vBulletin 3.5.0 Released

[Kier]

vBulletin 3.5.0

The vBulletin team is proud to present vBulletin 3.5.0 Gold.

vBulletin 3.5.0 is now considered our stable and supported release, superceding the 3.0.x series. We now recommend that all customers upgrade to 3.5.0 to take advantage of the new features and improvements, although we will continue supporting 3.0.9 for the forseeable future, providing security fixes as necessary.

Since many of you have been following the unstable releases, we will not post a full change log since 3.0.9 here, but if you want to view that list you may go here.

What does 'Gold' Mean?

The official name of this release is vBulletin 3.5.0, though you may hear it referred to as the 'gold' release. This term refers to the practise of burning the final, stable version of software to a gold CD in preparation for manufacture of the CDs for sale and distribution to customers.

Changes of note since RC3

• Cookie paths and cookie domains are now selected from a drop down or a text box as an override (if you're really sure). This should help prevent invalid cookie paths/domains from being set.
• Merging a thread now merges into one of the existing threads instead of a new one, also giving an option to replace the other threads with redirection notices.
• External.php has returned to retrieving data based on the time the thread was originally posted. (An index was added to optimize this query.)
• Some additional hooks

Installing or Upgrading vBulletin

Please see the appropriate manual sections: Installing vBulletin and Upgrading vBulletin.

Note that the process is the same as it was in the 3.0.x series, however you must redo your config.php if you are upgrading from 3.0.x!

If you have customized templates and upgrade to vBulletin 3.5, you will need to revert many of them or some areas of your board will not function!
(This is particularly true when upgrading from vBulletin 3.0.x. See this post for additional information.)

Uploading the Files

Due to a new database connection method in vBulletin 3.5.0, while uploading the files, it's a good idea to temporarily put your forums behind .htaccess protection or even temporarily rename your forums directory to prevent any visitors from generating database errors.

Changed Files

Consider all files to have changed since the 3.0.x series.

Bug Reports

You may report bugs by clicking here. Before reporting a bug, please attempt to recreate the bug on a default, uncustomized style (especially if your errors are JavaScript related). Additionally, if you have used the plugins/products system at all, please attempt to recreate the issue with the plugins system disabled!

Discussion

To discuss this release, please post in this thread.

[Kier]

The are the template changes since 3.5.0 RC3 ONLY

If you are not running 3.5.0 RC 3 yet, there are significantly more changed tempates than are listed here. Use "Find Updated Templates" to find the templates that have changed and incorporate those changes. You may even wish to start with a default style!

Note:
You need to only look through this post for templates you have customized. You do not need to take any action to ensure that your uncustomized templates are the latest versions.

If you find a template you have customized in this list, you will likely want to include the changes made here. However, this is not always required. Under each change listed here, you will see "requires revert?" This refers to whether the changes are mandatory (yes). If the changes are mandatory, things will break if you do not incorporate the changes made. It is strongly recommended that you revert and recustomize any templates that say they require a revert.

Additionally, you may wish to use the "Find Updated Template" feature in the control panel to find templates that have been changed since your last edit to them.

-----------------------------------------------------

MEMBERINFO

Conditionals controlling the Additional Information panel have been changed. An age display has also been added if the user has chosen to display their age.

Requires Revert? Yes



threadadmin_mergethreads

The merge threads options of inline moderation no longer creates a new thread. The moderator is given a select box from which to choose the destination thread. An option to leave redirects for the other merged threads is also now available.

Requires Revert? Yes



modifyprofile_birthday

Added bit of text detailing what the date of birth option does.

Requires Revert? No



SHOWTHREAD

Don't print out threaded mode menu if we're not going to use it.

Requires Revert? No



showthread_quickreply

Replaced both instances of 600px with $stylevar[messagewidth].

Requires revert? No



STANDARD_ERROR
STANDARD_ERROR_LITE
STANDARD_REDIRECT

Added missing trailing slashes to <meta> tags.

Requires Revert? No. If you're not bothered about XHTML validation you can ignore this.



search_results

Removed:

maxlength="$vboptions[maxuserlength]"

Requires Revert? You want to do this if you have usernames that are longer than your current max username length setting.



headinclude

Change

<if condition="$foruminfo">

to

<if condition="$show['foruminfo']">

and

<if condition="$threadinfo">

to

<if condition="$show['threadinfo']">

Requires Revert? No but private forum and thread titles can be exposed without this change.



calendar_edit

Split main <form> into two distinct forms to deal with bug 1401.

Requires revert? No



modifyavatar

Don't display avatar category select when there is only one avatar category.

Requires revert? No



navbar

Edit Avatar link has been removed from Quick Links. It left, it will continue to be present even when the user doesn't have permission to use predefined avatars.

