Let's talk about the stupid design of the VB Suite menu

[donottumbledry]

Yes, that's right. The rather stupid system that VB Suite uses to draw the nav tabs and nav bar.

No only does the header section require three different templates (yes three!) but those same templates are not consistent across the entire Suite. Why should the CMS side of things require it's own templates when the ones from the Forum would suffice?

This makes for a very inconsistent and cack-handed way of deploying the nav bar/tabs to the end-user. It also makes re-working the base templates and code an absolute nightmare. Plus - why does the navbar of your website sections suddenly disappear when you view an individual article in the CMS? Oh yes - it's because it's another bloody stupid template!

And why should the height of the nav tabs be directly influencing anything other than the nav tabs themselves? It does - change the height of the nav tabs and the same stylevar is then used indirectly which miss-aligns the drop-down menus in the nav bar and makes them all cocked up.


Who designed this crap? Were they on drugs? If not then perhaps they went away and then came back and decided that even though they were half way through designing a navigation system they would stop and start over from a completely different place for the CMS.

It's a joke.


Does anyone here work for Internet Brands and have you therefore developed any of this code? If so then you should be ashamed of yourselves.


And the crowning-glory is the absolutely fabulous way that the only way to stylise your site is to edit the templates. But wait... hang on! If vB release an update patch some of those templates will need to be reverted back! Wow. Now there's cleverness for you. Everyone's hard work at customising their site has been laid to waste and more time is needed to re-engineer the templates to take into consideration the individual customisations that you have implemented in them before you can then install the patch on your live forums.

WordPress, as a case example, requires NO template edits should you update the core files. The two are entirely separate. If the update is that major though then they'll give you advanced warning that the template might not work (usually though in the very least only a TINY part of it might not work, not the whole god damn thing).

I've been working away at the new Suite for the best part of three weeks. Now that might not sound very much for you long-term coders and developers out there but I can tell you this for nothing - these last three weeks have showed up more flaws and more developmental suicide holes and junior errors than I have ever seen in any software package. The coders should all be shot. No actually, shooting is too nice for them, in fact.