vB4 State of Affairs?

[DJ RRebel]

I posted this last night on vB.com and see now that it has been deleted (without even a PM)! Originally I was also going to ask a part 2 to my question regarding if IB actually followed through with their promises of better communication and transparency .. but I see it's just as much in the crapper as ever it seems .. anyhow .. here's my original post that pertains more to the quality of the product itself .. your feedback (even if short and sweet) would be appreciated. Thanks!


========== Deleted post from vB.com ==========

Just wondering what the opinion is of some of you long time members on what you feel about vB4?

Personally I was really frustrated with the way everything wasn't fully thought through when they added the social networking a couple of years ago. I stood up screaming at some of the obvious problems and sure enough most of the things I mentioned would be problems turned out to be problems (but at least 90% addressed from what I can tell as the problems were even more obvious in hindsight).

To say this left me rather frustrated was an understatement. I'm looking at starting a new site, but am seeing the same frustrating pattern as in the past. What really boggled my mind is that vB put a gold label on a product that clearly wasn't gold! From what I can tell from some of the discussions going on in various threads is that vB4 still isn't really a "gold" product.

I haven't installed or played/tested it yet .. So my question simply falls to some of you regular participants here who can give me an honest opinion .. Is vB 4.0.2 what you would consider Gold?

Meaning are there so many bugs, issues and things "they are working to improve" that each update is more of a major upgrade needing to revert 30+ templates among other things?

I see complaints of search not being very user friendly, as well as the asset manager being frustrating to new end users .. are these claims legit .. or are they just the usual complainers from those who complain about anything?

I did look around and ticker around here a couple of months ago when it went gold and was frustrated that as much as I like vB .. vB4 clearly did not merit the gold status it was given and was still Beta in my mind. I could spend a couple of days tinkering again .. but at this point I can't be bothered wasting the time and would like a simple paragraph or two from some of you summarizing your experience with vB4.0.2 and whether you feel it's a product worthy of Gold status and thus worthy of my time in developing a new site around it .. or do you feel it's not really "gold" and that I might be better off waiting a little longer for the product to stabilize a bit more?

Thanks

[Jaxel]

I find the programming behind VB4 is definately TOP NOTCH. However, as you implied in your post, implementation of many elements and styles are sorely lacking. In the past, I have yelled at Jelsoft for their poor implementation of social groups and user albums. Putting social groups into a "category cloud" is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard; when it comes to social groups, you would new groups to get discovered, but a "cloud" system made it much harder for "discovery". Discovery is what social networking is all about.

Then of course there were issues with the user albums; there was no easy way to browse the library of user albums. There were workarounds by editing some code, giving everyone the right to post ONE picture, and then setting the history timetable in the years. But now it appears that many of these options are gone, and now the user album system is in a worse state then before. Especially since there is no pagenav at the bottom of the user album page.

While I can clearly see that IB knows what they are doing with programming, they don't seem to know much about user activity, user interaction, social networking or discovery. Its clear they programmed the forums first, and worked on the interface as an afterthought. This kind of problem is the single reason why, as a programmer, I always work in the user interface first (using test data of course), and then build the programming behind it to suit the needs of my users.

Do I think VB4 merits a gold status? Actually? Yes... but I dont think it merits the cost of $280.

[championcycle]

i think the new 4.0 sucks. really hard to figure out once you get used to the old versions. the icons etc are a pain in the ass to change or find new ones you can use. i really hate it and honestly im going to have to pay someone now to uninstall it and move my database over to the 3.8 again. this things driving me bonkers.!

how do you make your own theme?!? I cant find anything anywhere, cant read up on it or anything. all the premade ones are horrible!

[Lynne]

Why do people not know how to find their own threads? http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...ate-of-Affairs

[vijayninel]

Originally Posted by Lynne

Why do people not know how to find their own threads? http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...ate-of-Affairs

LOL ... so the thread wasnt deleted after all.

[War.Frog]

Self-pwnt.

[borbole]

Originally Posted by vijayninel

LOL ... so the thread wasnt deleted after all.

I doubted it that vB could have deleted the OP''s thread. The vb run a very demotratic forum.

[vijayninel]

Originally Posted by borbole

I doubted it that vB could have deleted the OP''s thread. The vb run a very demotratic forum.

Perhaps but it really is difficult to find your own threads/posts in vb.com. Even I have had a tough time sometimes.

I wish they had links in the navbar like "My active threads/posts". I have that on my forum.

[borbole]

Originally Posted by vijayninel

Perhaps but it really is difficult to find your own threads/posts in vb.com. Even I have had a tough time sometimes.

I wish they had links in the navbar like "My active threads/posts". I have that on my forum.

You can find it very easy simply by going to your profile and checking the last posts/threads. But I agree, such a link to the navbar like smf has for ex, would be very useful.

[conradk]

I see that Jelsoft is eating their own dog food by using 4.0.3 in production. In my opinion, no dot-oh release is a production release. I guess they could have called it 4.0 Preview Release 3 and everyone would be happy.

Those running 4.0.x - I notice a redraw "pause" when you go between different areas. I read a bunch about performance and with my users, that is more important than a snazzy new UI. What version is vbulletin.org running as I don't see the same issues here?

I agree on the feature comments but from what I see much of this will get ironed out a few 4.0.x releases down the road.