Downgrade vbulletin 4 to vbulletin 3

[Mr Happy]

vBulletin 3 is an old out of date script that's no longer supported.

No it is not. vBulletin 3.x has not been EOLed that I know of has it?
vB 3.8 is a great script actually, whereas vB 4.x is still ungoing the myriad of bug fixes that should have been completed before the script went vB 4 Gold.

Besides - if it's so outdated - why is KWWHunction using 3.8.7
J.

Yes it has reached it's EOL. It did almost a year ago now (March last year). The fact that you want to downgrade to a script that you don't even know reached it's EOL is incredibly scary.

KWWH has a lot of custom modifications making it difficult to upgrade.

[MsJacquiiC]

Ooops - sorry about that. I'd honestly stopped following vB news after the 4 Gold release. It was my understanding that EOL would occur with the release of vB 4.2 = apparently the date was moved up several months in advance - meh...

It's not I who wanted to downgrade. I and a whole lot of vBulletin license holders still consider vB 3.8.7 PL2 the latest, greatest version of vB.

"Custom modifications" seems to be the excuse that vBulletin.org is using as well regarding a much needed upgrade. They're still running 3.7 - that's telling imo. Shouldn't official sites be running officially up-to-date installs of their own product?

Anyway - It seems vB 3 security and patch level releases will continue to be issued until "their usage has become insignificant" whatever that means....

[AmN]

vBulletin.org is using 3.6.12 lol... and why is still on old version you can find answer on their site.. also this year vb.org will get new vb4 ... and now back to thread and your previous question here is all what u need..

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=255104

[saini]

"You can downgrade easy"

How? Can someone provide step-by-step instructions to downgrade from vB4 to vB3 please? Thanks

yes you can downgrade ur vb but its a complex process. Vbteam has a good tutorial to do it.
I successfully downgraded the vb4 to vb3 and its working fine now on http://w4warez.com with no errors now. Thanks to kos for helping me to fix the errors.

[WDF]

Interesting read and also interesting that all the VB staff would rather say you can't do it but will not try with the attachments stored in the file system rather then the database.

[saini]

It was the Impex script that helps to downgrade it.

[WebMonster]

I was gona say use the impex script yes it worked great for me .

What are the errors you are getting ?

[SkyDiver]

Hi ,
One of the topics that most of webmasters talking about that is : How to downgrade from vBulletin 4.x.x to vBulletin 3.7 or 3.8 .
You can downgrade your vbulletin from 4.x to 3.x very very easy ! Without losing attachments , thanks , passwords .
You need IMPEX ( One of the vBulletin scripts like an addon ) to Do this work .

How to do this :

First of all you must get a backup ( export ) from attach and post_thanks table from your phpmyadmin ( in .sql format )

1. Get full backup from your vbulletin 4.x database .

2. Go to members.vbulletin.com and download IMPEX Script .

3. Make a new database and a new place for your new vbulletin ( 3.8) .

4. Install vbulletin 3.x ( 3.8.7 for example ) for your new database .

5. Extract the impex script and upload impex files ( in upload folder ) to your 3.8 forum root .

Now you have 2 databases . We call 4.x database old and 3.x database new .

6. You must config impex .

7. Go to impex folder in 3.x forum and rename ImpExConfig.php.new to ImpExConfig.php

After rename , Open and edit it :

####
#
# TARGET - The target is the vBulletin database (where the data is going to)
#
####

$impexconfig['target']['server'] = 'localhost';
$impexconfig['target']['user'] = 'username';
$impexconfig['target']['password'] = 'password';
$impexconfig['target']['database'] = 'vbulletin_forum';
$impexconfig['target']['tableprefix'] = '';

# If the system that is being imported from uses a database,
# enter the details for it here and set 'sourceexists' to true.
# If the source data is NOT stored in a database, set 'sourceexists' to false

$impexconfig['sourceexists'] = true;

####
#
# SOURCE - The source is the old forum database (where the data is coming from)
#
####

# mysql / mssql
$impexconfig['source']['databasetype'] = 'mysql'; // mysql OR mssql
$impexconfig['source']['server'] = 'localhost';
$impexconfig['source']['user'] = 'username';
$impexconfig['source']['password'] = 'password';
$impexconfig['source']['database'] = 'source';
$impexconfig['source']['tableprefix'] = '';

You must set 3.x database informations in TARGET
And set 4.x database informations in SOURCE
8. Go to vbulletin 3 admincp --> Login --> You must have a new tab "Import"
9. Click on Import tab then you will see import page.
Select system : Choose 3.7.x
Select version and product : Choose vBulletin 3.7 and 3.8
Start all of the modules .
After you do this work you must go to update counters and update all of counters.
After all of this works you must import post_thanks and attach table . ( then optimize tables)

Hope this helps

[MrOSX]

Convert to something like PHPBB, XenForo, IPB...etc, then convert back to vBulletin 3.

And good decision, vBulletin 4 really does suck, also the way vBulletin decided to have there own custom coding with <vb:> tags was really stupid, more work for coders.