Jacquii,

You're a designer, I'm a coder, I will defer to you on whether the style changes in VB4 were the cause of stylers/designers giving up on VB4- but as a coder you should trust me when it comes to the stability of the code. In all my coding experiences only 3 things ever changed on VB4 that warranted changes in mods over its entire history

1) Very early on the way to code a custom tab for user profile pages changed.

2) The editor upgrade of course brought changes to anything relying on the old editor

3) Over time some "bit" templates were placed with <vb:foreach> template calls to simplify and optimize code.

I'd say I spent less than 5% of all my development time on having to update VB4 mods for new updates of VB4- and I'm sure that is as much as or even less than would be necessary for an XF coder.

I would agree with BOP5.

vB4 is very stable. I can't recall the last time I had to update an add-on because of a vB4 core code change. I THINK it was from 4.0 to 4.1, but I could be wrong.

Title: Does xenForo get communities?

http://admin-talk.com/threads/does-x...unities.50935/

Where you will find the quality tone of a real discussion.

To be fair, that thread is not about vBulletin. The community view of vBulletin is in far worse shape. (IMO, anyway)

On the development/ownership side, who still works at vBulletin that I've developed any relationship with? I can't think of anyone. It's just a corporate image now, with some poor support staff fronting all of the heat.

Most important thing for me is whether the software I am using actually works, whether that be vB, xF, IPB or whatever. I don't really care about the community side of development forums - I've never posted on vB.com, only posted twice on xF.com (about a modification by nhawk incidentally :)) and never posted on IPB.com and I've been around for 11 years or so in total.

I'd rather have decent software, with as little or no bugs as possible than have developers getting involved in the community side of things - xenforo might not be a great community, but then again, I don't particularly think vBulletin has been great with it's customers lately either...swings and roundabouts really IMO

I was pointing 2 things by sharing that link :

1. The way discussion is carried over there in a more mature tone without insults on Admin-talk.

2. That the XF community, particularly the staff isn't that great and friendly like many thought. Sugar coating your language is mainly what i found many use there when it comes to XF. All it took is to criticize them to see what will happen.

Actually, #2 is important because i for one, I am always looking for a friendly company which knows how to properly communicate - of course next to a quality product. That is very important actually in any business. There is a reason why Amazon is very successful - customer sanctification is their No 1 priority; they won't spend 5 min arguing with you over a refund, they will process it right away. Then you wonder why Target, Best Buy, K-mart and many others complaint about their sales.

I don't think anyone would like to invest and buy a product to later find that he or she is being jerked by few of the company's staff.

In term of functionality, Vb 4.x is the best out there i believe out of all the forum software. What i personally can do on VB, i couldn't on XF.

I definitely agree with you. It seems to me that if you need some attention over there you must be a groupie or an arse kisser

Very true.

I felt that way when I bought into the vB4 pre-sale only to find that it was a complete mess which, in my opinion, took a very long time to rectify. If you look at it that way, customer service from both companies is somewhat lacking..

As I said before, both softwares and the companies as a whole have their good and bad points - you could pick through the holes on each one and justify your case if you are that way inclined....it is plainly obvious to me that there are people of both sites that do that.

To be honest Katie dear - This entire post is a clear example of why the word 4-letter-Cword-that-women-hate-to-be-called was invented. And dear - while I may be ignorant of a lot of things, I am anything but stupid.

What you need to do is

1. Get over yourself. You obviously have an old bagful of issues.
2. Instead of attacking me with your ridiculous nonsensical insults - come with relevant conversation as I have done.

And YES! You believe yourself to have been a victim of XF bullying or some such. The fact is that you are out of control, a trouble making instigator who obviously has nothing positive to bring to the XF forums. You are in moderation queue for being a complete, total ass. You in your previous posts have more than insinuated that XF is devious for having placed you in moderation queue and an assortment of other things, including how Kier and company are devious for continuing with their career.

