I think I need TWO test installations.

[TWood]

I'm at vB 4.1.3 and holding until the editor issues calm down. But, I know that I will eventually have to upgrade, so I'm trying to plan ahead.

I have about 60 custom template modifications to a clone of the default style, not parented, plus some really custom plugins. The advice I get here and at vb.com is that I should upgrade my test site, make the changes to those templates, export them as a style, then import the style into the live site.

Um...no. I want to see the result of importing the style before doing that to my live site. How do I do that without a second test site?

Edit: And this goes right back to a question about the software itself - WHY are the templates IN the database? WHY are the data layers and presentation layers co-mingled?

[Videx]

Sounds more like a complaint than a question. So I'll just agree with you. Lots of customizations can be a real PITA.

Dunno though - looking at the site in your sig I don't see a lot of obvious custom stuff. Except maybe the code that creates a "Welcome to 12345 zip code forum". Please tell me that's code and that you don't actually have a forum for every single mail code???

[TWood]

And boy are my fingers tired!

I've seen a site that set up 42,300 forums, one for each ZIP code, and it was a pain to navigate. My template modifications are subtle, mostly removing and rearranging things, and then changing the wording to make it look like there are that many forums. There's only one.

I just finished setting up the webcomic section using Wordpress as the CMS. I set up a 'child' theme to the slideshow theme so now I just have to add my own CSS to the child stylesheet, and it's fairly immune to the parent theme updates that might affect layout. And the database is completely separated anyway. It's just such a different way to manage the style than having templates in the database, and makes it so much easier to work on.