Upgrading vBulletin

The final page is an important one—there is a reminder to delete the install/install.php file. This prevents others from running the install script, which may damage your forum.

Delete the install.php file via FTP, click on Go Back, and then click on Proceed once again. You will then be taken to the log-on screen for the AdminCP, where the change of version numbers along with the absence of a screen telling you to upgrade are sure signs that things have worked out fine.

Testing the Upgrade

Once the upgrade is done, test the forum. Nothing elaborate. Just see if things are working. If you have a lot of hacks installed, then it might be a good idea to see whether they all work. This is a lot easier to do if you have more than one administrator on the site!

You can spend as much (or as little) time as you want doing this. As a bare minimum, check that you can still log in, post messages, and read messages. If you have a busy forum rest assured that the members will soon let you know if other things aren't working!

Unveiling the Upgrade

The final step is to unveil the upgrade to the members. Access the vBulletin Options page, and switch the forum back on. This will allow your members to log in again, to post and read messages, and to interact normally.

Be on the lookout for things that don't work, and take all reports of problems seriously. If you think that there are problems, follow these simple steps:

•Shut the forum down.

•Test to see whether you can recreate the problem. (Remember to test the forum using a registered user's account as well as an administrator's account, as some problems may only show up to members.)

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•Carry out the upgrade again. This time pay special attention to migrating the hacks and uploading the files properly.

•Test again.

If problems persist, then it could be that one of your hacks is incompatible with the new version. If you think that this is the case, then install a hack-free version and add the hacks manually to find out which one is causing the problem. If you are making use of a popular hack, then it is likely that others will also have the problem and will be talking about it on the vBulletin forums over on

http://www.vbulletin.com or http://www.vbulletin.org—check these out for information!

Summary

This chapter has dealt exclusively with upgrading a vBulletin discussion board. This is a process that you will probably need to carry out a few times a year to keep up to date with the latest releases.

On paper, this looks like a long process, but in reality it's quite easy—upgrading a basic board with just a few hacks (or no hacks at all) takes only minutes. With practice, it is possible to upgrade an extensively hacked board in less than an hour. After one or two upgrades, you will start to get a feel for how it works and where things are (for example, which files you've hacked and what other changes you've made). You'll then find that it is a lot faster and a lot easier.

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Changing the Look of vBulletin

In this chapter we're going to examine ways to change how your vBulletin installation looks to the outside world.

The sky's pretty much the limit with what you can do with vBulletin, and there's no point going through the process of building a custom style here, because what you will want to do will be different to what we will do. So, instead, we'll offer you some hints, tips, and insights into style manipulation and creation for vBulletin.

In this chapter we will look at:

•The role of styles and templates in vBulletin

•How to modify the default style

•How to add and edit a new style

•How to distribute a style that you have created

•How to upload a new style to your server and install it

Styling vBulletin

There are two ways that styles get created for vBulletin:

•Modification of the default style

•Creation of Custom styles

By far the most common method of creating styles for vBulletin is to start off with the default style (the blue and white style that you've seen so far in this book) and to make modifications to this style. You can think of this as a sort of 'feature-creep' or 'style-creep' of the original. This method is much easier and more straightforward than creating a style completely from scratch, and by using the default style as a starting point, you are making certain you haven't forgotten something or left something important out of the template.