Therefore - This statement IS TOTALLY RELEVANT to the conversation at hand.

You want to come here - posting your ridiculous screencaps - playing the victim. You're not the victim. You're an idiot! An idiot who likes to sling insults. And truly Katie - If you mattered - I might actually care about your insults. The fact of the matter is that you are as irrelevant to me as a turd in a pigfarm while I live in the city.

J.

Also - I don't know who the hell you think you are - but you do not dictate what I say and who I can say it to.
You're ridiculous and I will state this fact in without hesitation whenever I see fit.

Thanks!

--------------- Added [DATE]1394486220[/DATE] at [TIME]1394486220[/TIME] ---------------

I was told that something similar happened with vB 4. An past associate of mine who had shared free modifications here at one point said that with each 4.x update - he'd need to make changes to his modification base. This was during the time or 4.0 - 4.1 ... Perhaps all that changed as the 4.x code matured? Perhaps I was told incorrectly? IDK.

Maybe as someone not too familiar with code - I've overstated my assumption that coders left by the droves for whatever reason. Perhaps 'unstable' and 'bug-ridden' are not synonyms then. We can now say that vB 4 is a bug-ridden, stable code. This always seemed a contradiction imo. Anyway - I'll defer to you coders and thanks for your clarification.

As someone who's dibbled in vBulletin design though - My time with upgrading between vB 3.x versions had NEVER been met with the myriad of challenges I've seen with upgrading between vB 4.x versions. Seems like every version upgrade the style would require major changes to the style.

Super-frustrating to say the least.

And some dimwitted idiots going all out to defend the Titanic which now (with vB 5 Connect) has a gaping hole in its hull.

J.

--------------- Added [DATE]1394486858[/DATE] at [TIME]1394486858[/TIME] ---------------

That's just it. As someone sorely disappointed with vB 4 -- I had high hopes that Internet Brands would give us a wonderful product in vBulletin 5 Connect.

It. Just. Did. Not. Happen.

Instead - Internet Brands has seemingly put on their noise reduction headphones - so that they can ignore the angry voices of license holders like myself who also had high hopes of INVESTING (via purchased license of course) in what is supposed to be the next evolution of the world's leading community software.

This from a chick whose personal attack/insult towards me ascended from the depths of an unholy hot hell only to take shape in the form of, "by the way - your graphics suck. Go to school...or rather - go to DeviantArt... Blablabla...." This from a chick who has called folks in this thread mad, stupid, idiot, vBbashers, time-wasters while insinuating they are nonsensical drama queens --- and only because they've voiced their frustration about the current state of vBulletin. This from a chick who has posted several screencaps from XF -- calling them opportunists, hypocrits, bullies, liars while swearing up and down that they are talentless thieves of the Xend framework.

Hypocrisy much?

Thanks for the spray. I assume it would be poison...coming from you anyway.
I -- in the spirit of education of course -- now award you with:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2014/03/29.jpg

Next time - instead of insulting me - post something relevant. Perhaps respond to this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or this:

Or even this:

...instead of acting like a fool.
I've responded to your ridiculous assertions. And you have the audacity to post, "The way discussion is carried over there in a more mature tone without insults..." Yeah - perhaps address the relevant comments I've made - instead of being a strange old bird:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2014/03/30.jpg

Ok I'm going to make this super-duper simple for both of you.

Katie - Please visit this page: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/member.php?u=293712
Now click the link shown in the attachment:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/attachmen...hmentid=148408

^ "Add Jacquii to Your Ignore List"

________________

Jacquii - Please visit this page: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/member.php?u=202825
Now click the link shown in the attachment:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/attachmen...hmentid=148409

^ "Add katie hunter to Your Ignore List"

I just came back from being out of power and internet for over 4 days - http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/12/us/winter-weather/ and I'm not in the mood to even review all the hogwash you two have been directing at each other. If you choose to ignore my instructions above and decide not to ignore each other and continue to direct personal attacks toward each other I'll be issuing a general behavior warning (infraction).

