Steps before upgrade from 4.2.5 to 5 series

[Trevor Matthews]

Hi all

I am currenty removing all plug-ins from my 4.2.5 forum and tidying up all out of date files etc with the Suspect Files feature.

I only have Tapatalk and Everywhere Side Bar left as plug-ins.

Everywhere Side Bar seems to be not required for VB5 as there seems to be other ways to display the content I need to show on the side of the forum.

Should I remove Tapatalk completely before attempting the upgrade to VB5?
Should I install PHP 7 and see if it works on 4.2.5 before upgrading to VB5?
Currently I am on 5.6.30.

Many thanks.

[Wayne Luke]

Your vBulletin 4 files aren't relevant and won't be carried over to vBulletin 5. vBulletin 4 Addon Products will be removed during the upgrade. vBulletin 4 styles will remain but will be inactive and do not work in vBulletin 5. vBulletin 5 doesn't store plugins in the database. Your current version of PHP is satisfactory. Though, PHP 7 will provide a performance boost.

We recommend first upgrading a copy of your database. To do this, you would follow these steps:

1) Backup your current database.
2) Restore the backup in a new database.
3) Create a new directory.
4) Upload your vBulletin 5 files to this directory.
5) Follow the upgrade steps in the vb5readme.html file.

The upgrade will import your vBulletin 4 database information into the new vBulletin 5 tables and delete the majority of tables used by vBulletin 5. There is no procedure to revert.

Once, you have tested vBulletin 5 to your satisfaction, turn off your vB4 forums and create a new backup. Point the files in your vBulletin 5 directory to your vBulletin 4 database and run upgrade.php again.

[Trevor Matthews]

Thanks Wayne, I understand the process now.

[TheologyWeb]

Your vBulletin 4 files aren't relevant and won't be carried over to vBulletin 5. vBulletin 4 Addon Products will be removed during the upgrade. vBulletin 4 styles will remain but will be inactive and do not work in vBulletin 5. vBulletin 5 doesn't store plugins in the database. Your current version of PHP is satisfactory. Though, PHP 7 will provide a performance boost.

We recommend first upgrading a copy of your database. To do this, you would follow these steps:

1) Backup your current database.
2) Restore the backup in a new database.
3) Create a new directory.
4) Upload your vBulletin 5 files to this directory.
5) Follow the upgrade steps in the vb5readme.html file.

The upgrade will import your vBulletin 4 database information into the new vBulletin 5 tables and delete the majority of tables used by vBulletin 5. There is no procedure to revert.

Once, you have tested vBulletin 5 to your satisfaction, turn off your vB4 forums and create a new backup. Point the files in your vBulletin 5 directory to your vBulletin 4 database and run upgrade.php again.

Questions:

1. regarding that last step. Once we point the test forum to the live database and run the upgrade script again, won't we lose all of the customizations we made to the test server and have to start over? Like pages we created, menu modifications, admin settings, etc?

2. Reading the upgrade instructions in the manual there is a note that says, "as you already have a vbulletin installation running on your server, you should delete the install.php in the /core/install directory" --- Should I do this or leave it? I do already have a vbulletin installation (the test one) but I am also rerunning the upgrade on the v4 database I just copied over.

Thanks.

[TheologyWeb]

I updated my post above. if anyone can answer my questions I would very much appreciate it.

[Wayne Luke]

1. You can export your style changes to import into your live site in the AdminCP. Site Builder Pages, Permissions and setting changes would have to be re-applied.

2. The install directory should be deleted when it is not in use. You won't be able to access the AdminCP when it exists and it presents danger to your site if left on the server.

[TheologyWeb]

1. You can export your style changes to import into your live site in the AdminCP. Site Builder Pages, Permissions and setting changes would have to be re-applied.

2. The install directory should be deleted when it is not in use. You won't be able to access the AdminCP when it exists and it presents danger to your site if left on the server.

Thanks. The upgrade went smoothly.

[outermonvolia]

Point the files in your vBulletin 5 directory to your vBulletin 4 database and run upgrade.php again.

