Add funds to make vB4.x get supported again?
 

Hi everyone,
As I remembered then Joe D. supported to make vB4 work with PHP 7 and it was great but he stopped since he's left vB team, there is no one supports this version any more. Do you think we should add funds to someone in vB team to support this version again? Is that a good idea? What do you think? If this works, I wanted to add money with everyone to have a better vB4.x forum platform because I also am using vB4.x :)

It was Paul Marsden who developed a PHP7 compatible version of vBulletin 4 but he did not and is not authorized to make it public. I don't even know if he continues to use it. I think it would be fair to say he and vBulletin did not part on the most amicable of terms.

Insofar as the current development team there is a zero percent chance of them going backwards. vBulletin 4 is a technological dinosaur. It still works but for how much longer? SQL 8.0 and PHP 8 are about to become the industry standards.

Good morning ,
the truth that I am observing, and I do not see why if they are easy to adapt to vb5 and being a vb4 a dinosaur,

vbulleting.org is still using vb3 3.8.12 or this website will soon expire?.

well I hope that vb4 have for a few more years.

Thank you for reading .

Oh I remembered wrongly, Paul is exact, I also asked him sometimes in the past and get supported as well from him.

I really don't care if it will use the latest version of PHP or Mysql or not, I only focus on if it is supported or not.

Nice thought. I also don't know why vB didn't support it any more while more people are still wanting to use it.

vBulletin 3.8.12 is a custom build not available to the public and because vBulletin hosts it on its own servers they are able to make it compliant with their SQL and PHP and LAMP stack and whatever else they may have running. It would not run on any publicly available hosting.

I use publicly available hosting (VPS), my forums works just fine and I can use older, or newer versions of PHP. It just works.

I'm not sure where do you get that information that if new version of something (let's say PHP) gets published, all older version just stop working. Really strange notion, really strange...

PHP 7.1 is going to be End Of Life in five months. That's the most recent version with which vBulletin 4 and vBulletin 3 work. Once it is End Of Life hosting companies will be removing it.

https://www.php.net/supported-versions.php

There are still many hosters that even offer PHP 5.6.

Apart from that vbulletin 4.2.5 also runs under PHP 7.3.

Not unless you've modified it. They didn't put this on the downloads page for their health.

PHP 5.6 was declared End Of Life January of this year so while some hosts may continue to run it they could pull it at any time without notice. It's not a risk I would take if I were running a board of any substance.

Aside from that vBulletin 4 was developed using HTML 4.01 and CSS 2. HTML 5 has been the industry standard since 2014 and CSS 3 has been the industry standard since a year or less after vBulletin 4 was initially released.

The discussion here is about why the developers will not be taking on the project of bringing vBulletin 4 up to current industry standards. Holding to that the last two posts are irrelevant. This isn't about whether or not you can make it work today. There will be a day when you cannot make it work. That might be sooner or later. I don't have a crystal ball that tells me when hosting companies will pull the plug on PHP 5.x versions. It will probably be as soon as some security flaw is discovered that isn't going to be patched because, again, security updates ceased in January.

Having said all of that I cannot fathom why a forums administrator would want to continue to work with decade plus old software technology and design knowing that social media has trampled that philosophy and that the survival of forums depends upon evolution. The idea of giving members stupid and useless crap in the form of add ons and mods to keep them around has long outlived its usefulness.

People in the year 2019 want the most bang for their buck, so to speak. They want information overload or entertainment overload. They want the most return with the least investment. If any part of the process is too involved they move on to something else. It's the instant gratification generation. They want it all and they want it now. vBulletin 4 doesn't work that way and it never did. Registration isn't one step. Accessing content isn't one click. Commenting or replying isn't anonymous. Notifications aren't limited to only what someone cares about. The entire approach of traditional forum software is ass backwards.

While I have said this before elsewhere vBulletin 5 is the only forum software that has made any effort to adapt to 2019. It was released far too early and initially had far too many problems that gave it a bad reputation. A good number of people took third party opinion and ran with it. A good number of people migrated to other forum software which (surprise) was nothing more than vBulletin 4 clones. vBulletin 5 today is not the product it was when it was initially released. There are a number of things it does or can do that no other forum software does and that no other forum software will be able to do out of the box. The people who speak ill of it have obviously not used it. Does it still have bugs? Yes, but so does Windows 10 and they have far more than the four developers vB5 has. Literally, thousands of bugs have been resolved and thousands of improvements have been made since initial release.

Forums are a dying or dead niche. Trying to keep a small number of long-time members happy by holding on to outdated software with useless add ons and mods isn't going to change that. The only successful business model is "adapt or die."

