So assuming many current IPB customers are using the latest retail version of IPB, along with a custom skin, and with some mods, will migration of these additional tweaks be easily convertible?

Like many popular modifications, such as IB. Market, and one of the many popular point systems, they would be rendered useless until upgraded by the mod writers. I guess I answered my own question for that.

How will upgrading 2.3.5 skins to 3.0 be like?

there will be a LOT of skin and programming changes between v2 and v3. One would expect it will take some time for all markets to recover

Simple fact, they won't work

Yes, I'm afraid skins and mods made for 2.x will not work in 3.x. The changes are just too big to accommodate older work.

For instance, the template system supports "plugins" which we heavily use to apply display related tweaks to data in the template rather than in the source files. This makes customizing how things work much much easier (think of things like formatting dates, or numbers (1000 to 1,000) and so on). We're combining multiple templates into one so that when you want to edit the topic view page, you edit the page, not the 20 templates that make up the page. There's a ton more changes coming on that front, which we will blog about in the future.

However, it is safe to assume that given these changes skins can't possibly work in 3.x. It will take a little time for skinners and modders to update their code (and we will be providing helpful guides near 3.0's release), but hopefully moving forward things should be much much easier for everyone involved.

Sorry for the offopic but what about this IPB 3.0 release..? Are there any previews available anywhere.. being a bit curious..

Please refer to our company blog for more information on IP.Board 3.0?.

hmm... read all blog topics but didn't find any preview... I'm not sure there is one..

There isn't a preview, its only been in development for a few months (if that), the release is expected Q4 of this year (the last 3 months of this year)

Actually, they aren't the last 3 months of the year, that's Q1.

4th Quarter: July 1, 2008 – September 30, 2008

Um, no, the fourth quarter of the year is the last three months, like Alex said.

Oh ... I was see that on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_year .

Sorry if I'm wrong.

Someone has purposely added wrong information to wikipedia then lol

Wikipedia was showing the difference between fiscal year quarters and calendar year quarters.

And I don't think they were talking about the fiscal year, they're talking about the calendar year.

Yep, you are right Michael, it's calendar year.

And actually, a company's fiscal year can start and end when they choose. Most commonly the fiscal year either matches the calendar year OR follows the pattern mentioned on wikipedia though.

Awww... Still have to wait all summer...

Give us some credit - 3.0 is a major rewrite and we have multiple developers working on it. Q4 will actually be a pretty quick turn around if you ask me.

I bet it will be released around 5 - 20 December 2008.

Complete rewrite? wow.. that sure does sound interesting... i think vB won't stand a chance to IPB anymore

Ah so about 6 months. No rush. It is good to keep the IPB legacy in good state. It just saddens me to think of all the headache I went through finding a skin and converting it to 2.3.5. Now I have to do it all over again. Yikes!

It's good that there will be help from IPS for developers so we know how to update everything to work with 3.0

lol, such a hassle Can't wait though, IPB 3 is actually pretty exciting.

I've never drinked before, but that makes me want to get wasted.

Is there a way to make a tool for converting skins at least to a certain extent?

Unfortunately I can think of no such way to do so....sooooo much has changed already, and there's so much to go. I can't think of any way, myself, to be able to "convert" an old skin via a tool.