Newbie with what's probably a stupid question...if today my 4.2.5 forum is pointed to "domain.com/board" and the new VB5 files go into "domain.com/forums", is it as simple as just making a couple of redirect changes with my host to ensure visitors don't keep hitting the old URL after the 5.6.4 upgrade is complete?

[Mark.B]

Newbie with what's probably a stupid question...if today my 4.2.5 forum is pointed to "domain.com/board" and the new VB5 files go into "domain.com/forums", is it as simple as just making a couple of redirect changes with my host to ensure visitors don't keep hitting the old URL after the 5.6.4 upgrade is complete?

Don't do it that way.

vBulletin 5 has redirects in place from old vB4 URLs but this relies on the folder structure not changing.

However, vB5 requires an empty directory - that is to say, absolutely no old vB4 files in place (except user generated content like avatars and attachments, if stored in the file system)

So - rename your existing directory to something else, and make a new, empty directory at /board.
Copy over any user generated files and folders (such as avatars and attachments, if stored in the file system)
Also any custom smilies.

[outermonvolia]

Don't do it that way.

vBulletin 5 has redirects in place from old vB4 URLs but this relies on the folder structure not changing.

However, vB5 requires an empty directory - that is to say, absolutely no old vB4 files in place (except user generated content like avatars and attachments, if stored in the file system)

So - rename your existing directory to something else, and make a new, empty directory at /board.
Copy over any user generated files and folders (such as avatars and attachments, if stored in the file system)
Also any custom smilies.

Makes perfect sense!! So simple, too. Thank you!

[Wayne Luke]

The use of "forums" in the documentation is an example. You can install vBulletin 5 in any directory you wish. We cannot list all the different variations that customers use for their installation directory, there are thousands of combinations in use.

[ahobilam]

If upgraded from vb4.2.5 to vb5
What will happened to the custom bbcodes?
Is there option in VB5 to use custom bbcodes?
Please reply at the earliest I am ready upgrade after seeing the reply.

[Trevor Hannant]

Your custom BB Codes should continue to work - however you may need to edit them slightly after upgrade depending on what they are.

Please open your own topic for support rather than bumping an old topic that has nothing to do with Custom BB Codes

[Rob-H]

Your vBulletin 4 files aren't relevant and won't be carried over to vBulletin 5. vBulletin 4 Addon Products will be removed during the upgrade. vBulletin 4 styles will remain but will be inactive and do not work in vBulletin 5. vBulletin 5 doesn't store plugins in the database. Your current version of PHP is satisfactory. Though, PHP 7 will provide a performance boost.

We recommend first upgrading a copy of your database. To do this, you would follow these steps:

1) Backup your current database.
2) Restore the backup in a new database.
3) Create a new directory.
4) Upload your vBulletin 5 files to this directory.
5) Follow the upgrade steps in the vb5readme.html file.

The upgrade will import your vBulletin 4 database information into the new vBulletin 5 tables and delete the majority of tables used by vBulletin 5. There is no procedure to revert.

Once, you have tested vBulletin 5 to your satisfaction, turn off your vB4 forums and create a new backup. Point the files in your vBulletin 5 directory to your vBulletin 4 database and run upgrade.php again.

After I ran a new install in a clean directory (with attachments folder intact), I got a really funky page and can't log in. See attached.

What I need to do is copy the vb4 database (which is my live database) and upgrade to vb5. The attached is what I got when I tried that.

[Wayne Luke]

The most common reason for the attached image above is not renaming the htaccess.txt to .htaccess (the period is required). This is step #5 under uploading files in the vb5readme.html file.

Other issues are:

Frequent Installation Issues

After installing vBulletin 5, my site is unformatted
This means that URL Rewriting is not working on your site. Possible causes include:

• htaccess.txt has not been renamed to .htaccess (the leading period is important)
• mod_rewrite is not installed for Apache 2.4
• URL Rewrite is not installed for IIS 8.5+
• The server configuration for NGINX has not been updated. See the file for your version of PHP within the do_not_upload folder.
• AllowOverride is not allowed in the Apache configuration file.

Your hosting provider can help you get URL Rewrites working on your site.

If you're not having the hosting company manage your site, make sure that AllowOverride is set to All.