Asking someone to invest on the development of vBulletin 4 is like asking someone to invest in the development of the Ford Model T. It lacks power and safety features, and it may not even be safe for highway transportation since it's top speed is well under the posted 65MPH limit but, dagnabit, someone just has to have one because reasons! I'm not that someone.

good afternoon,
I understand your point of view In Omnibus about this problem, but we return to the same, vb5 could have improved over time and can be and as you comment windows10 also had errors, but windows10 could be updated from windows7 without much history, because the developers have not implemented and a tool for its simple update, because as you understand starting again from scratch I think it's a lot of time and work to say that it is your risk to update.
Thank you for reading .

I really think you don't understand very basic things about server management. :D

You can on your VPS (or full server) install older (even "dead") versions of software. You can use panels like Plesk to do that for you automatically:

https://www.plesk.com/features/

So, if you have your server (VPS or higher) you can run whatever PHP version, if you want to do so. And, you can be complete novice in that, as it is made very easy, if you use CP like Plesk, as it is just changing setting in your webinterface.

So, your story about doom and gloom is just story you tell yourself and it is not true.

The typical forums administrator is not using self-managed VPS. For one thing it is considerably more expensive. For another it requires a level of technical knowledge many do not possess or care to possess. You would be the exception, not the rule.

I'd respectfully request you not make assumptions as to what I do or do not know about server management or anything else.

You should take your own advice when it comes to why most add-on developers left vB. At least 50% of what you post is incorrect.

I won't get into that discussion again. So just leave it at that.

I know why they left. They didn't all leave for the same reasons. I welcome any discussion people want to have. So, don't leave it at that. If you want to question something I've said I encourage it because this is a discussion that needs to be had. The "official modifications" site is dead for a lot of reasons. If you have no desire to "get into it again" why are you replying?

You THINK you know why they left.

Unless you've personally spoken directly to each developer that has left, you are making assumptions. I can make that statement as fact because I have never made why I left fully public and you haven't spoken to me.

And there is no point in discussing those reasons because in most cases they still exist today in the current version of vB5. There's nothing that will make vB5 fix problems that were brought out in alpha testing and still exist in the bug tracker today after years of being there.

In the end, it's all about money and they cannot make any money with vBulletin 3/4 anymore since it's all about vBulletin 5, which makes sense from a business perspective.

If you have PHP 7 (and in the future PHP 8) compatibility issues then any decent PHP developer out there should be able to fix these issues. It doesn't have to be a vBulletin developer.

I think you'd be surprised the number with whom I have spoken. No one purchased vBulletin 5 with the expectation that development of third party add ons and modifications would become virtually non-existent. Customers wanted to know why. I am a customer. Again, there were a number of reasons the people with who I spoke left.

Some of those reasons included the difficulty and the inability to make enough money to justify rewriting existing mods from hook-based to API-based code. Some left for health reasons. Some left because they felt forums were not the future or at least not their future. Some had grievances with the manner with which vBulletin conscripted the third party mods and add ons site.

I'm not speaking for you. You're perfectly capable of doing that yourself. When a number of coders spoke of "problems" they were specifically referring to a lack of hooks. You may or may not be referring to that as a problem. I don't know. I never claimed to speak for everyone. I can only speak as to what I have been told firsthand.

This isn't really relevant to the issues with crowdfunding vBulletin 4 but it's an important discussion that warrants far more consideration than it has been given. Glenn Vergara seems to have no issue developing add ons and mods for vBulletin 5. DragonByte Tech was doing fine with it until they determined there was money to be made from XF and IPB since they charge for every add on and mod.

People get angry when I claim there were a good number of hackers who weren't really coders or developers making vBulletin 4 products. There were. A number of those people did not know how to rewrite their products for an API-based system and had no interest in learning. I spoke with several of them as well. I never said you were one of them. As you stated we've never spoken on any personal level.

Myth. They don't charge for every add-on and mod.

But as you said, this really has nothing to do with funding vB4. So we'll end it there.

Reread that. I said there is money to be made from XF. I said IPBoard charges for all their add ons. Or at least they used to. I'm fairly certain that's accurate.

Why not?

You show very openly your "knowledge", you make very wrong statements and now, when I make arguments that contradict your false and untrue statements, I should stop pointing out how wrong and untrue you are?

Sorry, you obviously think you know more than you actually do.

Also, thing is, you claim things that may scare some people with less knowledge into thinking you're right and your statements true.

If people want to have vB3/4 forums for years to come, they can. There's way to do that. Now and for 50, 100, and even 150 years even, if there would be people wanting to do something like that.

