I'm hoping you can explain your experience:

(1) Skinning/Templating - I'm currently using a template where we made sure it has the same header/footer as a Wordpress blog we have running. How difficult was it to convert your template? I heard it isn't fun. We'll probably need to hire someone but how poor is the templating system? I've heard nightmare stories from designers, which explains why so few templates are available.

(2) SEO - Difficult to say. I know you can technically also get post subjects as the URL as well as having the number work as well but does this help/hurt or not make any difference for SEO/traffic?

(3) Upgrade of mods - I use experience (which won't be ported although not fatal), Thank you and all the CYB mods. As I suspected, this whole VB upgrading fiasco turned off numerous developers and I can't blame them. How were you guys able to transition to the new VB using these mods? Conversions? Replacements and alternatives?

I'm considering sticking with vb 3.8.5 indefinitely if it makes sense. I'm just worried also about integrating with other products, which may use vb 4 as a basis point solely because there are probably not too many new sites going up as 3.8.5 (even though I have many extra licenses!)

Would love to hear your experiences as we may try to do the change.