[RedWingFan]

Originally Posted by Chase

- Page load lags... seems to take a little longer to load normal pages, doesn't seem as fluid as 3.x... I am on a semi-dedicated server so it can't be that.

I have access to a couple of different web servers, including dedicated. vB4 overall is just not as responsive.

Originally Posted by Chase

- Adding tabs or nav links aren't as easy. Shouldn't this be a rather simple procedure? I don't want to deal with crazy conditions.

Conditions unfortunately are a necessary evil. I've had to do the same myself.

Originally Posted by Chase

- And like many others have already stated, it seems like 4.x is more bloated than 3.x.

WAY more bloated. 4.x has featuritis. More new features thrown on top of existing features--just overall clumsy coding (and I've coded for a living). vB could be better if it had a ground-up rewrite, and lose all the extras that slow the entire system down. Yes there is "more going on." Bloat does that. Bloat is a waste of CPU cycles. That bloat should never have been added--no important new functionality was added.

With 4.x, vB has turned into the Microsoft Office of forum systems.

How many of these features did we really need? None that I can see. Why don't we TRIM features and instead, work on making the coding more efficient (especially the expensive database queries), and make it a lot more responsive? Why don't we rebuild the template system to something a bit more modern in terms of web standards? C'mon...tables in 2011 for forum layouts? The web HTML coding standards have moved on. vB is stuck in 2005.

On a couple of forums, I've switched over to something completely different and users have overwhelmingly liked it--I've noticed participation has gone up substantially on both. It's much more responsive and has far less clutter and "featuritis;" our members have not really missed all the extras. The emphasis is back on discussions and community interaction...and our members. Which is how it should be.

One final shot on the "forced" comments above, and I'm dropping out of this thread: what choice do we forum license holders have? We either have to convert to vB 4.1 to receive support, or get left in the dark because we can't, or don't want to, convert. Many of us also have a lot of customization in our 3.8.x forums (many of which address shortcomings in vB that STILL haven't been addressed in 4.1, by the way), and it is not feasible to convert to 4.1. So if we want support, yes, we are forced to convert to 4.1. I have never seen the Jelsoft-era vB drop support for older versions this quickly. Us 3.8 and earlier license holders just see this as a throbbing middle finger thrust in our general direction...