Do I upgrade??
 

Hi all,

My forum is happily running on VB 3.8.9 though I need to get it to be mobile friendly.

I've just attempted an upgrade to VB5 on a copy of the site but it failed and has left the site with a white browser screen. Thank goodness it's a duplicate of the site!

I'm curious why this forum is still running on VB3. Does anyone know?

Also, do you guys recommend upgrading to VB4 or VB5? All I want is for the site to be responsive...

Thanks in advance.

Andy

This site is still on VB3 because of the large number of custom mods that would take hundreds or thousands of man hours rewrite for VB4 or VB5. With major upgrades, you can't simply fix the code, the majority of it needs to be rewritten from scratch.

I can't help you on the responsive question, but our site started the upgrade process from vb 3.8.7 to vb5 about three years ago. We needed to first upgrade to vb4, do a bunch of infrastructure stuff to get ready for vb5 and then upgrade. It was a long process, but in the end worth it for us. We had very few mods on our site and now only have one, Tapatalk. Only you can decide if upgrding is worth it for you and if you have any mods on your site that aren't now part of VB5 you need to find replacements or accept that loss of functionality.

You will also lose your styles upgrading from 3 to 4 or to 5.

Finally, users are notoriously change adverse. Going from VB3 to VB4 isn't a huge change from a user standpoint. VB5 is a significant change and you will both be praised as a hero by some of your members and condemned by others.

Good Luck.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." is the reason why this is still running vBulletin 3.

Neither vBulletin 3/4 have (un)official full-responsive themes. Some people created responsive themes but they are far from really being full-responsive and mobile-friendly. As far as I know vBulletin 5 is the only one with a responsive theme.

If you absolutely must have a responsive theme then vBulletin 5 is the only way to go, however you could stick to vBulletin 3 or 4 and create your own mobile theme and force mobile users to that theme when they are visiting your forum.

Like this, except fully responsive and mobile friendly:

http://redneckclubhouse.com

I'd upgrade to the latest 4.x version if you're wanting to stick with vbulletin.
I would stay far far away from vbulletin 5 ;)

Thanks for the responses everyone. I've got to be honest and say that I'm seriously considering switching to another piece of forum software. VB5 has been out for ages and seems to be widely regarded as being very poor. If I'm going to go through the hassle of changing things, I need it be future proofed...

It sounds as though a lot of vb users are going elsewhere, but what is the favoured option!?

Thanks,

Andy

You should do what's best for your forum, check out all the options.
I moved to xenforo and it's mobile friendly right out of the box, which is very nice.

I'm reminded of your first post where you said: "My forum is happily running on VB 3.8.9"

So ask yourself - are your users happy? Do any of them really give a hoot what version of what platform you're using? What is the COMPELLING reason to change? Would it be worth alienating a percentage of your membership who like it just like you have it?

I will be using 3.8 until it stops working. Works perfectly.

Neither.
vB4 will work for you just as well as vB3, so you dont seem to have any need to upgrade.
vB5 - just dont. No, really, dont.


Why ?
Do you have a large number of mobile users ? are they all complaining ?
You can get dedicated mobile themes, for mobile users.
You can also get responsive vB3 themes (if you pay for them of course).