Woodsman

@HardwareMX After running the quarry did you hit the confirm button? It will or should let you continue from there.

@Ugur Kaya When you say after upgrading, are you speaking 3.4.x to 4.0? If so all 3.4.x skin themes, custom skin images, applications hooks or plugins of any form will not work with 4.0.

A 403 error is usually the page can't be displayed at the time. If a refresh does not work immediately try a hard refresh Ctrl-Alt-Delete and see if that works for you.

Glad to see it is working out for you.

If you follow the article step by step in the first post of this topic you can't fail... Happy Upgrading!

As Wim explained you can do either or - delete or disable 3rd party applications. Deleting you may run into a chance of fragments hanging around it your database that you will have to manually remove prior to the upgrade. This I won't recommend to anyone without database experience. The preferred method is by disabling the 3rd party applications in the ACP - Applications & Modules - Manage Applications & Modules and then disable 3rd party hooks via Manage Hooks just below. This will allow the 4.0 upgrade to bypass those disabled applications and hooks. In your new upgraded 4.0 test site ACP - System - System Features - Applications, at the very bottom it will show all your disabled files. These I would keep as they are for now just in case they get updated by the developers. Happy Upgrading!

I'm glad to help. Fear of the unknown gets to the heart of the majority. But then we soon realize there was nothing to fear.....

The step by step instructions posted here are written in a way that anyone can follow. The way it was written is in a "For Dummies" attitude for every level of experience.

At this point it is hard to say which fixed it for you but I am glad to hear it is working. On the other hand I ran the upgrade on an un touched forum backup on my local and again trashed it. Same upgrade with all the 3rd party products disabled or removed and now a working 4.0.13.1 test site added to my collection... My personal hunch is for most people ‌@Stuart Silvester may be correct in most common situations it may work as intended. In my situation I merged another site with my own back in 2012 that caused a big issue with the merge where the conversion tool needed some serious attention and rebuilding from the ground up in order to get the two sites to come together and work properly. Because of this I now feel my merged site still has a few underlying issues that will cause the upgrade problems as I am seeing them on my local. Is this situation the cause of my upgrades? That too is hard to say for sure. But I can honestly say that the upgrade (In my case) will fail every time without going through all the steps mentioned in this article. Yes it is time consuming, but then again a little extra time spent is worth the sanity loss.

This has been the recommended method from the beginning from the previews through betas. The reason for following this is to do just that. Remove all unwanted threats of instability from the previous versions. This is the only method I have been able to upgrade without error and I have made over 20 plus upgraded test sites on my local that were perfectly sound. Those that I let slide without manually cleaning most all failed before the upgrades were completed. And let me tell you I hate those red error bars that popped up caused by 3.4.x 3rd party themes and mods. Those that I took the time with and utilized the above process worked as they should even with a good 80% of the bugs that showed up in the tracker I was having very little issue with. Every fresh install (no upgrade) worked fine.

In preparation of the 3.4.x files it is best to manually remove all third party skin themes, mods, hooks and applications before proceeding to the upgrade. It sounds as though you have fragment hanging around during and after the upgrade. When you do a fresh install there is nothing to convert so therefore nothing to be missed during its cleanup... Try another upgrade. But first manually remove all third party skin themes, mods, hooks and applications as explained in this topic.

Is the issue due to lack of 4.0 themes in the market place or they won't install correctly? I may sound a bit bias at this point but every theme I have created are installing fine from one board version to another. But also I should add these are installed on test sites at the moment.

If you are trying to use the 3.4.x themes they wont work. Nor will any of the mods & apps. 4.0 is a totally different animal. You would have known this by fully reading the topic not to mention it has been stated many of times in this topic and others. Now if I misread your comment as a wise ass I apologize. But that's the way I am reading it. All the pertinent files and directories that need to be edited and copied over are mentioned.

Nice- I am sure those having trouble converting or issues with the converter itself will find that there is another alternative to getting it to play nice.

When you have the chance post your method here for those having the same issue. I think it will save a few strands of hair being ripped out Though the converter did a great job for a number of us there are still those like yourself getting frustrated with it not working for them.

I have used the converter both ways on a few of test sites on my local without issue. Both are working fine on my local. My live 3.4.8 site is also utf-8mb4 and it too is working as expected. Remember that the utf-8 is more of a common character standard as where utf-8mb4 is more complex for other applications.

We have been doing it all along so you are welcome to join in. I am not a staff member here at IPS and I wrote this to be more of a Member's 1 on 1 help article.

I don't believe they will work on another's 3rd party app though. Having to do with stepping on toes, copyright and if it does not work as expected then it is their problem now.

Are you lookig to upgrade your live board or a test board? IPS will upgrade your licensed live board for free as far as the core and official apps you hold license to. Just go to your clients center and submit a ticket. Unfortunatly they will not be able to upgrade your 3rd party apps. These you will need to contact the app authors.

If I had the time I would, but you can go here https://community.invisionpower.com/third-party/providers and talk to these fine people. As for me I am in preparation to spend a week in a boat with nothing more than a fishing pole on my mind.

First Part Again - The framework IPS 4.0 is built on is not compatible with any part of the older 3.4.x or earlier structures. This has been stated a number of times in this topic as many other topics. Skin Themes, Mods, apps and hooks from the previous versions can not be used with 4.0's new frame work. All of these have to be rebuilt from the ground up using the new framework. 2nd Part Yes it is possible for the coder (understanding the 4.0 framework) to rewrite a hook compatible to IPS 4.0.

In most cases it will be up to the 3rd party App author to do the upgrade. As for IPS created apps, they have already been upgraded.

No, Due to 4.0 being a totally rewritten framework 3.4.x apps and skins will not be compatable

If you are getting reminants of IPS4 then you are trying to run the upgraded version of your backup. Try another fresh copy of the board backup and database.

Maybe not with IPS4 itself, but if you are attempting to convert 3.4.7 or 3.4.8 to UTF8 or UTF8mb4 prior to any upgrade they should.