Making such outrages claims that having VPS is something too expensive, or that requires "too much knowledge" is just along lines of how much you yourself don't know.

So, if you're so bald to make such false statements, expect that there's someone who will right these wrongs. As I did.

And, learn something about servers man, will come in handy even to you...

I'm just going to leave this here because I did not say either one of these things. These are both misquotes out of context.

This is what I said:

You put words in my mouth and then claimed I lied.

Of course not. I'm not putting anything into your mouth (or fingers to be more precise).

I just follow your claims made in this thread here. You stated this:

That's where I started and corrected you. After that, you make claim after claim that shows how little you know, how biased (and wrongly at that) you are.

Now you try to get my words out of context to shame me. But, you're the one who forgets this is forum, we can check everything you have "put in your mouth yourself" to use your phrase, and what I wrote back.

So, VPS and other servers can and will run vB3/4 forums in years to come, if there's people who want to run them on these publicly available hosting.

Shame on you for trying such low tactics, but more shame on you for your gross lack of knowledge in general. Or maybe it isn't lack of knowledge, but something else...

Anyway, to just conclude for other interested parties, if there's need to run vB3/4 forums in years to come, it is possible and it will be possible.

Saying this, I'm not persuading anyone to actually run any particular forum software. Let everyone of us choose what they want. But not just lie to people (or tell something that is not true out of lack of knowledge).

In this one thread let's agree to disagree and leave it at that! I hate to see you two argue or comment like this whatever you may deem to call it, I truly do and I'd like to leave the thread up for constructive feedback.

I would break down the replies and try to be as unbiased as possible and try to help understand this more but that's not my place nor my prerogative only closing the thread is once it becomes out of hand per say reply-wise. I'll leave it up to good judgement and speaking to each other moving forward with some moderation of respect.

"We all float down here" - IT

Glenn is simply a ROCK STAR vB5 mod-wise in my book, my definition meaning he's committed!

The DBTech statement might be untrue in a sense, I don't know though as I don't read any publications by them anymore after the indictments and them being brought up on charges hence why if you didn't know of this then you wouldn't consider that when making that statement, I would go further into that but you can use Google to learn of that if you feel the need - there will be no discussion of those events (specific details) on this forum other than my tidbit of info just now provided which is intended to allow you to know of something that occurred, to research if you see fit and make your own judgment/assumption on the matter. Alternatively it could be due to Xenforo having a paid mod area, developers who can post there and the simple lack of that here on the org i.e. what I mean is on vBulletin they didn't have as much competition as they do on Xenforo modification and plugin-wise but I'm unsure of IPB currently or rather Invision Community so I can't even comment there.

I'm taking the liberty of assuming you're referring to the child pornography cases against both Iain and Fillip. While that's a good reason not to do business with them they abandoned their vBulletin customers prior to those charges. I'm not going to ask if they abandoned their customers before or after they became paedophiles since apparently at least some of the material they possessed was dating back to 2007.

Quite frankly I think more people should be aware of this because they would see a lot less business if people knew about it.

But the problem is, users like me still want to pay for vBulletin 4, at least buy "extra support" if it is still supported.


Honestly I applied this by hiring some developers to fix some issues on addons when upgrade to PHP 7.x and vB4.2.5 but if there are more people pay for a person to support vB then all community will be supported than just me. I think that will be better to add funds together.

It's also possible to run DOS 2.0 but why would you want to? There's a point at which all software becomes obsolete. vBulletin 4.x is approaching ten years old. vBulletin 3.x was initially released in 2004. Yes, it's technically correct that you can run outdated software, and, yes, you can always find some hosting somewhere that will support virtually anything, especially if you're willing to spend the additional money for self-managed hosting and have the time to spend learning how to self-manage a server. Most people don't have the time even if they have the money. You can't reasonably build a community if you're spending all your time in the back end or server.

Giving people advice to use outdated software that requires more than following the manual instructions is poor practice. What happens when it is no longer possible to run outdated software? Especially after it's been so heavily modified to work that it cannot be updated using the script provided.

I'm not going to go ad hominem here because it's unhelpful to anyone. I just think the advice to use ten or fifteen year old software and modifications or add ons because it can still be made to work, security holes and all, is not sound advice.

This is how you try make your "arguments" true, but thing is, you stated something completely different: People wouldn't be able to run vB3/4 on publicly available servers.

I didn't try to make argument that people want to use vB3/4, I stated that people will be able to run vB3/4 if they want to.

If people want to, or not, I don't try to argue. It's up to each and every one of us.

You really don't even know what you're talking yourself. :down: