May 12

Updating custom vBulletin Skins is such a pain

Updating vBulletin Skins

This is the part of updating a vBulletin forum that I never look forward too. I seen a tool posted in the forums called WinMerge, I can see how it would be helpful updating skins if I had another monitor of just more desktop space.

I’ll quickly go over what I do to update a vBulletin skin and the templates, maybe it well help a few out who don’t have a clue what’s involved in updating their skins. If anyone has a better way to update a style, or maybe some tips using WinMerge or another application, please share with us.

Okay, here goes…

The first step would be going to your admin panel. This will be the admin link in your footer, or go to yoursite.com/forums/admincp/index.php… If you have changed the name of your admin panel, you’ll go to the appropriate URL. From the admin panel main page, you’ll see something in the right section that says “Out-of-Date Custom Templates Found!” with a link under this text.

After you click this link you will see all the templates and the skins that need updated. For this example I’m going to update the footer template on a test skin that we have up for testing. You’ll want to navigate to the right of the template that you want to update. Click on “[View History]“

The History of Template shows the template if you clicked revert, and your current template.

Clicking on Compare Version will get you a screen like this.

At this point, I’ve already made a copy of the whole skins XML file in case I mess up the styles.

I’ll also open up notepad and make a copy of the old style, lease this ^ window open and I’ll open up the styles manager again so I can edit the old style added the bits of code from the new one. It’ll usually take me a time of two to get everything added and working, but that’s the basics on updating a vBulletin Skins..

ps… Here is a tutorial that goes into detail where I leave off.. Thanks to Nick @ vBStartup

Updating vBulletin Templates in Detail

Last 5 posts in vbulletin management

Posted by:Brandon in vbulletin management, webmaster tips

3 Responses to “Updating custom vBulletin Skins is such a pain”

  1. Posted by NIck Booher on May 12th, 2008 at 11:19 pm |

    Great tutorial Brandon :)

    I just wrote one for my site that furthers it a bit (linked to yours of course)

    http://www.vbstartup.com/showthread.php?t=127

    It’s often helpful to compare between the default from the previous version and the current to find changes rather than sifting through highlighted lines that may be just customizations in my style.

  2. Posted by Brandon on May 12th, 2008 at 11:30 pm |

    Thanks Nick for the link and breakdown on updating the template code :)
    I added a link in the first post to your tutorial as well..

    Cheers

  3. Posted by Jelmer on May 19th, 2008 at 9:46 am |

    I feel your pain, right now I still have 25 templates to go, of course some of them are easy but it’s such a boring job, comparing code and fixing it.

    I use a similar technique but there must be a better way to do this with a special application like you mentioned, and a big monitor.. Anyway there’s no need to upgrade vbulletin that often so I just try to work through it as quickly as possible and move on to more interesting things.

Add a Comment