Requires Revert? No

[Kier]

Oh... and we hope you like our little homage to the old vB 1.1x style we have running here

[Kier]

The following is a rough summary of what has changed between vBulletin 3.0.x and 3.5.0

• Product/Plugin system with over 550 'hook' locations strategically placed in the code. Allows modification and extension of vBulletin without physical alteration of the vBulletin PHP scripts.
• Inline moderation allows multiple threads or posts to be have moderation actions performed without a visit to the admin or moderator control panels
• Completely rewritten message editor with ability to instantly switch between standard and WYSIWYG modes
• Thread title editing on forumdisplay via AJAX
• Thread opening and closing on forumdisplay via AJAX
• Super-Quick Reply on showthread via AJAX
• Inline post edit on showthread via AJAX
• Username suggestion for PM recipients and search by user via AJAX
• Data manipulation APIs (Data Manager) for centralized data saving
• Template History & Comparison for easy tracking of changes
• Database-based thread and forum read marking
• MySQL Full Text Search
• Additional Datastore Storage Methods
• SMTP Mail Wrapper
• MySQLi Wrapper
• PHPDoc'd Source Code
• Moderator log language abstraction
• Webkit support for style manager color picker
• ImageMagick 6 Support (alternative to GD)
• Calendar events support start/end times
• Custom avatar and profile picture resizing
• Profile pictures can be saved to filesystem
• Statistics ordering
• Each attachment image type can be individually set to generate thumbnails or not
• Each attachment image type can be individually set to open in a new window or not
• Moderated posts and threads do not contribute to post count until approved
• Language chooser in footer
• New bbcode parser now corrects invalid tag nesting to ensure valid HTML
• New [attach] bbcode tag for placing attachments inline with messages
• New [noparse] bbcode tag for disabling bbcode parsing within
• Word wrap excludes contents of PHP/CODE/HTML blocks
• Search engine spider configuration via XML file
• New 'Can View Thread Content' permission
• New 'Can Upload Animated GIF' permission
• Attachment upload via URL in addition to local upload
• New (hopefully foolproof) method for setting cookiepath/cookiedomain
• Forum description field no longer limited to 250 characters
• Completely rewritten Paid Subscriptions system - now known as Payment APIs. New support for 2checkout, Worldpay and Authorize.net
• 'Always Moderate Group Posts' permission replaced with more logical 'Follow Forum Moderation Rules' permission
• Threads containing posts awaiting moderation have indicator icon on forumdisplay for moderators
• Right-to-left language support improved
• Additional 'Execute SQL' auto-queries added
• Image verification for sendmessage to avoid spam issues
• Improved registration image verification to out-fox those pesky bots
• Control panel navigation controlled by XML for easier addition of links
• Upgrade system now imports styles/languages/options only after upgrade complete rather than after each script
• Ability to preview signature edits
• Calendar event email reminders
• And of course, numerous bugs and annoyances resolved.

[Mike Sullivan]

Additionally, ImpEx has now been updated in the members' area to work with 3.5. It only functions with 3.5!

You may also wish to check out the documentation, which has been updated for 3.5.

[Kier]

When uploading the files, it's a good idea to temporarily put your forums behind .htaccess protection or even temporarily rename your forums directory to prevent any visitors from generating database errors.

[Kier]

Please note that vBulletin 3.5 uses a new, reformatted config.php file. For more information see this page in the manual and this thread.

[Mike Sullivan]

There are a number of mandatory template changes between vBulletin 3.5.0 and previous versions (particularly 3.0.x).

If you have customized templates and upgrade to vBulletin 3.5, you will need to revert many of them or some areas of your board will not function!

To determine which templates need to be reverted, see the "Find Updated Templates" part of the "Styles & Templates" section of your control panel. When upgrading to vBulletin 3.5.0 from 3.0.x, consider all templates listed on that page to be out-of-date and incompatible with 3.5.0. You should revert all templates listed there and redo your customizations!

Please see this page of the manual for more information on the "Find Updated Templates" page.

[Kier]

Please note that a bug in Turck MMCache and older versions of eAccelerator will prevent vBulletin 3.5 from functioning. This can manifest itself by redirecting you to the incorrect upgrade script, displaying blank pages, generating strange SQL errors, and more.

To retain the (huge) benefits of running an MMCache, you should switch your server to use eAccelerator 0.9.3 or newer instead.

You can also try disabling Tuck MMCache or eAccelerator via a .htaccess file if your web server supports it.

Create a file called .htaccess in your main forums directory.

for eAccelerator, place the following in the file:

php_flag eaccelerator.enable 0
php_flag eaccelerator.optimizer 0

for Turck MMCache, place the follwing in the file:

php_flag mmcache.enable 0
php_flag mmcache.optimizer 0

If you receive server error after adding the .htaccess, your webserver may be set to not allow you to use these directives. In this case you will need to delete the .htaccess file and contact your host about upgrading to eAccelerator 0.9.3 or newer.

[Freddie Bingham]

vBulletin 3.5.0 supports saving profile pictures in the file system.

If you currently have Custom Avatars stored in the filesystem, you need to move them back to the Database and then move them back out to the filesystem. This will also move profile pictures out to the filesysyem. If you don't do this, your users will need to reupload their profile pictures.