Is it wise to start mastering programming relating to your forum software?

[Shawn Gossman]

Many big boards online use earlier versions of the vBulletin forum software. I'm talking 3.8 and below.

They still use these outdated versions because of themes and modifications installed that would break the forum if they attempted to upgrade.

So, what happens when that version is no longer supported?

Many times, some of these forum owners will have the knowledge or an administrator with knowledge of how to maintain the code of the forum software regardless of whether it is supported or not. At the end of the day, it is easier to patch the forum yourself than to deal with the aftermath of trying to fix a forum that has failed to upgrade to the latest version.

So, that makes me present this topic to you folks.

Do you think we, as forum owners, should start mastering the ability to patch and perform programming activities on our forum relating to the software we use so that we are not later on brought into a similar situation?

What is to say, with the decline of forum software development, a software platform closes down and no longer updates. You can try to migrate elsewhere, risk migration errors and failure, or continue to maintain the forum software for your own needs.

How does everyone feel about this topic?

 

[vortex]

I would say learning the language that the forum is coded in is a really good idea.

For example, vBulletin. Learning PHP would be really helpful in patching in fixes.

This also means that you can customise your forum more in depth than using plugins if you're using an old unsupported version. This is not really recommended though.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I would say learning the language that the forum is coded in is a really good idea.

For example, vBulletin. Learning PHP would be really helpful in patching in fixes.

This also means that you can customise your forum more in depth than using plugins if you're using an old unsupported version. This is not really recommended though.

I try to stray away from using many plugins because they can go unsupported and it could break the forum during an upgrade.

I'm really picky about what I use.

I won't use the AMS system for example (an article plugin) because you can do the same thing with creating a board on your forum, using a custom navigational tab, and prefixes and fields. No offense to the plugin author but I can skip the upgrading horrors if the feature ever loses interest in being updated by keeping it all on the forum.