Quick Overview: How to Upgrade to vBulletin 5 Connect.

[Wayne Luke]

vBulletin 5 Requires URL Rewriting. This will be mod_rewrite or its equivalent under Apache and URL Rewrite under IIS. There is an .htaccess (Apache) file and web.config (IIS) included in the upload folder for this purpose. The software will not work without URL Rewriting.

Note: It is important to install vBulletin 5 into a clean directory. Do not attempt to overwrite your 4.X files or the install will fail and you will be left with hundreds of unused files.

Setting Up vBulletin 5
Please note that vBulletin 5 has two config.php files. It is very important that both are edited and the values of any overlapping variables like cookie prefix are identical in both files.

1. If Upgrading from a previous version, you need to create a backup of your database before proceeding.
2. After Purchasing, download vB5 from the your Member's Area.
3. Unzip the package.
4. Create a new directory to hold vBulletin 5. It should not contain any vBulletin 3 or 4 files.
5. Copy the /upload/ your new html folder. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to assumed it’s been renamed and refer to it as /vb5/.
6. Rename /vb5/core/includes/config.php.new to config.php and edit it like you would for vB4. (Change the database credentials & database name.). This is similar to how you installed/upgraded vBulletin 3 and 4.
7. Rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess (Note the preceding . IS required)

5.X specific steps

1. Rename /vb5/config.php.bkp to config.php.
2. Set the cookieprefix to be the same as the one in /vb5/core/includes/config.php.

Running the Upgrade Wizard

1. Go to the install directory of core in your browser to install vB5. This is just like installing vB4. Ex: http://www.example.com/vb5/core/install/upgrade.php
2. When finished you can view the site through the baseurl (http://www.example.com/vb5).
3. You should be able to access your AdminCP via the baseurl + /admincp (http://www.example.com/vb5/admincp).

Command Line Upgrades.
If you have a larger forum, you should upgrade via the command line. This is a faster and more efficient way to upgrade. In order to do this, follow these steps:

1. Edit your config.php files as stated above.
2. Connect to your server via SSH.
3. Switch to your forum's core install directory. example: cd <install location>/core/install
4. Type this command: php upgrade.php

You can use this command "nohup php upgrade.php &" if you feel that your SSH connection will fail in the middle of the upgrade. This will allow the upgrade to continue in the background without a connection.

Why are there two config.php files?
vBulletin 5 has two layers of functionality. These are the Presentation and the Core Layers. The Presentation layer does not have permission to use code in the Core layer directly and accesses it via the API. This allows more data security and in the future can include the functionality where the Core layer is located on a completely different server for more security.