Reverting Themes and Phrases Question

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Group,

I thought 3.5.0 was working just fine, (except for a few security issues that were brought to our attention), But the Vb people just had to go messing with things...

I think 3.5.1 opened up a whole new can of worms and problems or issues related to the themes and phrases, I know it has for me as it has set me back aways. And I'm not too happy about it thats for sure.

"If it aint broke dont fix it, Thats what I have always heard"

But anyway thats a different issue altogether here is my question about reverting themes and Phrases if anyone can or will help explain this to me.

Since I have changed over to VB version 3.5.1 every customized theme and Phrase that I have installed VB is telling me to "Revert" a various number of templates.

Just what the heck is actually going on here when It says "revert" or is "Reverting" and WHY is it required?

And if i customize my themes and phrases again, am I going to have to revert and restore everything again everytime a new update comes out and it tells me to "Revert"???

Thanks much

Doug

[feldon23]

Every time a new version of vBulletin comes out, templates are changed.

Keeping your templates up-to-date has been a requirement in vBulletin virtually since day one, and the reported list of templates has always been available under the Find Updated Templates tab, but since thousands of customers including yourself didn't know or didn't heed this information, it has been given a more prominent location.

If your templates are significantly out of date, your users may be unable to post messages or otherwise participate in or view your forum or you may be exposing yourself and your users to security flaws! Realize that every style you add to your forum, especially ones that significantly alter the appearance of the forum, increase the amount of time and effort for upgrading your fourm. Maybe some day the design and style of vBulletin will largely be defined by CSS. Then the template changes will take less work.


Let's say you are running vB3.5.0 and you have modified, for example, the postbit template. If you upgrade to vB3.5.1 and that upgrade also included changes to the postbit template, your version of the postbit template is now "frozen in time" at 3.5.0. Your postbit template may be missing spelling or grammatical fixes, phrase and language fixes, trivial or major functionality improvements, or even critical security fixes!

Of course not all changes are vital. If you look at the Release Notes every time a new version of vBulletin comes out, there is a detailed list of template changes for that new version. Some of those templates say Revert necessary? Yes which means that you are losing functionality or exposing yourself to a security risk by not updating your templates.

You will want to reflect the changes in your templates that Jelsoft made from vB3.5.0 to vB3.5.1. vBulletin 3.5 has made this template comparison process much easier by bundling Template History and Template Comparison features within the Admin Control Panel.

[Removed-1078464]

Feldon,

Thank you so much for taking the time to explain a little more in detail.

I will definetely take a look into the things you mentioned.

Thanks

Doug

[feldon23]

If you look at the list of Template Changes from vB3.5.0 -> vB3.5.1, all but 2 or 3 changes are cosmetic bugfixes.