Admin Control Panel Items Missing

[peegoo]

Was looking at the vertical list of Admin Control Panel controls...and was also looking at the vBulletin online manual for vBulletin 4.2.3...and noticed some items on my Admin Control Panel were missing.

Notably:

+ vBulletin Blog
+ vBulletin CMS

Any idea why these are missing from my vBulletin 4.2.3 install? Are they add-on's of some sort?

Thanks

[Mark.B]

Was looking at the vertical list of Admin Control Panel controls...and was also looking at the vBulletin online manual for vBulletin 4.2.3...and noticed some items on my Admin Control Panel were missing.

Notably:

+ vBulletin Blog
+ vBulletin CMS

Any idea why these are missing from my vBulletin 4.2.3 install? Are they add-on's of some sort?

Thanks

Chances are you have the 'forum only' version of vB4 installed.

Download the suite version, it's listed as 'vBulletin 4 Forum, CMS & Blogs' these days, (at this point I'd stick on 4.2.3, only change one thing at a time), upload ALL the files, run the upgrade script.

NOTE: Backup your files and database first.

[peegoo]

Thanks for the help Mark. Are you saying that I should stick with the 4.2.3 version?

I've also never done a vBulletin upgrade before. I will certainly back everything up first. When the upgrade script is run...does it only add/upgrade what's not there? In this case the CMS & Blog items?

One last question which I know might be difficult to answer. But are the CMS & Blog items worth adding?

Thank you.

[Mark.B]

Thanks for the help Mark. Are you saying that I should stick with the 4.2.3 version?

In terms of making this change, yes. Once you have it working on 4.2.3, you can evaluate whether you should go to 4.2.5. This will be dependent on things like php version (for example, you could be running php 5.4 with 4.2.3, and this would not work with 4.2.5, whereas php 5.6 will). Additionally, you only really want one major change at a time, otherwise if you do it all in one go and something breaks, it's harder to pin down where it went wrong.

I've also never done a vBulletin upgrade before. I will certainly back everything up first. When the upgrade script is run...does it only add/upgrade what's not there? In this case the CMS & Blog items?

It will add the blog and CMS, it will also reimport languages and styles though it won't overwrite any customisations.

One last question which I know might be difficult to answer. But are the CMS & Blog items worth adding?

If you have a need for them, yes.

Blogs historically don't seem to get used much by members on most sites, and the content is tricky to find in vB4 as it doesn't integrate into 'New Topics' and suchlike.
Articles/CMS can be very useful, but obviously this only works if you think you need some articles.

If you have no need of these two features, then don't bother, as it won't gain you anything at all.