Preserve custom templates during upgrades

[daiver]

I have some heavily modified templates for the skins in my forums. Do I have to do everything again or can I just copy the templates from the past version? If so, which dirs and files do I have to copy?

I'm using eva2000's upgrade method, stickied in this forum and I'm moving from 3.6.1 to 3.6.3.

Also, eva2000 mentions this:

Removing hacks: It's at this stage if you have hacks on your database, you can remove them from this test duplicate copy of your database you just created in step 3 - which has your imported back up sql file from step 4. This leaves all hacks and php edits intact on your live original database untouched. All you are doing is removing hacks and php edits from a copy of your original database.

Do I have to remove and then reinstall them or is this something to do if something goes wrong?

[Boxy]

Custom templates are not altered or removed as part of the upgrade process, however, if you have modified any of the default templates you may need to revert them an reapply your changes.

Hacks are not supported by the upgrade and can sometime cause problems, so generally we would advise removing these before you start the upgrade and add them back in after.

[daiver]

Thanks for the advice. I didn't remove the hacks until I installed again since they gave me problems. I assume there's no risk if I did it after and not before, right?

[feldon23]

You shouldn't need to remove hacks if you are going from 3.6.1 to 3.6.3.

Make a good backup and then check out the discussion threads for each plugin/product/mod/hack you are running to see if there are any issues with 3.6.2 or 3.6.3. If not, then you are good to go.