Why not vBulletin 7 ?
 

Due to the fact that social networks have vastly grown, uses of forum board decreased so much, but forum still has its own place, where we can archive and discuss things with determined subject. I still like vbulletin style and its structure a lot, that's why I'm still stick with vb4. However in order to live, forum have to change. There are some of social-like-forum software recently but none is really useful.

Then there is vb5, I would say this is a failure, lacks of feature, lacks of customisation, full of bugs through out versions. It can be easily seen as below, (73 and 28) compares to (2700)

vB5 is still under development but it doesn't seem like an active product. So, why not vbulletin 7, you can take time to think about the changes. the concepts, like PHP 7, a really good thing recently.

I know the idea is delusional as their minds are now full of fixing bugs. But let these are just for expectations and for FUN.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2016/11/8.png

Why are you skipping 6?

Also, your assessment of vBulletin 5 is complete nonsense.

I don't have numbers of their sale of course. But look at the vb5 ecosystem, do you see thing? Do you want to use a forum full of bugs and have no more than 100 extensions? Are you willing to pay for all modifications you need? Also as I stated, it's just an expectation.

Why skipping 6? Just a funny example, php 7, windows 10 and so on.

Making a brand new version from scratch would take years, and would require users to buy new licenses. Not going to happen. Development is focused on vB5 for at least the foreseeable future.

As stated, the assessment of vB5 there is way out anyhow. I think some people used one of the 5.0.0 Alphas and decided they didn't like it, and assume the product is still like that. It isn't.

Not going to change the fact that it still has many bugs, you need to pay for what you need, even just a simple thing from vb4.

Lacks of extensions, third party login is absent, real time notification is nowhere.
This just proves that standard requirement is somehow low.

I don't think they even have the manpower to start all over again, even if they wanted to.

This reply is directed at the general point, not at you specifically.

Not to mention there's absolutely no reason to start over again. It's not as though the competition has advanced even to the level of vBulletin 4.2x as of yet.

There's only so far the development of a message board forum software can wander before it becomes something other than a message board forum.

I realize there are people who think it should become a social media platform but if it becomes that it is no longer a message board forum. It can't be everything to everyone.

It can't be Facebook, and Twitter, and Instagram, and WordPress, and forum software. If it's all of those things guess how much time social media people will spend on the forums? About the same amount they spend now.

But it seems like that's what people want and expect.

A lot of people lost their bowels over the initial release of vB4. And yet, it has developed into the best software of its type.

vB5 is the only software of its type. It has no competition. So when some people go off the deep end about how vB5 is a bad product because it's not an upgraded version of vB4 they have no valid argument. vB5 was never supposed to be that and was never advertised as being that.

Kevin and the development team have made huge progress on vB5 in the last few months. In less time than it took for people to not only accept but actually like vB4 I believe they will have vB5 leading the industry. They did it with vB3 and with vB4, so there is a precedent.

Agreed, and it's also worth noting that vB now has a small but stable and long term development team, lef by Kevin. They've all been there ages, they now know the vB5 code inside out. Of coure, they cannot work miracles but things are chugging along very nicely, and some of the stuff coming up, if it comes to pass, will please a fair few people.

New features get launched now with very little issue...vB Messenger is the most recent example, well received, popular and I think only one real bug turned up post the initial release, which has now been fixed, and so there can be some focus on improving the functionality. There's now the basics of a page manager in site builder, something that's long been demanded. A major current focus is improving language support, as Arabic (in particular) sites have issues at the moment. In 5.2.5 they sorted out the image upload problems and it just now works. Etc etc.

Meanwhile the cloud platform continues to grow and is proving a popular way to 'test the water' with a forum before going self hosted (since you can port across). Conversely, some long established boards have decided to move to cloud for the low maintenance overhead. Cloud upgrades, which were a bit fraught in the early days, now go without a hitch.

I will add that while there aren't a huge quantity of mods on vBorg, that doesn't mean there aren't any to chose from. Most of the more complicated and sophisticated products built for vb5 are not free and are typically custom built for functionality requested by the person buying the mod.

