Why 3.x forums have 5 times more visitors

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

Paul, cableforum looks heavily modified. Do you feel its currently worth the time and effort to upgrade it to vb4? You already have an article system, so the CMS may be superfluous.

Its planned to move to vb4 this year, its mainly dependant on me actually having the time.

We currently use textpattern for the news and that will get dumped in favour of the CMS. The biggest issue being copying over the existing items.

[FreshFroot]

The odd part is that vB and DragonByte Tech and a few other places have been stating that "stats" show MORE people are using vB4 than vB3.

As for hits... I am not sure.

[DragonByte Tech]

Originally Posted by FreshFroot

The odd part is that vB and DragonByte Tech and a few other places have been stating that "stats" show MORE people are using vB4 than vB3.

As for hits... I am not sure.

I can confirm that, our stats show 5 times more people actively using and improving their forums on v4 than on v3 based on our mods available for both.

The take up rate and sales figures for the mods show roughly 80% of sales are the vb4 versions - sample size of several hundred over all of the products.

Iain

[HondaStreetCult]

I just cant seem to get mine 3.x to upgrade

[Max Taxable]

Originally Posted by Adrian Schneider

I still use and recommend 3.8.x.

- Stable
- Less code, higher quality code-base, and simpler to build mods for
- Easier to skin (new stylevar system is a joke, IMO)
- Better interface (subjective, of course)
- I've already developed several years of mods for it that I use

It's obviously dated, but it doesn't take much work to make it look modern. We have a collection of plugins that we use to turn off several unused features, and make some areas simpler.

I won't upgrade for a long time. Perhaps 5.x, but I have no confidence in the team behind it.

^^^ This.

Plus, there is NO COMPELLING reason to "upgrade" to v4. It's not demonstrably better, it's not any better looking, it's not at all innovative, there's nothing to recommend it, IMO.

To answer the OP: Apples to oranges - there are I am sure, tens of thousands, at least, more v3 boards out there than there are v4 boards out there.

[imported_silkroad]

We love vB3 and have no plans to upgrade to vB4. In our users opinions, there was nothing our users wanted in vB4 that was not already well done in vB3.

In addition, we really don't like the "me too" look of vB4, and thought the original vB3 development line was more "pure" to our goals as forum.

Also, we have many custom plugins we like; and since there are no "great new features we want" from vB4, it is a waste of resource to upgrade our custom code.

Could go "on and on"; but we are happy with vB3 and even if IB stops supporting it completely, we will keep running it; as we have not seen anything out of the new development lines that are in our forum and users best interest. They don't want blogs and don't want to be on a copycat FB site, etc; our users want a solid forum and that is what we give them and continually try to improve upon.

We tried the new vB Mobile Suite and were very disappointed in the bugs and the very bad service from IB. We don't even use Mobile Suite although we paid for it (full price) and IB never even suggested a refund. Sad and bad customer support, really.

Call me old fashioned or nostalgic, but we liked the original Jelsoft vB development team, now long gone from vB. The "new kids" seem to want to "beat us up" on every issue, as if any customer issue becomes personal and their mode of operation is to attack the customer.

Naturally, customer service is important; and since we have very bad experiences with the "new kids"; we are perfectly happy to run and update our vB3 software which we paid for and works great for us. There is no reason for us to support a business which has turned a blind eye to our issues and has embarked on a development line which does not really improve the core forum concept; but instead tries to copy cat social media trends.

vB3 is great! Love live vB3!

Jelsoft, we miss you!

--------------- Added [DATE]1330581379[/DATE] at [TIME]1330581379[/TIME] ---------------

Originally Posted by DragonByte Tech

I can confirm that, our stats show 5 times more people actively using and improving their forums on v4 than on v3 based on our mods available for both.

The take up rate and sales figures for the mods show roughly 80% of sales are the vb4 versions - sample size of several hundred over all of the products.

Iain

That is "more than likely" because new users without vB3 experience will certainly buy vB4 instead of vB3.

More experienced forum admins will "more than likely" write more custom code and plugins.

In other words, these types of statistics showing screenshots of "who is looking in vB4 vs. vB3 forums" are misleading and mostly useless.

