Opinions on Upgrading from vB4 to vB5

[In Omnibus]

Originally Posted by Hikarin

I personally am happy with vB4.

But the team over at vB are telling me that upgrading is the best option now that vB4 has reached end of life, and that since PHP versions will not be able to be increased, that it will create security issues.
I was fine, but they have me second-guessing myself. =x

I personally prefer the look of vB4. But if security really will become an issue....

What's really becoming an issue is privacy laws. vBulletin 4 is already way behind the curve regarding EU Privacy laws and US Privacy Shield laws. US Privacy laws are about to take a major turn toward resembling EU GDPR regulations.

For a number of sites this won't matter but for any site that advertises, markets, conducts research, sells, or solicits it's going to be a huge compliance issue.

The modifications currently available for vBulletin 4 (and the one available for vBulletin 5) don't even come close to meeting the legal requirements.

As Dave said there will always be someone willing to figure out how to make the software work so long as it can be figured out. I will say that PHP 7.1 is going to be deprecated by year's end and SQL 8.0 is going to be the industry standard next year. Those are going to make it a lot harder for anyone not technically knowledgeable to continue to operate vBulletin 4 or any other software that won't run on those versions.

I generally function by the axiom, "If it isn't broken don't fix it."

But if you know ahead of time it's going to be broken over and over and over ...