And that's the way mod development is heading on all platforms now. You pay for anything half-decent. The vB3 and vB4 days of thousands of fully-featured, supported modifications being released for free will never return on any platform.

Glenn has some decent mods for vB5 on his site. Well worth looking at.

Did they ever release any documentation on vBulletin's 5 API and how to create mods or is it still just a matter of digging through the code and finding posts on forums of people who figured it out?

I know about http://vb5support.com/ but some of the pages aren't finished.

Replicant wrote up a pretty good skeleton for vB5 product development.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=323006

<a href="http://vb5support.com/resources/api/" target="_blank">http://vb5support.com/resources/api/</a>

It seems that it is your belief.
You believe in what you are doing, that doesn't apply for other people. Some just need default features from a message board, some need more, it depends on object which your site is heading to.

The fact that I made an idea to discuss for a change, but you prove that vbulletin accept current situation. You just cannot use it as excuse for downside of the platform right now. The lack of modification makes vbulletin is no longer a target for developers, thus price for each modification being paid can be increased significantly. You no longer have a standard quality to compare between mods.

Of course, a better way is to give up from modifications (I notice changes of vbulletin strategy), but since bugs and major features haven't been filled soon, I don't see there is a slight difference.

You do realise that I have absolutely zero say in things like this? I'm giving you my opinion, that's all. I don't 'prove that vBulletin accept' anything. I have no idea what their thinking is.

What I do know, is that the days of people spending hours, days and weeks coding free modifications are over, on all platforms. Yes some still do it but most new stuff coming out is paid.

What uis also a fact, is that historically, going back to vBulletin's early days, the vast majority of customer do NOT use modifications. They just don't. It's a fact. Some will use a style but even that isn't as widespread as you'd think. The same will no doubt be true of other platforms. People saying 'this platform will die because of lack of modifications' are just plain wrong. The popularity of various cloud platforms, like vBulletin's, where modifcations aren't even allowed, bear this out.

What version of vB are you running, and what bugs have you noticed with the software?

Why not 7? Because Seven Eight Nine as in ATE! I'd be running for my life!

Joking aside, well simply put because 5 is still being actively developed and improved upon and it happens to be the primary version on the cloud which is making them quite a bit of money. Many people fail to realize that, sure many customers want mods and think outside the box 0 the cloud is not the perfect fit for them but those who want a simple and straight forward forum have exactly what they need in vB5 and the cloud - it's like pressing an Easy Button. Those who've always pressed it don't know the hard way nor will they ever benefit from the hard work (customization in our case) but in the same sense they don't always need said benefits as some need the basic cloud setup and some need more.

I've been waiting for seemingly EVER for vB5 to improve, here recently some strides have been made but we're still a long way off imho, the amount of time left to improve upon it before a new version is mentioned, mocked up, and developed is not much so I dare say we'll be seeing vB6 before we see a rock solid kick A double SS chew bubble gum no wait all out of gum vB5.

I've had three VB forums since VB1, and it îs a fact that Social Media and sites with groups (Mostly Facebook) are killing forums. I've been trying everything to encourage more activity, but I feel like I'm losing the battle. I upgraded all three forums from an addon feature rich 4 to VB5, and activity dropped like a lead balloon. I've been checking for features that VB4 had addons for - and there's nt a damn addon I find useful. There are only three pages of addons that don't work, brand, or require the "Pro" version to be useful. Most of the addons haven't had the creator login in four years.

It looks like Vbulletin is going the way of the dinosaur, and I see a future of shutting them down and focussing on Pages and Groups on Facebook.

I personally prefer the organization and layout of the board, but the lack of addon and feature support on Vbulletin tells me it won't last too much longer as interest from Users and Developers both have died. Nothing defines VB as being better anymore. Sad!

Forums will always have a niche because they can do things that no social media platform can do. If you've ever used Facebook Groups you know social media can't do what forums do. It tried and failed miserably.

