General question about custom appearance features

[fmgrowit]

For the past week (+), I've been trying to PAY someone to design a banner and icons for my site. Most of the work is done, but the images do need a little work before they are installed.

As simple of a task as it sounds, I now understand that it's easier to build a Space shuttle and International space stations combined.

My question here is...What is it about using custom images that future upgrade won't support?

Do the images have to be updated every time a new and improved version of VB comes out?

In fairness to all of the contractors who said they could do the job, but never bothered returning an email beyond that point...only one used the excuse for not being able to do my job because they won't work after I install an update.

Anyone who knows how to do menial tasks with VB can make a mint on this site. It's just a matter of one of you getting your sh...stuff getting it together and DO it.

[Videx]

Advertising banners and icons are two completely different things. I routinely create banners for new advertisers myself. But I still use the default icon set.

Yes, I imagine unless you're careful with the updates they would overwrite your custom icons. Nothing new there; whenever I update I take out the whole "images" folder and when I'm done with the others I upload it separately without overwrite.

[fmgrowit]

Thanks for the advice. I'm not referring to "advertising" banners. I'm referring to page (header) banners. My guess is any images other than default would be affected by updates and should be removed prior to updating.

[Videx]

I dunno, kind of sounds like everyone's problem - a custom logo. Just be sure not to overwrite anything you want to keep.

You should write down what to do when upgrading. Here's an excerpt from my own notes (kept in my private Admin forum so the next Admin can see them). Note that I move out my images folder and upload them separately.

Updating VB

• Activate notice "Forum going down for maintenance"
• Backup database and forum locally using cpanel.
• Backup database and forum to home directory on the server using cpanel.
• Extract vbulletin files locally
• Rename local upload/ to forum/
• delete local forum/install/install.php

* maybe edit local includes/config.php.new (not usually necessary)

• delete local /includes/xml/spiders_vbulletin.xml. Used by Track Guest Visits mod and the list is available here http://www.wolfshead-solutions.com/spiders-list .
• move local /images folder (we don't want to overwrite custom images)
• close forum
• upload local files, overwriting all (drop new forum/ onto public_html/)
• upload images folder, skipping existing files (drop images/ onto /public_html/forum/)
• Run the upgrade script http://www.myforum.org/forum/install/upgrade.php
• Check for updated templates and phrases (see manual)
• Deactivate notice "Forum going down for maintenance"
• open forum

[nhawk]

Somebody is yanking your chain about images being overwritten when there's an upgrade.

They need to put the images being used in their own path, create a template and set the image paths to where the new images are in that template's stylevars and css sheets. OR (not recommened) change the paths in the default template stylevars and css sheets.

Using that method, updates will never overwrite your images.