Download vBulletin 3.6.6

A few days ago on the forum of vBulletin a new version of the forum software announced, namely version 3.6.6. vBulletin, unlike other open source forums such as phpBB and YaBB, is released under a commercial license. The program uses PHP and MySQL to start and open user topics, post comments and send private messages. The new 3.6.6 release of vBulletin has a large number of bug fixes, improvements and new features. New features include a new JavaScript framework. Additionally, the forum software has been primed for the upcoming vBulletin Blog, according to the release notes:

vBulletin 3.6.6

It has been almost six months since our last bug-fix release (3.6.4) so ​​the release of 3.6.6 represents a large number of fixes and tweaks to the system.

vBulletin 3.6.6 is the minimum required version for the upcoming vBulletin Blog and Project Tools products and includes various new hooks (including the much-requested fetch_musername hook) and code changes to accomodate these new systems. As a result, certain existing vBulletin features have been upgraded, such as date entry fields in the Admin CP, which now all feature the calendar popup date picker system designed for the project tools.

For the benefit of plugin authors, the information shown at the bottom of all vBulletin pages in debug mode is now greatly enhanced and shows not only all templates that have been called, but also all files that have been included by PHP and all hooks that have been encountered together with whether or not they executed code.

New Javascript Framework

With the use of AJAX and other client-side scripting systems increasing all the time, version 3.6.6 debuts various new methods of working with Javascript in vBulletin, many of which assist in the effort to remove as much Javascript from the templates as possible.

In order to facilitate this switch and to provide a solid framework on which to build, we have decided to employ the Yahoo! User Interface javascript library (YUI) for much of our DOM, event and XML-HTTP features, and in future versions you will see much greater use of this excellent library as we migrate some of our older Javascript code to a YUI base.

Included by default in vBulletin is the DOM/Event library (yahoo-dom-event.js) and the XML-HTTP connection handler (connection.js).

Upgrading from Previous Versions

3.6.6 is a maintenance release and we recommend that all customers upgrade to benefit from six months of bug fixes and stability improvements. Certain input validation errors in the Admin Control Panel have also been resolved so that unexpected errors are not encountered.

No patch or plugin is available to bring previous versions up to 3.6.6 without a full upgrade, as the various changes to implement all the bug fixes represent a large number of changes. To get the fixes from 3.6.6 onto your own board you must perform a full upgrade.

Full instructions for upgrading vBulletin are available here.

Template Changes

For this release we have changed the format of our custom Templates Changed Since XYZ notice.

Previously the list was change-based, which often resulted in several templates being listed multiple times, sometimes with mandatory changes and other times not.

The 3.6.6 template change notice is template-based, so each template is listed only once and all changes to that template will be listed under the template name. If any of the changes to a template is mandatory, the entire template will be listed as requiring the change.

We hope that this new system will be easier and quicker to work with for those with modified templates.

PHP and MySQL Requirements

Please note that vBulletin 3.6.x requires at least PHP 4.3.3 and MySQL 4.0.16 or later.