Again, and I'll keep on saying it, lack of add-ons will not kill any of the forum products in the market, because only a TINY FRACTION of site owners are interested in modifying and customising their boards.

It doesn't matter how many times people trot this one out, it doesn't change the facts. A thriving add on community certainly doesnt hurt, but it is absolutely not essential, it is a niche and a very small one at that.

Another huge mistake forum owners make, is trying to turn their forums into Facebook,a nd demanding the vendors make their forum products into Facebook clones. It won't work. Forums are not Facebook. Facebook and Twitter have taken a lot of activity away from forums, but that's because they have taken people's TIME. The attractions of Facebook are not going to be replicated in a forum, it's the presence of family / friends / colleagues all on the same network that provides the attraction, not the fact there's a like button or that posts are laid out in a certain way.

The way to keep your forum active is with CONTENT, not by trying to make it look and feel like Facebook.

Premium mods for other software brands are all for sale, not free. Why should it be any different for vb5?

Free mods are usually a sales pitch to get you to purchase the premium versions.

Here's a free mod with two functions no one cares about but if you want the one with functions and features you actually want that'll cost you!

The options are typically limited to free half-baked products that don't do everything you want or paid full versions that lock you into a particular software version and a host of future compatibility issues.

There is no perfect solution but the one that comes closest is the one most forums use:

Zero modifications.

Definitely not tiny, if so vB3 and vB4 were no where near what they archived. I've built many forums and I know each forum need special things to attract people. You could begin a forum plainly simple, without modifications but at the end, site owner have to do more to increase activities, if they do not want the site looks dead. Back in the days, I had some forums which could fill the latest posts statistic within every 10 seconds, and I knew modifications got an important role. Content is the first thing, but the question is how to keep people interest, how to make them keep supporting your forum, not only content can do, because your site is not an unique on the internet.

You provided an example of vbulletin did not have many modifications from early days, but it is invalid argument for me. vBulletin had potential to be great and useful was main reason attracting more modifications and addons, but now they want to turn back to the bronze age. You could not pay for every modification as I stated in my previous reply.

I know some giant forums which have great contents also great amount of active users. Most of biggest forum are still in old version with plenty of modifications, you just cannot see through their old style, for example 2-step authentication. They've been there since vb2, upgraded to vb3, some forums even upgraded to vb4, and likely stalled forever or chose to migrate to another board / system.

Anyway, this thread is just a unreal expectation as it would never be considered. I just want to express the fact of how their strategy changed.

I'm glad you said what we were all thinking...lol


so a few false (in my opinion) statements in this thread.
1. vb5 is a trainwreck.. vb4 was for years, vb5 is destine for the same if not worse future.
2. Saying no one makes free mods anymore is a lie. Check wordpress, check phpbb check opensourse scripts. 1000's of free mods all across the board. Paid as well of course, but there are free moders out there that just want to help out.
3. vb5 is far from gold even today after "released" years ago. No way in the world it should attempt to create another major version.
4. Correct vb isn't going to die because lack of mods for latest version. The mods at vb.org were certainly a large perk to owning a vb license back in the day.
5. Don't even run a site "in the cloud" It's like renting when you have enough money to buy a house and you know how to fix a broken pipe if needed.

In short.. you'll never polish a turd enough that I'll be convinced to put it on my head and use it as a hat..

Assuming there were ever to be a new version (and there are no signs of that heppening atm) then it would be vB6.
There is no reason to jump to 7, php only did that becasue they had started on designing php 6 before abandoning it.

Microsoft just cannot count, there numbering has been all over the place (e.g. 3.11, 95, 98, 3.5, 4, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10).

Fun fact: Microsoft skipped 9 because a lot of (old) software checks for the number 9 in the Microsoft version in order to determine whether it's something like Windows 98/95. It would of caused conflicts.

vBulletin 5 is not suitable for my needs yet, but perhaps it will meet my requirements sometime in the future. It's starting to look a lot better than a few years ago though.

