Upgrade 3.0.x to 3.6.x Best Practices

We've got a moderately customized forum with custom navbar, header, crumbs, etc. If you were giving ball park figures, what time frame would be reasonable to migrate a forum from a 3.0 version to the latest build?
Should we migrate to intermediate builds or jump directly to the latest?



Thanks,

I upgraded a forum last week from 3.0 to 3.6.5. It's not hard, but does take a little while. You need to close the forum, and disable the hacks, do the upgrade, enable the hacks one at a time, to see if they will all work. Doing it this way, if one doesn't work you'll be able to isolate which one it is.

Chances are, the one that doesn't work (if indeed there IS one), there's probably an upgrade for at vb.org, as most of the hacks have been upgraded if one was needed.

All in all, took me about 45 mins.

Binrock:

Regarding your second question.
The upgrade script takes care of the intermediate builds, it will go through them as necessary.

I always backup my existing database before an upgrade.
If you don't want too much downtime you could always enable the vBulletin default style ONLY while you sort out any customised styles.

ooooops - sorry about that. I didn't mention backups - I forget about that, it's just a given with me.

where can i download vbulletin 3.6

At www.vbulletin.com (http://www.vbulletin.com)

1) Right, as Peggy said, it doesn't take very long to run through the vBulletin upgrade process or upload/upgrade the hacks. While vBulletin does automatically upgrade the templates to reflect the changes made in the newest version, it does not upgrade any of your modified templates. You will have to manually update those templates otherwise key functions will not work. For example, there have been additions to the POSTBIT template since vB 3.0.x such as the "multiquote" feature. This can take a lot of time depending on the number of templates that need to be modified. From my own experience of updating some 30 skins, it can take awhile depending on how many templates need to be updated. Upgrading from 3.5.x to 3.6.x, there are fewer changes to be made. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about 3.0.x to 3.6.x. :(

2) vBulletin upgrades your forum build by build (e.g. 3.0.4 -> 3.0.5 ... 3.6.4 -> 3.6.5) so I would just install the latest version.

There are alot of changes from 3.0 and 3.6. I know from doing several upgrades

Lol, by far my least favorite thing about the upgrade process..

I can understand that :)
I do it on a regular basis tho. My first upgrade from 3.0 to 3.6 was a harrowing experience, lol