What happens if I dont update WHMCS?

[Spark]

I have the latest whmcs with ClientX theme. The problem is that client x was poorly designed so I asked developer to make lots of design changes. He did what he could in overrides.css But the rest he did directly in the .tpl files.

This means I cant update the theme without losing all the changes. The knock on effect is that I cant update whmcs core because the theme may become incompatible, which could break the site. 

So I assume the only option now is to not update either the theme or the core. So what's the consequence of this? Can I just run my business for thr next 10 years on out of date core and theme, or is that super risky for some reason?

[Kian]

I have some customers that are still running v5 and one v4. It works. Of course we all know that it's a bad idea but they say me that they had no issue at all. As you can imagine their websites look very old (portal template 😵) not to mention admin interface but they get money and setup hosting accounts.

 

Anyway you could try to update your system using a dev installation of WHMCS (you can get a dev license for free). Most of the times your template will work.

Edited April 3, 2020 by Kian

[brian!]

12 hours ago, Spark said:

So I assume the only option now is to not update either the theme or the core.

or choose a different theme going forward. 🙂

12 hours ago, Spark said:

This means I cant update the theme without losing all the changes.

it would just take longer, and require careful planning....

would it be possible to take those changes out of the template and recreate them using hooks ?? I don't know the answer to that as I don't know what's been changed, but it's worth investigating to see if it's a viable option.

12 hours ago, Spark said:

So what's the consequence of this?

short-term, none really.... eventually, a future WHMCS release might have a feature that you need, or a fix to a current issue.... at that point, you'll have a decision to make.

my thought would be that if you can get through to v8 with the current setup, and assuming you don't need new features/bug fixes, then that's going to be fine... at this stage, there is literally no knowing how radical v8 will be but I would have thought it would have consequences for existing themes (and if it doesn't, then it might as well just be called v7.x or whatever!).

[zomex]

On 4/2/2020 at 10:01 PM, Spark said:

 He did what he could in overrides.css But the rest he did directly in the .tpl files.

Overides.css is indeed a old file, many versions ago it was merged to the new all.css/all.min.css

In the short term there's no issue with using an old version of WHMCS. But overtime I would say the risks are high and 10 years certainly would not be possible as old versions become unsupported within a year or two of release:

https://docs.whmcs.com/Long_Term_Support

The best thing you can do is look at a way to add support to your theme or find a theme that is actively updated for new WHMCS releases.