vb4.xx or vb3.8x for a new forum?
 

Hello everyone,

I have not been around with vbb for over a year, and just came back. I need a lot of update about vbulletin new version.

anyway.. long story short. I'm about to launch a new forum and hoping it will get big within 2 years. I wanna know what version of vbulletin is best to use now regards on these factors: mod, skin, seo friendly, users friendly, which version is lighter?

Thanks

Upgrading to 4.x was the biggest mistake I made for my forum.

Nothing but problems.

3.8 is the choice

The only problem with 3.8 are "unfriendly" URLs but that can be fixed with VBSEO, or another SEO product... but honestly I don't believe 'friendly' urls help all that much on google anyway, it's just better for humans to read.

About SEO features: you will end up using vBSEO anyway if you want the best results.

But the choice between 3.8 and 4.0 is different. Many people here say: How hard time they had with upgrading. Say: links to album pictures had a tendency to become broken, and if they are used elsewhere it was a problem.

Users had to adapt to a new forum and it led to extra work for moderators.

They had to redo templates, and was unable to find ports of popular templates, so designing their template involved a lot of work.

They aren't that happy with the upgrade and I respect their feelings. For people with limited technical knowledge upgrade can be painful.

BUT you ask about a new board, and you know that within foreseeable future you will have to move to 4.x if you want support even if you choose 3.8.X and you would experience the same pain as many people who upgraded their board.

If you choose 4.X you won't endure this transition, and 4.X is nice enough to begin with, and many people are perfectly happy with it.

I would say use 4.x With the upcoming release of 4.0.8 and very soon 4.1 I think vBulletin will be very much on the right track after some time.

I agree that 4.0.x was a pain to upgrade and still lacks in some ways but with that said it is also the one using the latest coding techniques. It has most if not all the "mods" vb3.x has and some that come "right out of the box"

The CMS IMO is not worth getting at the moment and is lacking in many many ways BUT this is NOT a "lets bash vb features" thread so enough said on that......

I would have a play around with both the Demos that are about if I was you. Just an idea but.....you could start off with 3.8 and upgrade once things are more settled with 4.x The 3.x will still be supported for security fixes for a while yet.

I don't know how you can say that- vbulletin 4 uses a lot of the vb3 code- look at the php files, forumdisplay.php is almost identical between 3.8 and 4.0.

pretty much the only part of vb4 using new coding is the CMS..

I know the coding is not perfect but I was talking more regards the concept and thoughts behind it