[misuse]

First off I am not in this to argue. I was just pointing out my experiences with VB4 after running Vbulletin for the last 9 years through all of the series.
I have built a business off a single forum site that now has 16 well paid employees.
My case is not the general little fansite. 350K+ users a month.
My community puts food in the mouth of many. I have to be very careful with which paths I choose. VB4 is not the best option for my business right now...

Originally Posted by misuse
The skinning/styling is near impossible for an intermediate user let alone a company that is one of the best template designers in the VB world.

All opinions of course.. I was able to make a few styles that our members liked, I've also seen several nice 4.x styles.
IMO the style system is better than the 3.x series, but again.. just my opinion.

There is lots of nice color options out there along with header images.
Customization to the templates is all vanilla so far.

PS.. what's this "best template designers in the VB world" I'll be sure not to recommend them.

I found them on this site and he is one of the main guys that everyone has recommended for years! He's done a great job in the past but since vb4 came out he has been stumped with my particular layout. (layout is a big deal in the ad world)

The ad spots are very limited! For those of us that make a living off our sites the spots and ability to ad new spots (there is none) makes VB4 a definate NO UPGRADE.

PS.. they are the exact same ones that are in 3.7 +

Maybe you should research this a little more. http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBIV-7586

I feel like IB took over and wants everyone's sites to not make $ and all look the same. It would mean less customer support issues.

Do you have anything to back this claim up?

If everyones website looked/worked the same then end users would have the same problems and the customer service would have less gremlins to chase.
In the end the product would be stable and work out of the box just like Apple.

It seems now that they are trying to force us to upgrade. Great....

Once again, no one is FORCED to do anything.. you always have options

They discontinued support for the 3x series at the end of this last month.
Options:
Stick with 3.8 series and hope there is no security holes.
Upgrade to vb4.
Move to PHPBB, SMF or custom. I will probably fork out the $20K for custom.

I want to use the new tech but not at the cost of losing $ and dealing with managing nightmares.

Do you generally use the latest and greatest of everything?
Have you ever ran into problems with other items using this route?

The question was 1 year later... It's not so much new anymore.
Yes I have been known to upgrade my cell phone, video card, processor, servers, drivers, car, truck, office, wife, etc after a year.
Yes I have had problems with new stuff. Especially the wife.

I have 3 dedicated servers running my site. My host said they would not support VB4 if upgraded to. Too buggy for them, this was yesterday!

You must have a crappy host than who has no idea what they're talking about

Because a host that has experience with other big boards going to VB4 does not recommend my company upgrading to VB4 they must be crappy.
They must not know what they are doing with VB.
I will leave them immediatly to whoever you recommend so I can be supported with VB4 server configuration.

VB.org must not know what they are doing. They are not on VB4 either!

Brandon I know you try to make a living off of design and forum set up. I hope you are as busy as can be and wish you success.
The GF forums look good for what they are.
I remember 4K members years ago. It's not easy to get. When you hit 10K members it will start to roll and the next thing you know you are at 80K then 100K+.