big boarders who went from 3.0.x to 3.5.x how did ya do it?

I would love to hear some examples of how you big board folks did your major upgrade from 3.0.x to 3.5.x

My board is not quite "big board" yet but it's getting close, and I am faced with upgrading to 3.5 with minimal disruption. As you can imagine my 3.0.6 board over the years has been hacked and modded quite a bit.

Thanks for any tips!

[Mark.B]

I'm still working intermittently on a test board that I upgraded a while ago, I'm about two thirds through but have loads of hacks so it's not easy.

I am in no hurry though. I still cannot see what 3.5 does for my users that 3.0 does not.

[Alex_]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Hmm, I doubt you could actually run the upgrade script in 30 seconds, let alone change the files. Methinks 30 seconds is not quite accurate.

I talked about 3.5.3 to 3.5.4 - the other update took 7 hours with recounting.

But let it be a minute if you want
Copy files - patch with my diffs - running the update script.

But I am eager to try out that template patch (side by side thing) hack that was posted here cause I found it still uncomfortable to patch/update the templates.
A working diff option in the admincp between two templates would be fasten bigger updates a lot.

[Digma]

I keep postponing it. I've got a testforum running, but haven't finalized a move back to main yet.

[Krofh]

Took 15 hours for us... we did it through ImpEx though. We had set up a test forum where we designed new styles, installed a whole ton of hacks, etc., so we didn't want to do the standard upgrade system... Sadly, ImpEx doesn't care about postids, userids, threadids, etc., it just puts them into the first available slot. So, I had to write my own custom script to adjust the userids so everything stayed correct. After getting all that worked out, it took 15 hours in all, 9 am to 1 am. Now our site's running awesomely, and we're not looking forward at all to the possibility of a vBulletin 4.

[ramprage]

I'm not even a smidge the size of some of these guys forums but I'm planning on doing an upgrade from 3.07 to 3.54 with 7k members. Thinking of trying this on a duplicate site first to see how it goes then do it on the real one. Any suggestions for this?

I've got a bunch of custom hacks with 3.0x installed and photopost... any tips for making a smooth transition to 3.54? Will the upgrade remove all the old hacks? If so I'd just like to use the plugins feature for 3.5 for new ones. Hopefully that will work..

[sross]

Originally Posted by ramprage

I'm not even a smidge the size of some of these guys forums but I'm planning on doing an upgrade from 3.07 to 3.54 with 7k members. Thinking of trying this on a duplicate site first to see how it goes then do it on the real one. Any suggestions for this?

I've got a bunch of custom hacks with 3.0x installed and photopost... any tips for making a smooth transition to 3.54? Will the upgrade remove all the old hacks? If so I'd just like to use the plugins feature for 3.5 for new ones. Hopefully that will work..

Hey, I'm in the same boat.. 3.0.6 and upgrading to 3.5.4 in June about 12,500 members. When are you going to go for it? If it's before me please post your experience. My current plan is to rebuild the design on a test forum, then lock my prod forum and do an upgrade, then import my new design. At this point all my hacks will be gone so I'll just leave the site down while I get a few hacks re-installed, test it all out, then open the site. Then just tell my members we are open but are still finishing some upgrades. My only real fear is that the upgrade will bomb, however if this happens I can always revert to a backup which I plan to take beforehand..

[Erwin]

Why not install the hacks on the test site, export them as products and reimport the product?

[sross]

Originally Posted by Erwin

Why not install the hacks on the test site, export them as products and reimport the product?

I didn't know I could do that lol. I most definitely will then

[Multani]

It took 2 hours and was easier than I expected.

[Wifey]

I paid to have it done and the guy was awesome that did it -- it went off without a hitch.

Until I got a hold of it, LOL. I tried installing a hack that locked down my server so three hours earlier today was spent at work working on things I'm paid to do and corresponding e-mail with my hosting!