No, don't dare stop. I think I might understand some of it. I can read capitals.

I used to be able to semi master the hardware side of IT - now I get as far as CTRL+ALT+DEL

...or connecting to Teamviewer and let someone remotely fix the problem.

Was actually quite chuffed the other day as I had to swap hard drives on a PC with a failed motherboard....something remote dial in can't do :ROFL:

Thats OK for you then, I had to speak to my wife about stuff unrelated to cars on several occasions recently :ROFL:

hahah, I feel a great weight bearing down on me....

fwiw, I did actually buy and download the latest Vbulletin software last night, so that's a step forward.....


... probably not going to improve things much just sat in my download folder though, but I feel accomplished... ;)

Not as much as when it comes to actually installing it. ;)

You'll have a bunch of people sitting here twitching at their keyboards and checking the time every few minutes in anticipation.

I'm curious what the upgrade process actually is. Are there a bunch of scripts to run in MySQL? Presumably the PHP stuff is just drop the new files on top of the old ones? Is all the config in the database?

If you're moving to a new server at the same time can a test version be spun up in parallel to the live version?

Vbulletin has to go from 3.8 -> 4.2 -> 5.x

Windows has to come into supportability at least.. ;-)

MySQL and PHP will no doubt need updating hugely too.


There will definitely be parallel testing, to make sure that the upgrade hasn't broken anything, before performing it for real, so consider yourself volunteered for that test phase +++

Edit: I didn't really answer your questions! - I assume there will be lots of DB scripts to alter the schema, but not looked yet. I also assume the php bits will just drop in..... The database is key. You can run everything in the DB, or run attachments as separate files. We currently have separate attachments, although they recommend you move attachments back into the DB for any sort of migration work, which makes sense, but I suspect we have gathered a lot of attachments over the last decade... !

It will be a few weeks yet I think unfortunately. Royal Mail have thrown us some curveballs on their APIs post Brexit, so need to finish sorting all that out first.

Happy to help out however is useful :)

Are there any updates on this?

The forum runs on software from 2009 that has probably hundreds of easily accessible exploits.

They run http (meaning all the input like our log ins and passwords are sent to forums in plain text) and to be honest I'm suprised this forum is still up and hasn't been ransomwared. It's the equivalent of having your debit card pin written on the card in your wallet.

Are there any backups in case this happens?

There are plenty of time served forum members with decades of experience in IT which I'm sure would be happy to help out if needed.

Having the forums run on https would also mean the forums would not be all the way down on the google search results, so more users would register and use the forums. Most browsers these days mark http websites as unsecure which I'm sure turns off many potential members.

I also wouldn't mind chipping in for the new licenses and whatever's needed.

The risk of these forums (and all the knowledge freely shared between users) going down is very high and once it gets ransomed/hacked or whatever it may be too late to rebuild it.

Not something I personally would like to see. As you say, there is a vast amount of information both on the forum and in members heads, and it would be a shame if it was lost. As much as I browse the A8 groups on Facebook, there's no real way to see what information is there, and quite a lot of posts lack any semblance of caring. Those who ask for help upload a photo and ask "What's wrong?", or seem unwilling to provide any relevant information.