Well, I also saw a decrease in active members on vb.com forum this year comparing with last year, or something, can't say exactly when, but traffic there got lower, anyone notice that? Not saying vbulletin is doomed or anything silly like that, I'm just curious with that fact, and curious if it's just me seeing things or it really did happen.

Yes,from what I noticed,it's happening here as well.IMHO,please do not insult me for this opinion,but I think it's because the world is now revolving too much about money.Money,money and again money.A couple of years ago coders did everything for free (including myself),now that everything has gone up and everything costs something,we need to care about our business.People are on the edge of the abyss and they will soon cause their own destruction.What's the point of buying government planes that costs millions of dollars,when there are people in Africa,or even in their own country,who are dying and have nothing to eat.I mean what makes us different from other animals,apart from that that we can think on a higher level?If everyone will think just about himself,the point of living and a society and helping each other,disappears.

Ah,I have gone too much off-topic,but I needed to say that :)

Why do people keep saying that? It's under vBulletin Options in the Admin CP. The only thing that can't be changed is the orientation of the blocks and the use of tabs. But the entire Social Networking aspect of profiles can be ticked on and off with specificity.


Let's be pragmatic here. Other then the ideological stance people have with tables, moving over to DIVs isn't going to change a whole lot for designers. You actually will still have to touch the templates most of the time you would have for a table based one.

But as far as the slow move to pure CSS (which I've always felt was a poor choice of words, but I digress again), you have to consider the fact that vBulletin has always made their changes gradually. Which, having done some designing myself, is a welcome behaviour, because there would nothing worse, even from a coder's standpoint, for them to make such dramatic shifts in the code and styling of the product that you have to re-learn everything all over again. This may not be their primary motivation, but I'm sure they've considered what kind of a shock to the styles and mods market a less then gradual change would have on their system. It may be slow to others, but over all it makes sense to keep it paced for the masses.

Yes I know,but I liked the old profile styles :)

I'm sure you could get the old style back with a single template edit.

Sure,but I believe I am not the only one who liked the old style profiles :)

Well, I like the new profile styles a lot better than the old four squares one :)

what makes you say they're trying to mimic myspace? it doesn't at all seem like that to me. especially with the look of the usercp, i'd wish they'd go more into the new myspace system, because users on forums would just love the simplicity.

i do feel like less people sites are using vbulletin these days. i think even up to early 3.6 ages, it was hard to find a good forum that wasn't using vbulletin, but these days it's not, a lot of newer sites don't go for vbulletin, but rather for the competitions, or go straight joomla/xoops because of the userfriendly look on profiles etc, and then choose a crappy forum because most people these days want their profiles to shine. almost only forums that are completely based on sharing information still run vbulletin.

but i still love vbulletin, and i'll keep advising it to every client or friend of mine, even if most decide against it these days, which to me almost always seems to be because of the user profile and usercp.

Jedi, I both see and understand where you are coming from with that, but I don't personally think that it should be the case. I also have to disagree with this:
If whoever they hire for this job is skilled enough, can come up with very clean and semantic markup, and knows what they're doing with CSS, then there is no doubt in my mind that I could create an entirely different looking layout without ever having to touch the markup once.

I'm not saying that will be the case every single time, but most template changes will simply be to put in additional features that are desired and not there by default.

I see what you're saying about most people not being ready for a big change like that.. but I would never let that hold me back as a business owner. If people want the old style, then they can use an older version of vBulletin. I don't feel that a web development company should hold itself back from advancing because some people may not want to learn how to use CSS correctly.

At least, AT LEAST offer two variations.. maybe keep the tables alive for people who will flip out, and also offer a clean, semantic, and tableless design for people who are ready to move forward as the internet does.

I think the one and only downside of it would be third party addons / plugins. Let's face it, the majority of programmers are not the best html developers in the world.. and vice verca. There would probably need to be two developers per addon most of the time. One for markup, the other for programming. That will never stick in this community.

I should a be little more clear on what I was saying. I wasn't suggesting that vB is holding back because people where not mentally prepared to handle big change, I mean they where being patient because people may not be physically prepared to handle sudden change.

It's like why countries like the US have a transition period where the next President has to wait several months before the final transition of power takes place, both for reasons of national security and for the mental progression it will take for the country to grasp it. Complex systems usually develop at a pace, rather then just when change is first available. In this case, the complex system isn't just vBulletin core script, but the entire community as a whole (plugin/mod developers, style designers, veteran administrators, novice vB owners, business sites that rely on third party scripts, non-business sites with a dedicated fan-base, etc). I don't think it would be wise for any business, just for the sake of a new technology, to disregard their market base as whole for any one component. Sure, it may mean that they have to rely on some older technology for a while. But in the meantime, their process remains structured, everything continues to function efficiently, and their customer base doesn't feel their being left behind.