Emperor's New Clothes?

[Mark.B]

I'm not sure what to make of my own post here, but here goes.

I'm currently running 3.0.10. It's quite heavily modified, though not as heavily as some, and although I've got quite good at implementing and changing modifications, I'm still rubbish by overall standards - it's a struggle for me to do anything and involves lots of trial and error.

Now, I'm faced with upgrading to 3.5, and I cannot see how this is going to benefit me.

Many of the hacks I use have not been converted, or cannot be converted, and I am often told "that's just how vBulletin is now".

Hacks that HAVE been ported are almost impossible to customise further due to the new XML system.

A stock 3.5 offers just short of fat zero in benefits to members compared to a stock 3.0. It looks identical, and the only discernible difference is the AJAX on quick reply - my members would not even notice that.

There's some other 'features', like cookies not persisting by default, bold highlighting of unread threads working in a confusing way, today's posts not showing stuff you've already read.....

Then on top of that, a large proportion of hacks from 3.0 are "not practical" on 3.5!

I therefore ask....not in a nasty way....whatever is the point of 3.5, other than to give admins a few snazzy toys to play with?

As an admin of 3.0, I am faced with telling my members that we are upgrading the board but will end up with fewer features.

Although I *am* working on the upgrade on a test board, I am starting to come to the conclusion that I'd be better off waiting for 4.0, in whatever year that comes, which would at least have significant feature and layout changes to make it worthwhile.

At the moment, I could remove the version number from the copyright notice and a lay person would not have any idea whether I was on 3.0 or 3.5. There just seems to be absolute zero point in it, yet everyone raves about how wonderful it is for the end user.

Hence the title of my thread, 'the emperor's new clothes'. Can nobody else see that,m for a modified board, an upgrade is masses and masses of work for pretty much zero benefit?

Even this site has not upgraded, and that can't be a coincidence. Many busy boards I know that have upgraded spend half their time apologising for the fact that stuff they had before no longer works. vBarticles being a case in point, though personally I don't use that myself.

(Please don't think I'm knocking Jelsoft here - vBulletin is fantastic and always will be!)