Fun Fact #2: People who purchased a competing product which is essentially a stripped version of vB4 and then paid for every add on and mod are hard to take seriously on their opinions of vB5.

Personally I cannot see me ever running anything beyond VB4. The basic design of VB5 means it will just wont perform that well on large sites, and a new version (VB6+) designed in a different way seems compltely unlikely now, or in the forseeable future. Atm, vB3.8 is running our site quite happily, and will continue to do so for a long while. We could move too VB4.2 if necessary, but in both cases the only likely issues are php compatibility, so I should be able to keep them running for years yet.

If it ever came to a point where I had to move, then I'd look at what alternatives were available at the time.

Yes, that's certainly what I am doing. At least, vb4 can run on php7 (however require modifying core classes), which is enough by now. In future, the only option is to move from vb.

[S]vB5 took nearly 4 years to fix bugs and now said: "You don't need modifications".[/S]

Fun Fact #3: This thread seems to be the most replied thread recently. But we have run off arguments.
We agreed that there would be no vb6 in a near future. vB5 is lack of addons and vB want to tell us that we don't need modifications.

I believe there's a version out there that has support for PHP 7 at vbulletin.com, but it's not stable release. (?)

Yes, there is a project by Paul to make vb4 support php 7 https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=322892

It's in alpha test.

I know vB3 and 4 handle large sites very well. As far as vB5 not performing well on large sites, I've heard this many times but with zero examples. I wouldn't know from experience since my site is just a baby. I know vb.com isn't the largest or busiest site by any means, but it seems to purr along quite happily every time I visit. Is the limitation on vB5 because of the architecture or is it just resource hungry basically limited to the computing power of the particular server it's on?

The architecture I think. Beside vbulletin requires minimum 100 queries each request (I've tested on an empty board on localhost) isn't a good idea, although half of them are database cache queries.

Without a proper cache driver and application base optimizatio, I don't think large forum can render below 2s, they should have other choices of software.

vBOptimise of DBTech is really one of greatst vb4 modification.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2016/11/7.png

I dont really understand what you point is here, vB has never 'needed' modifications, but they are available if you wish to extend its functionality.

It's harder to make modifications in vb5 for developer. Extremely harder for ordinary users (Please don't say normal users do not make mods)

My point is, vB alone doesn't need modification, but a forum using vB needs modifications to keep itself alive. I haven't seen many "default" forums that are running.

Then you haven't looked because most of the vB5 forums are default, including the theme.

Theme shouldn't be included I think.

Large forums without custom mods? Could you show me some of them. I really want to expand my view.

Your statement said nothing about large forums.

When you're done moving the goalposts let me know and I'll answer the question.

A lot of vB5 forums do get styled, at least to some degree, and in my travels round people's sites doing support I've seen some extremely nice ones....from fully fledged new themes where someone has clearly rewritten a lot of the style, to simple colour changes that really work and give the site some identity.

One of the things I personally feel does vB5 no favours at all, is that its default style is rather drab. Even if it were a brighter blue, it'd be nicer. Some of the 'themes' that now ship with the product are very nice and they provide a decent starting point to style the rest of the site.

Just to give an example:
This is my cloud demo site: https://www.adminammo.com/
I used the 'Black Red' theme as the basis for the style, but the css is heavily customised to move the look more towards the 'traditional' forum layout...a bit like vB3 and older forum scripts like XMB. Everything back in boxes, etc.

I'm not claming it as a work of genius, but it shows what can be done with vB5.
AND - that is a cloud site. So no templates were changed, as cloud sites don't allow it. It's all done with additional css.

I've done styling work for dozens of vB5 sites who upgraded from vB4 and wanted their 'old' look and feel back. Mostly I stick to stylvars, colour changes and custom css, because changing templates just causes problems when they next upgrade.

Mark, did you ever complete the article documenting the additional CSS that you did to bring back the look and feel from prior VB versions? What you've accomplished without changing templates is truly impressive