Anybody still stuck running 3.4.X? Security and PHP7

[Nils]

The upgrade to version 4 a few years ago left me in a bad situation: I had been running IP.Board 3 for many years and have made a lot of customizations to it. Unfortunately this meant that upgrading to version 4 would have been a huge effort. There are so many backwards-incompatible changes between v3 and v4 that I would have to rewrite many things from scratch. My forums are just a small side project at this point so I cannot justify the time investment required to do this.

And thus I have unfortunately gotten stuck running version 3.4.9 for the last few years.

I know the 3.4.X branch isn't officially supported anymore but I was wondering - is there anybody else here that is stuck in a similar situation? Are there any resources available for us?

In particular, I have two major questions:

• Have any security issues been discovered since the last official update? Are there any fixes?
• Has anybody explored how to make IP.Board 3.4.9 run on PHP7? I found a post online saying that PHP7 was not supported but I don't know whether that means it just hasn't been tested or whether there are any practical problems.

I would be very thankful for any pointers! I am comfortable making changes to the code base myself if I have to.

 

 

[bfarber]

I am unaware of any security issues in 3.4.x that have not had a patch released, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

3.4.x does not work on PHP7. Syntax/language changes mean that errors will be thrown.

[Joy Rex]

22 hours ago, Nils said:

The upgrade to version 4 a few years ago left me in a bad situation: I had been running IP.Board 3 for many years and have made a lot of customizations to it. Unfortunately this meant that upgrading to version 4 would have been a huge effort. There are so many backwards-incompatible changes between v3 and v4 that I would have to rewrite many things from scratch. My forums are just a small side project at this point so I cannot justify the time investment required to do this.

And thus I have unfortunately gotten stuck running version 3.4.9 for the last few years.

I know the 3.4.X branch isn't officially supported anymore but I was wondering - is there anybody else here that is stuck in a similar situation? Are there any resources available for us?

In particular, I have two major questions:

• Have any security issues been discovered since the last official update? Are there any fixes?
• Has anybody explored how to make IP.Board 3.4.9 run on PHP7? I found a post online saying that PHP7 was not supported but I don't know whether that means it just hasn't been tested or whether there are any practical problems.

I would be very thankful for any pointers! I am comfortable making changes to the code base myself if I have to.

 

 

I too was in your situation until recently, but due to PHP 5.x being end-of-life and version 4 looking so good and tempting, I finally took the plunge and with IPS's help, got my forum converted. They did a fantastic job.

I know it can be daunting to consider an upgrade with all the customizations you have, but take this as an opportunity to review and "spring clean" anything that isn't really needed or relevant anymore.

It also helps to make a list of 'must-have' features that might currently be customizations and find out if 4.4.x has it as a standard feature, or is something there is an addon for. You won't find a solution in every case, and will need to decide how important that feature really is.

I must say though my forum is much faster than before and now I have more options to manage my community and site than ever, so in that regard it was well worth the time spent upgrading!