Welcome back. And my apologies... I'm easy to bait and quick to react.
I haven't had an infraction since 11 Sep 2009 --- An infraction issued by Marco.
This in itself is a bit of a miracle. Ask Paul LOL -- Anyway - I'll gladly add Katie to my ignore list of now one.

J.

You havent done anything to deserve one (yet !).

Both you and Katie need to stop being personal now, anymore attacks by either on the other will attract admin wrath :)

Glad to be back and Marco was well, he was just Marco and I don't say this to make fun of him as I liked him but good golly it seemed like he had issued everyone an infraction at one point in time LOL even one on my profile by him too - simple misunderstanding all it was but I laugh to this day over it he was a good coordinator imo :cool:.

I can't like anymore posts by Paul M - One of the few people who should be excluded from that limit imo ;).

Yep, I also got an Infraction around the same time from Marco.
Maybe he got the buttons mixed up from giving reputation and giving Infractions..lol..

Glad to see this quieting down. Both of these smart professional gals have always added original and interesting input here at vbulletin.org, but it was getting to the point someone was going to loose an 'eye'. Let's keep the gals, the input, and the eyes. :)

No, VB4 isn't bug ridden either. Bug Ridden products cannot be used in production environments. VB4 has been strong and stable now for years.

How can you say with a straight face that vB 4 isn't bug ridden?
Bug ridden products HAVE BUGS. Guess what vB 4 has at least 2 of Joe? Bugs ;)

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/attachmen...1&d=1394415684

Please don't get me wrong Joe. I've just become the owner of a vB 4 license. While I'm a bit intrigued what I'll do with it - I most certainly will not be talked into believing that we are dealing with a perfect product here.

Joe. You've certainly more street-smarts (I'd imagine) to know that your assertion that "VB4 isn't bug ridden" IS ridiculous. So please don't laugh at me when I ask with the utmost curiousity: BirdOPrey5 - who are you and what have you done with Joe?

J.

Also - correct me if I'm wrong - but can't bug ridden products be used in a production environment... and especially used in a production environment when the error reporting is turned off, as to hide at least errors - which apparently are not bugs.... just errors? This is what I've been told about vB 4 --- error reporting is off by default - out of sight - out of mind.... Enjoy your script.

There are no bugs in vB4, just unintended features. :p

Jacquii,

A lot of the 'Errors' that are 'hidden' are warnings pertaining to things like variables not existing before use. While it is better to initialize variables before using them, PHP assigns them 'on the fly' anyway so those are warnings that can be safely ignored.

JIRA numbers mean nothing... There are JIRA's for misspelled words in help documents, an extra semi-colon in code, These all count as "bugs." Also counted in JIRA as "issues" (your image) are countless "improvement requests" and "feature requests" which aren't bugs by any definition.

Use the product, I would bet you would be hard pressed to find a bug without looking one up. Most people who use VB 4.x will never run into a real bug, those who do will be hit by one or two.

There is absolutely no intellectually honest way of calling VB4 "bug ridden."

I concur, Jacquii give it a go... it's not like it used to be when it first launched it improved ten fold easy I can assure you.

Sites' statistics is the real answer :0) VB4 is bug free! but we always want to see more features and updates, who doesn't like that. Else complaints by members would have been posted in thousands, we all know that~ ex my site, i don't see anyone complaining that a certain function breaks when x does this or y did that.

