Outdated Templates Warning in AdminCP After Product Upgrade

[NashChristian]

Hello Brian,

Today I upgraded all 3 vBa products: CMPS, Dyna, and Links Directory. All which gave upgrade instructions where if you were upgrading from a really old product, you needed to first revert your templates.

I was NOT upgrading from a really old product, and my understanding of your upgrade instructions did not require me to revert any templates. (I have a LOT of customized templates, and it would probably cost me 30+ hours to revert them and have to customize them again.)

Everything appears at the moment to be working fine. That was one of my smoother upgrades. However I am now receiving a warning notice in my admincp:

Out-of-Date Custom Templates Found!
There are currently 17 customized template(s) that need to be updated or reverted. Some sections of vBulletin may not function if you do not do this!

Click here to view these templates!

Please see the "attached" PDF file for a list of which templates they are speaking of. They appear to be comprised of all 3 vBa products.

How should I respond to this? Do I REALLY need to revert all of my vBa templates? (Dyna & Links Directory?) That would cause me a whole lot of work! And probably several support tickets to figure out again!

Will leaving it as is, cause me to lose any functionality? If not, how do I clear this warning message out of my admincp?

Please advise.
Thanks.
Jeff

[Brian]

Are you familiar with vB's built in template comparing feature? If you click 'View History' next to those templates then you will see an option that will let you compare the templates to see what the changes were. There are at least a couple in there that will need to have the new security key feature applied (ADV_LINKS_ADD_EDIT and ADV_LINKS_SHOWLINK). Most of the rest you will probably be ok with, but it still wouldn't hurt to compare the differences to be safe.

[NashChristian]

Dang! No, I'm not familiar with the template comparing feature.

So how should I do this? When comparing, it is going to show me the differences between my customized template, and the new one from your upgrade? What then? Do I need to print out my customized template, then revert the template (so that it will be compliant with the new security key stuff), then go into the new template and manually add back in the changes from my customized template?

Or is it the other way around - I should find the changes, NOT REVERT the template, and copy the new security key features into my previously customized template? If this is the correct way, then can you please tell me what the security key code that I'm looking for, looks like? I have no clue about this.

After I "compare" the templates, will it remove the warning from my admincp?

I really wish that there was some automated way to morph in the new security stuff, without having to get into code up to my eyebrows.

Thanks.
Jeff

[Brian]

The comparison features in vB should show you all differences in the templates. The method that seems to work best for me is opening the 'Edit Template' link for the template I'm about to compare in a new tab/window, then open the 'View History' link in it's own tab/window. Choose the versions to compare, then you'll see the differences and be able to easily switch to the window you opened the 'Edit Template' link in and apply any changes. Be sure to note which version it shows for the New/Old buttons when you start to compare them since it usually shows my custom template as the newest one and the updated template as the old one (seems reversed to me).
Once you edit the template then the 'Customized Templates' message should disappear from that one as it assumes that you've modified the template to add the updated changes.
If you're just concerned with making sure the secuity token feature has been added, you can search the default templates for 'securitytoken' to see where that was added. That part just mostly involves adding the following hidden input field to any <form>'s in your templates:

<input type="hidden" name="securitytoken" value="$bbuserinfo[securitytoken]" />

I really wish that there was some automated way to morph in the new security stuff, without having to get into code up to my eyebrows.

You must not have been around in the days of vB 2, before the plugin system was added. Updates were a *real* pain back then.

[NashChristian]

Thanks for the tips on comparing my templates Brian.

I haven't done this yet, but I just realized that my links directory is no longer functional (at all). I'm receiving the following error message when I try to go to my links directory:

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare construct_orderby() (previously declared in /home/jfenton/public_html/NashvilleChristian/forums/includes/vba_dyna_functions.php:177) in /home/jfenton/public_html/NashvilleChristian/forums/includes/functions_vba_links.php on line 71

Please reference this link.

I'm wondering if this has to do with the templates above which need to be reverted or updated, or whether this has to do with the CMPS Module - New/Random Entries (updated for v1.0.0), which I installed at the same time as my vBa upgrade; previous versions of which have caused conflicts between dyna and the links directory.

Please help!

This is causing me major loss of site functionality!

Thanks.
Jeff

[Brian]

Yes, that is due to the CMPS Dynamics module being active on your vBa Links pages. Currently there are conflicting function names in the products, so you would need to either remove the Dynamics module from the CMPS page that's integrated with vBa Links, or just remove the integration from vBa Links.
Note that we expect to have the first beta version of vBa Links v3.0 publicly available by the end of the month and those functions have been renamed in the new version to prevent any issues like this with integration.

[NashChristian]

Oh dang! That was what I was afraid of.

Wierd thing is, I have the module active on my home page only. On my vBa links pages, as well as on my forums pages, the only integration is the left column for navigation. The center column integration with the "Newest Articles" module is only active on my HOME page.

Any idea how I can fix this without having to remove the navigation integration from my links pages?

Thanks!

Looking forward to that new release!

Jeff

[NashChristian]

Brian,

I've DISABLED the module, and it is still causing the conflict!

Do I need to physically remove all the plug-ins and uninstall the module like last time?

Does this have anything to do with the fact that this is in one of my "secondary" instances, my "articles" section?

If I could get the "Newest Articles" Module to work on my HOME page only, without conflicting with the links directory, that would be great! I REALLY would like to use this module, but I can't keep rendering my Links Directory inoperable.

Please advise.

Thanks.
Jeff

[Brian]

Ahhh, sorry I was forgetting about the plugin. If you edit your 'vBa Dynamics CMPS Module (load $vba_dyna class)' plugin and change the first line to this then that should take care of the issue.

if (!is_object($vba_dyna) AND VBA_SCRIPT != 'links_directory')

[NashChristian]

That fixed it! Thanks!

SO back to my question about the templates above, you said:

There are at least a couple in there that will need to have the new security key feature applied (ADV_LINKS_ADD_EDIT and ADV_LINKS_SHOWLINK).

What are the consequences of NOT correcting this?

Thanks for the help Brian!
Jeff

[NashChristian]

I guess that the forms stop working without this...

At least that seems to be the consequences that I'm currently experiencing.

[NashChristian]

Learning to edit templates....

[NashChristian]

Dang! That took me ALL night!

Looks like I'm back on track though.

I realized why my links directory forms wern't working, you showed me how to customize my savelink.php last time, to make it NOT require a "description". Once I overwrote the file with your new version, this code was no longer in there, and I don't even offer a place where a description CAN be entered, so it would not accept my forms.

I went through several VERY LONG threads of where you originally walked me through all this stuff, and I believe that I'm out of the woods for now!

I also got all my templates updated so that I don't get any more error messages.

That was a LOT of work though!

Next I want to upgrade to vB3.7 (I read somewhere that you recommend updating vBa products first, so I did), then add in vB Blog & Project Tools.

Maybe I should just take a few weeks off work!

Jeff

[surfdude]

vBLinks 3!!! Soon? Can't wait.