Is it possible to mod vB5?
 

Hi everybody,

I have what I feel is an amazing forum right now. Everything is set up exactly the way I want it. I should mention that it's a brand new forum running vB5 (meaning I'm not coming from vB4).

Having said all that, there are several features I'd like to add to my site to make it truly personalized and custom and dissimilar from other forums out there, to give my visitors a unique and fun experience...and a reason to keep coming back.

Unfortunately, I don't know anything about php. So any mods I make to my site, I would need to pay someone to do them for me.

I actually reached out to a developer about a year ago about this and ran some of my ideas by them. They told me that they could do the mods for me, but then I'd forever be trapped in the vB5 version I was using at the time the mod is implemented. In other words, I could never upgrade after modding my site. This is obviously far from ideal.

Is this still true?

What about the hooks system? I get the feeling that the hooks system is used for the purpose of modding a site.

Anyway, this whole thing is totally out of my realm of experience, but it's something I want to explore. There are several things I want my site to do that it currently doesn't do now--and I don't expect vBulletin to ever implement some of these features that I want. Could someone please give me advice?

There are so few coders actively working on third party modifications for vB5 it would be difficult to even recommend one with whom you could speak about your specific needs. It's extremely easy for someone to claim they know what they are doing and take your money. My advice would be to require anyone you hire to provide a working product or products before you pay them. I also don't believe for a minute that you should pay for a product which is not compatible with minor software version upgrades. I could see a product not being compatible with a major version change or with a major change to PHP or MySQL versions but I'd be leery of any developer who told you that you could never upgrade your software. That's really all I can tell you.

VB5 is still under development so there may be some minor changes or adjustments that need to be done to maintain version compatibility but like ProSportsForums said, be careful who you hire and pay when it's done and you are satisfied. Also would be a good idea to lock in some kind of agreement on keeping the code up to date should the upgrades require it.

It's never been true.
You may have to update some from time to time, thats always been the case, even with vB3 & vb4.
vbulletin.com has a number of extensions installed (since it went live with 5.0.0) and I think ive had to update a couple of them in the last 4 years.

Thats exactly what its used for.
Its quite new in vb5 (prior to that you had the extensions system, which still works).
As far as hooks go, you may find they dont currently exist where you need them, but you can add them your self and then request they be added to the core.

Any idea why this might be? I don't want to anger the makers of the software with my question, but why is it that no one is working on mods for vB5? Did it not sell as much as they expected? Is it too buggy?

I just find this very odd...and there has to be a reason why. I feel like if there was a bunch of people actively working on 3rd party stuff, that would be a good place to start in asking someone to do some custom code work.

Is there a point where you think more people may start working on this kind of stuff in the future? vB5 has been around for several years now...

I only develop for my own clients but if I were to venture a guess I would say that the complete lack of hooks up until recently deterred many of the third party developers who worked on previous major version add-ons and modifications.

The API really isn't difficult to grasp but for developers who are accustomed to years of hooks and are used to coding without having to even think about how to hook a template it's a foreign language.

To their credit, vB5 did begin to bring back hooks but I'm not certain exactly where they are in that process. Last I knew they had released a test version for third party developers to use and determine where hooks should be located in the product. You'd likely get more information on that asking over at vb.com since Kevin Sours, the lead developer of vB5, is far more likely to see any specific questions you may have on the hooks there than here.

Speaking as a former vB add-on developer, beta tester and one of the first to release an add-on for vB5 (all of my add-ons are now in the graveyard), I can tell you from my standpoint it had nothing to do with the lack of hooks.

First an foremost, the software was buggy. Updating add-ons for vB5 became a weekly ordeal when something would be changed.

Second, the code in general in my opinion is poorly written. Any system that takes 91+ database queries to load the main page of an unmodified install is not good code.

Third, the release of vB5 as SAS (vB5Cloud) takes customers away from developers since add-ons can not be installed on sites hosted by vB.

Now mind you the last version I checked was version 5.1.4. So there may be improvements now.

There have been a great many improvements since the 5.1.4 version. The software in my opinion is no longer what I would consider "buggy" although there are still some bugs. Even though there are a large number of database queries, with the addition of support for PHP7, my site is hitting just under 3 second on initial pageload times with well over 130 database hits. PHP7 alone reduced my pageload times and server load by a good 35-40%.

What do you use to see how many database queries are made? Also, which webpage speed test are you using for your page load times?

Here are my results from Webpagespeed test:

It says that I am in the six second range. A three second improvement by the way from just switching from free cloudflare to pro. I am using Vb 5 and PHP 7.0.8.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2016/07/10.jpg

You have to turn on debug mode for the site. It's not something I would do on a production (live) server.