Statistics: since 2006 - Just upgraded to VB 4.x last year when i felt it is safe to do it.

http://forum.nihonomaru.com
Threads 229,654
Posts 4,810,512
Members 1,684,229

Use to be around 900+ to 1200+ new registered member daily but thanks to Google and their constant changes http://i.imgur.com/OwXXwcE.png things changed a bit. Some credit back in the days to Vbseo. VB didn't have seo features for VB 3.x. That is why VB 5.x should focus on the right SEO features and make it easy to change your url structure via admin cp, it is very important for any forum software to have a solid SEO. like make good use of tips like these

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...lnext-and.html

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...and%20indexing
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...arch%20results

To this date for instance Vbseo Sitemap is better than VB 4.x sitemap, mainly their smart features with priority based on views, posts, and rating not assigning a certain priority # per an entire category https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...emap+Generator

Example:

Smart Frequency for Show Thread Pages
Select 'Yes' to activate automated page update frequency calculations for each show thread page.
NOTE: Frequency is calculated based on the last modification time.

Smart Priority
Select "Yes" to activate smart priority setting for ALL pages. .... Priority will be automatically calculated for each thread based on (a) views, (b) replies, (c) rating, and (d) number of Linkbacks.

NOTE: If your forum does not have Linkback capability, the smart priority will be calculated based on elements (a) to (c) above.

Now compare to Xenforo, i don't want to even start comparing and contrasting, it is a nightmare with its lack of features, ex it is lacking a Tag feature on Xenforo, you can't tag your threads, the tags aren't in a canonical list on a forum by forum basis.

Nice stats

There is a reason why many companies like 2K Games uses VB (: http://forums.2k.com/ there is no deny in that

https://www.2k.com/
http://forums.2k.com/

How about Funimation - VB
http://www.funimation.com/
http://www.funimation.com/forum/forum.php

They all appear to be using VB 4.x for a reason.

Apparently Joe concurs :P

I've heard this before - but from my perspective - these errors still exist. The fact that we can safely ignore them does not make them any less errors that need to be fixed.


JIRA numbers mean nothing?!
I've been looking through JIRA to see if there's anyway I can confirm what you're saying. Here's an example of what I've found as concerns vB 4:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2014/03/52.png

I've seen a few examples like the above - where the general response by vB Staff is like:
This is a known issue, you can workaround that by bla bla bla... The bug still marked as confirmed, yet unresolved.

The list in the screencap above is NOT feature & improvement requests. This seems a direct contradiction to what you're saying Joe.

What's most concerning to me is that vB 4 is finished. There's to be no further development or bug fixes? Noone's working on it? It's been abandoned as an unfinished product with confirmed bugs.

Perhaps my eyes are deceiving me? I would like to think not anyway...

I must admit - the last time I attempted to use vB 4 on any of my own personal projects was prior to vB 4.1 ... I'm of the school that the 'upgrade' from vB 3 - vB 4 Gold broke the styling system. vB 3's styling was (and still is imo) much more intuitive than vB 4.

Should be interesting to see the improvements between 4 Gold and 4.2 styling anyway...

J.

Actually Jacquii that list is great...

The actual bugs on that list are mostly related to foreign characters and that is because UTF-8 was never a fully supported feature of VB 4.x, there are functions that just don't work with it.

So if you are using VB 4 in a supported setup (say English) then none of those are problems for you.

Now you say these are all marked as bugs but just reading these I can see that is simply untrue- Look at the notices condition- script name- that "bug" is clearly marked as a "feature request" - http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBIV-6602 - Absolutely nothing is broken about it, someone is simply requesting we add more options to the notices manager. There are several others listed that seem to be feature requests or improvement requests whether they are listed as bugs are not I don't know (and honestly don't care- because it doesn't really matter) such as- Facebook Connect needs a User CP feature to Opt Out and Usergroup permissions to enable HTML in forums- this has been a long requested feature that was delivered as a feature in VB5. It's not a bug and not likely to come to VB4.

The bug reported by digital point about user merges is legit- http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBIV-6602 - but it only will hit really big sites with slave databases (I've never seen one in the real world) doing multiple user merges at once which is very few. A great example of a legit bug but it just doesn't affect many people.

Hidden CMS Forum Visible If URL is known - http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBIV-4785 - another "Improvement Request" - not a bug, not a problem, as designed really.

