There has been mention of this in another thread, but the word is now official - JelSoft has released their latest version of the forum software, vBulletin 3.7.0.

I have set aside Saturday morning to upgrade this site.

Please understand this site has a lot of edited templates, in order to add some of the functionality we enjoy. And the new version of the software contains some major re-writes of those templates, which means I am going to have a plain, vanilla forum after I upload the new files and run the upgrade scripts.

The forum will be recognizable as a vBulletin forum, but I am going to have to come back in and re-insert a boatload of code, in order to get everything working the way it is. Which is going to take a considerable bit of time.

Here is a rough idea of what you can expect on Saturday morning.

Somewhere around 8:00 AM Eastern Time, I will be closing the forums. It takes approximately 25 minutes to upload the entire vBulletin package to the server. Since we have been dragging our feet a bit, there are several upgrades that will need to be run, after the file upload process. I will upgrade the forum from version 3.6.8 to 3.6.9 to 3.6.10 to 3.7.0 Beta 1 to 3.7.0 Beta 2 to 3.7.0 Beta 3 to 3.7.0 Beta 4 to 3.7.0 Beta 5 to 3.7.0 Beta 6 to 3.7.0 Release Candidate 1 to 3.7.0 RC2 to 3.7.0 RC3 to 3.7.0 RC4 to 3.7.0. This will likely take another 15-20 minutes.

At that point, I will re-open the forums, but you will need to understand and accept things are going to be quite different from what you are used to seeing. The side column on the forum index page will be gone, the links to the portal and photo gallery on the Navbar will be gone, the ads will be gone, etc.

I've yet to look, but I believe there are about 20 templates that will require editing, to bring all of that back online. If things go smoothly, add another 2-3 hours work. If things prove difficult, add 4+ hours.

So you are going to need to be patient. Posting messages to tell me you can't see the side column or find the link to the portal is not going to accomplish anything at all, so don't even expect me to be looking for them, much less answering them.

If I can have everything back in place and running 100% before noon, then Highlandtide is going to owe me a steak dinner and the rest of you will be on the bell for the rest of the day. And if you don't know what being on the bell is about, then quit pretending to be a Scot!

Again, I just need everyone to be patient, come Saturday morning. If you're logged into the forum any time after about 7:30 AM, you'll do well to not be writing anything of vital importance. As soon as I can get sat down on Saturday morning, the forums are going to get closed, so be prepared. And once they go down, you can expect them to be down for approximately one hour. After they re-open, they are going to be a bit rough around the edges for another 2-4 hours.

So there you have it. You cannot say you weren't warned.

Riverkilt, take deep, even breaths. You'll still be able to do everything you are doing now. And if you feel a bit daring and bold, you may find you'll even be able to do some new things, too.