Upgrading from vB 3.8.x to vB 5.x

[Knonts]

I used to be an avid user of vBulletin software (still own several licenses, but don't use them) and I still help manage another owners vBulletin forum who is currently running vBulletin 3.8.9. The plan is to upgrade the forum to either the latest build of vBulletin or move to another product but before we make that decision I was hoping to get a few questions answered:

• Will the $209 upgrade cost allow me to upgrade my current vBulletin 3.x license to current 5 version or is that price only for vBulletin 4 to 5 users?
• Does vBulletin 5 offer a way to deal with user linked pictures on HTTPS enabled forums? Such as Xenforo uses an image proxy so that my forum which is HTTPS doesn't display any broken or partial HTTPS errors. Does the same feature or ability exist within vBulletin?
• Are there any gotcha's or any other information I might need to know prior to upgrading vBulletin 3.8.9 to the latest vBulletin 5 build?

Thanks in advance!

[BirdOPrey5]

1) The $209 will allow upgrading from either VB 3.x or VB 4.x to 5.x.

2) Other than allowing users to upload images locally instead of link to them, there is nothing specific to force/stop users from embedding http images in https pages, no.

3) Be aware there is no Calendar feature on VB5, if you use that on VB 3.x there is no replacement for it. Any add-ons you have for VB 3.x will be disabled and not work after upgrading. Any custom styles will be marked as incompatible as well. There are some other generally minor features that were dropped from VB5 like password protected forums an threaded views for posts. Please play with this forum and/or the trial to make sure VB5 has everything you need and use. On the plus side there are new features not found in any other VB versions, and some not in any other forum packages like Site Builder which allows editing and managing much of the site via the front end, reducing need for the Admin CP. Stronger password encryption, the ability to require a paid subscription be purchased at the time of registration.

[Knonts]

Thanks BirdOPrey5

We've decided to perform the upgrade from vB3 to vB5 and everything seems to have gone fairly well with the exception of Google reporting a lot of 404 errors. It seems the SEO changes in vB5 have changed a lot compared to vB3 and now all my indexed pages are broken.

Would have been nice to know about that before hand.

[Mark.B]

If you were using standard URLs in vB3 or vB4, these will redirect to the new vB5 equivalents.

Were you using vBSEO previously? vBSEO was a third party product, their custom URL structures will not redirect as described above.

For further support, you'll need to associate your forum account with your license. Please go here:

https://members.vbulletin.com/membersupport_priority.php

...and enter your email address in one of the boxes. You'll need to have your customer number and password to access the page.