Planning to Upgrade the Forum Soon

[KristineS]

The upgrade will happen when you get to it, Steve. Sometimes other things do take precedence. It will be nice to see the upgraded version of the forum, but the current version works just fine.

[vangogh]

True enough. At some point we'll have to upgrade just for the security. Hopefully it won't be too long before I can get to it.

[jamestl2]

So are you going to change the forum skin once you upgrade too, Steve?

Don't really care too much for the skin vbulletin.com currently uses...

[vangogh]

At first I'll just leave it as the default vBulletin skin. I think the version 4 one looks a little nicer than this one. In time (assuming I find time), I'd like to modify the template and give us a different look. One nice thing about version 4+ is that the layout is css based as opposed to table based. It should be much easier to customize the look of the forum.

[jamestl2]

I was wondering when they were finally going to make the switch. (Haven't looked into it myself yet.)

Converting all the preexisting templates that most forums use into tableless layouts does sound nightmarish though. Hopefully the admin side of version 4 does make customization quicker and easier for those who weren't as familiar with the previous versions.

[vangogh]

I won't really know until I try to customize the look, but knowing it's css already has me more optimistic. I've looked at the code and it is cleaner and I read a short tutorial showing how easy it is to make some changes to give the forum a new look.

First things first though. Finding time to actually upgrade.

[Spider]

What version is the upgraded forum?

[vangogh]

We've moved up to the version 4 line. I'd rather not say the specific version since it's a security thing to hide it if you can.

Our license is up this week. I don't need to renew since I purchased an owned license, but the only way to get future ugrades and access to code in the support forums is to purchase the license for version 4. I was entitled to download the new version with the last license, but will need to pay again for future upgrades. I'm going to buy the full publishing suite when I do. That'll give us more features and turn the forum into more of a full site with a forum as the main section. I'm not quite sure how it can be set up though. I'm hoping we can still have the forum site at the root, but it's possible that when you type in the domain a home page will show up and the forum will be one of the main links.

I'll have to look into it all before actually upgrading to the full suite and I think even with the full suite I can set it up so only the forum is actually here.

[Spider]

Thanks - but why is the specific version a security issue now? All previous versions of vB had the specific version clearly marked in the footnote.

[vangogh]

The company always places it there. I had removed it though. It shouldn't have been showing before. The reason not to mention it is say version 2.3.4.5 has some security flaw, but version 2.3.4.6 doesn't have it and 2.3.4.7 has a different security flaw. By publicly showing which version you use you make it easier for someone to match the flaw with the version. There are other ways someone might find the hole, but why make it easy for them.

Imagine the back door of your house uses a specific lock with a flaw and could be unlocked with any key. That's a security hole that you should fix and anyone trying any key in your back door can easily get into your home. You wouldn't post a sign on the front door saying you're using that specific lock though. The security hole exists regardless and the only real security is to get another lock, but you're not going to announce which lock your using would you?