So I have a few forums. I lost one as a casualty of "war". A 4500 member forum. I learned my lesson, and that lesson is:

Forum software is a security risk, so it is imporant to keep your forums updated to the most secure version possible.

This being said, how do you larger earners and those who run multiple busy forums keep your highly customized forum software up to date? Do you just have some guy you pay hourly everytime a new patch or vulnerability comes out? I would think managing it yourself would be too much of a time drain, especially if you own/operate 5+ forums.

How does this work?

Well, I have 4 forums now, and will have 5 in the very near future.

One thing I would suggest is to document and keep track of every modification and plugin that you use, especially file edits. When it comes time to upgrade, I first closed the forums, then updated the database, then proceeded to re-implement anything that was "lost" during the upgrade. Then of course I had to go through about 60 templates per forum as well to make sure they were up to date.

My forums are highly customized but it doesn't take me very long to upgrade. This is mainly due to the fact that I keep everything documented and that I am the only one who programs for the site. I know what everything does and where it should be.

Ugh.

Well thanks, good method there, I will keep that in mind.

What did you think, there was a magical way to update them all instantly?

If you don't modify your boards much it won't take as long to upgrade.

What did you think, there was a magical way to update them all instantly?

Firefox modifies pretty much automatically for me. Why not forum software?

Tough loss there Malcomlo. Personally, for my blogs, I bookmark the places where I take hacks from, in case I ever change templates or whatever and want to reimplement the hacks. I also back up my source code every so often. Don't know if that helps for forums, but I hope it does...

I do the update my self, but i do also have some cheap companies from India who do work on them. they are **** good, fast and cheap.

My adult forum are just under way to get a major re-styling with unique look and installing 5 mods that will take hours and i get that for "nothing"