We run vB3 because we like it and we don't hang out in the "plugin forums" on this site because we can easily write our own mods that we need.

.. just trying to keep it real.... sorry to be so direct in my reply on this topic.

vB3 is great. Hands down.

[BSMedia]

I dont know how anyone could use vB 4.

Just go back through, and count the "Bug fixes" released in each version...and tell me how its "stable".

Example:
4.1.11 166 bug fixes
4.1.10 300+ bug fixes (apparently to many to count past 300)
etc etc etc

[Pandemikk]

Originally Posted by BSMedia

I dont know how anyone could use vB 4.

Just go back through, and count the "Bug fixes" released in each version...and tell me how its "stable".

Example:
4.1.11 166 bug fixes
4.1.10 300+ bug fixes (apparently to many to count past 300)
etc etc etc

There's bug fixes in 3.8.x versions as well. In fact, 3.8.7 still has unresolved bugs that will most likely not be addressed as the company has decided to dedicate its time and development to the 4.x series.

It's pretty unfair to compare bugs in a .8 vs. a .1 version. Of course the .8 will have less bugs and be more reliable! But if anyone remembers 3.1 you would know that 4.1 is doing far better than it did.

Personally, the vB 4 upgrade was easy- but then again I have a lot of technical experience with vBulletin. For non-technical forum admins I could definitely see how the upgrade would be a pass in the ass, as I don't think it is quite user friendly enough. Why? I think it should back-up the database and restore the database should the upgrade go wrong, and it should require the vB4 upgrade to be in a completely new directory so that if all goes wrong the user can simply revert back to vB3 and try again. But that's just asking for perfection, and, tbh, if your forum doesn't have a tech admin able to upgrade without assistance you need to find one if you plan on growing your forum at all.

How do I feel about vB4 now? I like it. I like the new layout, it's more profession and modern. Sure it took some time to get use to, but even Google and Facebook get negative feedback when they update their looks. People seem to be inherently against change, but overtime they get use to it and, for the most part, agree that the new look is better than the old.

Some features new in vB4 that I enjoy:

• CSS & Divs replace Tables and inline styles - It's 2012, it's time to use semantic mark up.
• New Editor - It's just way better. Better cross-browser compatibility, cleaner, etc.
• Updated template syntax - Simply love it. Else if, each, namespaced, etc.
• Stylevars - Allows for better modification custimization and it's more friendly than digging through the templates. It still needs work though, how are we suppose to know what each stylevar defines unless we dig through the templates?
• More AJAX functionality - There's still needs to be more though. I can't wait until they AJAX pagination (for threads at least).

Those just stick out to me atm. But there's little things scattered around that I like, such as quoting in the quick reply instead of a new reply and buttons using HTML and CSS instead of images.

[AuroraStorm]

I"m still on 3.7.3 and was going to start upgrading this year, but I've lost so many members to Facebook that I'm holding back to see what will happen. I'm going to hold on for another year but by 2014 and my membership percentage is under 10%, I'll shut down. It's simply not worth the cost to sustain a dead board...I've even had to shut down new registrations because the fast-adapting spam bots are damn near out of control...

DANG YOU FACEBOOK!! DANG YOU!!

But if I had to be truthful about it, message boards only have so long of a shelf life...boards that are 10 years and older are almost rare and hard to find. I knew that going into it and I've been up for 6 years and I'm surprised that I had that long of a run...

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by AuroraStorm

I"m still on 3.7.3 and was going to start upgrading this year, but I've lost so many members to Facebook that I'm holding back to see what will happen. I'm going to hold on for another year but by 2014 and my membership percentage is under 10%, I'll shut down. It's simply not worth the cost to sustain a dead board...I've even had to shut down new registrations because the fast-adapting spam bots are damn near out of control...

DANG YOU FACEBOOK!! DANG YOU!!

But if I had to be truthful about it, message boards only have so long of a shelf life...boards that are 10 years and older are almost rare and hard to find. I knew that going into it and I've been up for 6 years and I'm surprised that I had that long of a run...

What's your forum about?