So in that entire screen shot perhaps there are one or two actual bugs but they don't really affect the vast majority of license holders and fewer still who use the software in a supported environment.

Jacquii, No one said vB4 doesnt have bugs, it does, just like every other forum software.

The general implication of calling something "bug ridden" is that it has so many bugs you will find it hard to use without issue.
Thats just not the case, the vast majority of users will never encounter a bug, and even then in many cases its just trivial (like a mis-spelt word).

Im not sure what your point is exactly, but to imply (as you seem to be trying to do) that vB4 is unstable or unusable is simply untrue.

Well I'm sure you already knew from interacting w/ 4 after it first hit but styling 4.x is different than 3.x used to be. If you're tinkering anytime this week or weekend then check out my article here - it's older but 95% of it still holds true to the style so it can help!

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=256370

Well - the initial purpose of my post:

Then Joe stated something about vB 4 code being stable for years. This seemed curious to me - so I, a bit distracted, wondered aloud how 'stable' a product can be when it has at least 3 pages of user-reported bugs in JIRA. Then the (unwinnable?) battle of semantics: stable, usable, buggy, bug-ridden, etc:

For me = bug ridden does not mean unusable, it simply means there are substantial amount of bugs. And from the look of it - vB 4 has quite a substantial amount of them. vB 5 Connect is just one huge roach.

I'll appreciate you guys' vB 4 bug (feature/improvement request) feedback and concede that it's safe to say vB 4 obviously is stable enough to use in production environments. That's a little difficult to do when you own a script that's much less than the perfection you'd rightfully expect it to be... But I'll do it.

In terms of what this thread is about though (vB vs. XF) --- my point was not at all to insinuate that vB 4 is unusable. These words never came out of my mouth -- and afterall - I have a vB 4 license that I'm planning on using sometime this year... My point is to show that XF is a cleaner script in terms of code bugs/errors when compared with both vB 4 and vB 5.

And don't get me wrong. I'm not 'hating' vBulletin. [s]I simply feel that I am in a position to demand better of a product that I've been a fan of since vB 3.5[/s] I simply feel that WE are in a special position and SHOULD demand better of the product that's struggling to remain #1. We're obligated to do so not only because we've purchased the script, but because we are still fans of it in some way or other. Also because - at the end of the day - these facts still remain: bugs are going unfixed, development has basically stopped as far as vB 4.x is concerned and vB 5 in its current condition seems mired in tar, with seemingly a 2+ year non-plan of a timeline to bring it to usable status.

J.

--------------- Added [DATE]1394660469[/DATE] at [TIME]1394660469[/TIME] ---------------

Oh yes. I had been doing some styling for vB 3 and found the process enjoyable even.

I was completely floored to see the drastic changes made between vB 3's to vB 4's styling system. The vB 4 stylevars seem all over the place. It certainly wasn't intuitive the last time I actually seriously considered coding a vB 4 style anyway.

Thanks for the article link - I'll check it out a little later.

J.

Jacqui, keep also in mind that if you are running php 5.4.4 only vb 4.2.2 is compatible with that and if you put in your config.php that single line

you will not get any annoying errors

I've worked on several sites that have vB 4.2 installed. If I had a dollar for each time I've had to use the extra code line in config.php - I'd have a fistful of dollars LOL Thanks for the heads up just the same though!

I'm running php 5.3.16 at the moment -- but am thinking of upgrading soon. So I'll keep the version numbers in mind as well.

Thanks Lionel.

J.

Post removed.

Katie, if you wish to discuss posts on the XF forum, then do so on the XF forum, do not link and replicate them here. Thanks.

To be honest Paul, whilst i'd like to see the differences discussed and peoples unbiased views on the products, this thread has become tiresome with bickering and bitterness, i'd love to see it cleaned up with just the facts and opinions on those facts.

