[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by nam6641

the difference between different vbulletin versions 3,4,5 are that whenever you upgrade the vbulletin, You get
1. More server load
2. Slower page Loads
3. Loses Search Engine Rankings each time you upgrade (vbulletin 3 has index.php as default page, vb4 has forum.php/content.php/activity.php as default pages, while vbulletin 5 make a mess for search engines by moving all pages to core directory and change the whole sitemap) And search engines needs to re-index all your pages again after upgrading to vb5. i have read about the two layers system for more security in vb5, i wan't to know is it good for rankings by changing the whole site structure?
4. You get more new bugs after upgrading.
5. Every time vbulletin upgrades its script the coders have to learn code again from the scratch to make new mods or port old mods to run with new script.
So whats the benefit of buying a vb5. If there is any? please mention thanks,if there are some solid reasons behind the vb5 then i will have no hesitation in purchasing a vb5 license.And one more thing i have noticed that we can't customize the design and templates as we used to do in vb4. is that true?

You appear to be misinformed on some of your statements.

3. The URLs will never have /core/ in them and all your old URLs will redirect correctly to the new URLs if you install vBulletin 5 in the same directory VB4 was installed in.

5. The upgrade from VB 3 to 3.5 added a hooks system so yes it was a new way of coding mods but the template syntax was the same. The upgrade from 3.x to 4.x had new template syntax but the back end (hooks) code was exactly the same as VB 3.x. In fact the majority of my mods work fine on 3.x or 4.x. The upgrade from 4.x to 5.x has removed the hooks system in favor of file extensions, so yes it is another big change, but the template syntax from 4.x works in 5.x, so that is something. There hasn't really be a release where everything changes.

1 & 2 - Remains to be seen when it is out of Beta
4 - This is true, but honestly expected- going to a new major version will always bring new bugs.