NJ, what you may want to do is (if you are going to purchase the license, which I feel you probably will, is just set up a second site (for testing), import everything to the second site while running your original as normal, and implement these hacks as if it might work. Then you could go from there. That's what I did when last year moving from <gasp> phpNuke. I still have the old Nuke site and the database (including the testing I did to make sure it would work the way I wanted it to).
NJ, what you may want to do is (if you are going to purchase the license, which I feel you probably will, is just set up a second site (for testing), import everything to the second site while running your original as normal, and implement these hacks as if it might work. Then you could go from there. That's what I did when last year moving from <gasp> phpNuke. I still have the old Nuke site and the database (including the testing I did to make sure it would work the way I wanted it to).
I was most likely gonna do that, on my home server just to test it..
Great once you have that licence make sure your email address here is the same as the one purchased vBulletin with or add it to the priority support form in the members area and you should display as licenced immediately and be able to post anywhere on the forums.