As I stated earlier I have just purchased a xenforo license to have a play with it, i'm a couple of weeks in and it just seems so damn difficult to work with, it's not as intuitive or admin friendly although the front end is nice and clean with a good user experience.

XF's backend is a bit different than vBulletin to be sure. There's a bit of a learning curve you have to conquer before it becomes familiar, second-hand nature.

It's interesting to see different perspectives. I, for instance, find the XF AdminCP quite delightful to work with, especially the styling side of things. And while I am a fan of the vB AdminCP (it's much more intuitive than IPB anyway) - XF's AdminCP just seems more logically put together imo. If I might ask - what are you finding so difficult to accomplish in XF's AdminCP?

J.

Lol, pretty much everything really, I've been with vb since 2005 I think, I had a small dabble with SMF but vb is pretty much all I know. At this moment in time (and I haven't been able to play with it too much) I can hardly do anything, my interest is in coding, with vb you have the plugin system and its pretty straight forward to code for it, as yet I haven't found how to do it in xf. When I wanted to change the look of a forum it seemed as difficult as finding the plugin system ;)

When time allows i'll be able to examine other things that folk have done, add them to my xf installation (its not public it's just for play and coding) and then try and work out how they've done it.

I was quite in the same situation when I started to look into xF. Always worked with vB, and with the plugin system I knew how to get things done quickly. And one really gets used to that... With xF you have to start from scratch, since things indeed are done differently. But once you wrap your head around it (and it did not take me too long to do some basic stuff), it is much more flexible than the plugins. And since the plugins are history with vB5 anyway, I chose to rather invest my time there. What vB5 clearly misses is even the most basic documentation for coders, let alone full-blown articles or tutorials. That's what allowed me to succeed in my first steps with xF, while I'm just confronted with an empty articles section on vB5 here on vb.org, and I have the distinct feeling that even those who should know the software best (the guys at vb.com) have not really worked out how to code addons for vB5.

I've tested XF admin system a while back and i wasn't pleased with its structure at all. What i didn't like

1. I went to test the template system of XF and it was messy for me to play with. Its structure was different than VB. I didn't find it user friendly but all over. http://youtu.be/BeFO1ZUmBCU

2. Then i was curious about user + usergroup and it wasn't like VB at all, they are missing many of VB default functions but that wasn't what i didn't like, the permission style and how it is structure is very limited and very bland when you create a new usergroup.

I wasn't pleased with the admin system at all, now comparing VB 5.x admin system with XF i think VB 5.x has great potentials and beats it, Vb just need to work hard on their features , functions and front-end designs. And most importantly make use of interactive design.

http://youtu.be/YTjlRoLdmxI vs http://youtu.be/4zuj6GZi17Q

I myself have been using vb for 12 years and purchased my first Xenforo license last week. I have been impressed so far. I really like the way things are laid out and organized in the admin panel, contrary to some of the posts I have read. As with any software, there will be a learning curve. I can tell you how to do almost anything, without looking, in the vbulletin acp. That came with time. (I absolutely hate the vb admincp and find it disorganized.) In a few months I know I will be able to do the same thing with xenforo. I really feel that vbulletin dropped the ball by allowing the issues with php5 and vb4 to take so long to resolve. (Still waiting....) I am running the latest STABLE version of php5 and had to hide errors and still need to remove duplicate posts . vBulletin just isn't what it use to be in my opinion. Xenforo offers a solution for those of us who are simply sick of how incompetent the devs for VB appear to be these days.

This isn't true by any means. I've seen Mike's and Kier's coding skills and when comparing VB to XF, VB wins right away and when it comes to requested features, they aren't up front about it. Test them.

Without comparing and contrasting the level of skills of both VB and XF dev team, i will leave this video for fun http://youtu.be/OsT0Sod377I

Seriously, making Mike and Kier sound legend in coding when most probably they aren't that super great, they are good coders but not super great nor that skilled to brag about it, else they should have not stayed with VB for 9 years.