vb4 upgrade to vb5 is it worth

[ageurtse]

Hello,

Is it worth to upgrade vb4 to vb5.
it's a pretty large board with almost 1.000.000 posts
and several gig of attachments.

please need some advice on this.

[final kaoss]

I think I would create a secondary board and import the database to it and ask your community to use it & see if they like it or not. Most communities don't like the change to VB5.

[Dave]

Usually people don't like change, especially if they are used to your vBulletin 4 forum for years. If they take it the wrong way, it can cause a significant impact on your forum its activity.

Don't fix what ain't broken.

[ageurtse]

Dave, thats the same i thought.

But the user's wan't a bit more modern site.
like drag and drop an image in a post.

and more of that kind of stuff.

[Dave]

In that case I would do what final_kaoss said.

[Brandon Sheley]

Originally Posted by ageurtse

Hello,

Is it worth to upgrade vb4 to vb5.

no.

[Max Taxable]

Originally Posted by ageurtse

Dave, thats the same i thought.

But the user's wan't a bit more modern site.
like drag and drop an image in a post.

and more of that kind of stuff.

Not a compelling reason to throw out the baby with the bath water.

The trick isn't to just give them what they want as much as it is to give them what they need. I seriously doubt any significant number of members are going to leave if you don't "upgrade." But if the vB5 isn't acceptable to them, large numbers will leave.

Like said already, "if it ain't broke don't fix it."

Plus it's not something you can easily take back. There is very little in vB5 that is compatible with vB4. They are truly two different animals.

[TheLastSuperman]

EVVVERRBODDDDIIIIIE GET TO THE CHOPPA! The Don't do it Choppa!

lol joking aside, no need as many have already stated.

Only reasons to upgrade would be:
- Some compelling new feature simply not available in vB3/vB4.
- Due to a security issue i.e. if they simply didn't patch vB4 then you would of course be required then but usually some small form of patch for earlier versions is released.
- Due to PHP incompatibility. For some time PHP5.2 was the golden era for vBulletin 4.x series, as PHP progressed though so did the software and in-turn it's PHP requirements and dependencies (PHP modules required such as MySQLi if you want to use it instead and so on).

With that being said about PHP you need to realize there may come a time when you're either forced to upgrade to a newer version of vB even if it's just a slight number higher such as 3.8.10 from 3.8.7 (as 3.8.10 has the ability to be up-to-date with PayPal's new requirements but not versions before as they were never updated to do so). OR you may need to move hosts if they're running new versions of let's say CentOS and it will only run PHP5.4 with some tweaks if I recall, 5.6 is the default of many installations now if not higher and they're not offering a selection of older php versions (deprecated). So if you're running let's say for example vBulletin 3.7.3, you should be on PHP5.2 or 5.3 at the highest (unconfirmed on 5.3 from me that might be a maybe) because the default 5.6 won't work there will be so many errors the file edits alone wouldn't be enough to retain your sanity.

So it still boils down to the no need to fix what ain't broke because unless you break it by some mandatory PHP upgrade requirement it should run just fine. Sometimes though for example companies, may have a corporate policy to ensure the most recent PHP version is used at all times - that might see a need for an upgrade to a newer version i.e. a jump from vB3 to vB4 / vB4 to vB5 etc etc but it's important to review all the information available and only upgrade if it's required. Also don't forget that every time vBulletin releases a new version they do an announcement on the forum with information relevant to that specific version such as a specific PHP version requirement or similar, always search and reference past announcements for a quick and easy way to find php specifics on different versions.

[The Boss66]

I'd say best bet is to upgrade from VB4 to Xenforo 2