This is a small and quick guide on the steps to perform to upgrade a skin from different versions of IPB like for example IP.Board 2.2.2 to 2.3.0

This guide assumes that you know how to navigate the IPB control panel and how to use the skin system on IPB. If you are new to skinning on IPB you may want to read my guide on how to make a skin for ipb.

The first thing you should do is to grab the latest copy of IP.Board from the customer panel. Then follow through to unzip and upload all the new files to your test board then go to the upgrade link which is usually http://yourforum.com/upgrade/.

Before you proceed I recommend to backup all files including SQL backup. Please ask your host to help you on this if you do not know how.

Once you reach the section where it asks you if you want to revert your skins, Select no to reverse any skin. If you revert your skin you will loose any edits, which would mean you would have a default html skin without the proper skin edits to make it look like the final skin design.

Now that you have upgraded you would need to know where the skin have changed. As IPS now released upgrades with a skin and php difference report it will help you identify the templated needed to be edited so that new features or bugs in skins can be fixed.

To find the difference report go to the news entry on IPS Board and find the entry for the version you want to convert. In this case it is IPB 2.3.0 and it is in an attachment below the first entry in the thread. So now what you have to difference report you need to understand what is going on.

In the HTML file that you downloaded there is just loads of text but what you are looking for are skin_boards > stats_header as these tell you that the content block html below it is the current html and the highlighted code are the bits affected.

So to quickly get to the skin to edit I am going to teach you a really cool and neat trick that not a lot of people know. As the format of the heading is like this: skin_boards > stats_header. Just change it around to make it look like this stats_header(skin_boards). Now with that copied go to admin cp > Look & feel > %choose your skin% > edit template HTML. Now you will find a text field in the header of the table with a submit button with caption Find Template Bit. In the field just past stats_header(skin_boards) and it should automatically open the template bit automatically without you needing to find what skin_boards is assigned to in the list. Very quick isn’t it?

Now in the Text area you just have to find the section that is being affected and edit it to make it work. That I cannot cover as it is quite easy to just modify as you just have to play around with the html to make it look like the new html. Remember that the green highlighted code is removed code and the red highlighted code is added code.

I hope this gives you a quick insight on how to upgrade your Invision Power Board skins from and to different versions. If you like what I write just reply with a thanks to any entry that you found useful, it keeps me motivated. If you have any problem just comment.