1 Yr Later: Is vB4 Better than vB 3.8?

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by Alfa1

What it does have is 1000+ bugs that I surely do not need.

I love the way people band around this inaccurate figure.

[belowthebelt]

Nope, not here either.... to many good mods should be standard with the base software.

you pay an arm and a leg for it, it should be better equip to handle post management, it simply dose not stack up to v3.x

[Alfa1]

Originally Posted by Paul M

I love the way people band around this inaccurate figure.

Indeed. The real figure is higher, but I excluded anything not 100% confirmed when defining that number of 1064 bugs. As stated it doesnt include design flaws.

But I am glad you like the banding around.

Paul, have you found a good reason to update to vb4? Something substantial that vb3 doesnt have, not counting the fact that its the newest.

[DNN]

I would say VB4 is da bomb diggity! =)

[combs]

I dunno, I like being on the latest stable version and recently upgraded. One thing I constantly hate is having to ask if a certain mod will work on an updated version that just goes from say 4.0.7 to 4.0.8. I am currently stuck because I see a lot of the mods I want to use don't work on 4.1.3, so why would I upgrade? What do they have to change so much that makes it not work.

The 2 biggest improvements in VB4 are both terrible.

1. The side blocks are super ugly. I don't see why anybody would use them. They are big bulky, the text is big and ugly and the border around it is as well. You should be able to customize them much easier.

2. The homepage CMS crap. The stuff is way too complicated to figute out between the categories and sections and all of that. I remember I spent two days trying to figure the crap out. It needs to be simplified. It needs to look better. You should be able to build skins for it like wordpress etc.

To be, most VB4 forums all look the same. It's got to be hard to really customize it. I model most of my skins after VB3 style. I wish I could upgrade to 4.1.3 so I can use the skin converter, but again i'd lose a lot of mods.

The forum support is pretty terrible as well. I post simple things I need a little help with and rarely ever get a response.

The worst part is I paid what $200 for an owned license of VB3...and then the discount I get to upgrade to VB is instead of paying $190....I pay $175?? WTF is that.

If the forum I bought wasn't using VB, no way I would have used it again. Vbulletin will probably be close to extinct in the next few years because of the way they screwed over their long time customers to make a quick buck. IPB is superior.

[Joey805]

They should just offer VB4 as another product but continue to support VB 3.8x just for security fixes and such. I would be happy to keep paying for it but don't force us to upgrade to a product that doesn't suit alot of our needs. This is rather a brutal thing to do.

[RWerksman]

After running VB4 on multiple forums for the last year, I can honestly say that I wish I wouldn't have upgraded. There is nothing in VB4, with the exception of a little bit slicker UI, that warrants upgrading. In fact, performance on every single one of my forums has slowed, and I've needed to purchase additional hardware to keep it to a somewhat acceptable level. (which isn't saying much)

After blowing over $1,000 on licenses, I wish I would have either stuck with 3.8 or evaluated other alternatives more heavily. As it sits, I feel like we're just treading water and we're locked in long term after having invested so much - kinda like having a child.

[Alfa1]

I find myself checking out the state of vbulletins competition every day to see how they progress. I hope to see more alternatives to vb and to see the current alternatives progress to a point where migration is possible.

Or maybe vbulletin will surprise me and finally develop into a state that we can all be happy with. But I do not see that happening anytime soon. There are no signs of it. Realistically we should be happy if IB fixes the mess that was created with the vb4.0.0 release. But that would not satisfy my sites needs.

[Boofo]

I'm too old to start learning another board software's coding style, so I'm struck with vb 4 for the duration.

[Alfa1]

Originally Posted by Boofo

I'm too old to start learning another board software's coding style, so I'm struck with vb 4 for the duration.

That is a serious consideration for me as well. I would much rather keep using vbulletin after all the time, energy and money invested in vbulletin. Learning a new system would be like throwing away everything I have learned about vb. But after 4 years of waiting, it seems that vbulletin 4 is not going anywhere near fantastic, within the foreseeable future.

Its interesting to see that various forum software that was previously incomparable to vb is now approaching vbulletin 3 in style and functionality.
And IPB 3.2 looks very promising.
XenForo has a long way to go, but the addon community is already impressive. The lawsuit seems to have done XF a lot of good in that respect.
Joe Ward's Launch.Forum seems an interesting and promising startup.