Is Vbulletin 4 getting any better?

I am running vb 3.8 right now.

I bought a vb4 license long time ago, but was unwilling to upgrade until it becomes stable and all of the bugs are fixed.

I saw several new releases, in which many bugs were fixed. However, some people say that with those "fixes" more bugs were introduced. They say that it is not getting any better.

What is your opinion? Is vb 4 getting better? Is it stable now?
Is it worth to upgrade, or should I simply forget about it and stay on 3.8?

 

i upgraded from 3.8 to 4.0.2....and then went back to 3.8...lol...

 

Depends on your needs. Even if v4 is working perfectly, the plan is to keep changing the way it interfaces with skins, products, and plugins at least until v4.1 comes out "The intention is to have vB 4.1 out in the latter half of 2010"

So even if the software is perfect with every release, to me, it will not be stable. Others may have a differing opinion.

In addition they had 4 security patches for v4 last week.

 

Wow! Poor you.

This doesn't sound good at all.

I prefer stable and working forum software.
I am satisfied with 3.8 and it looks like I will not be upgrading, ever.

 

I was expecting to update my forums sometime around May, 2010 - that was based on the scheduled updates to VB 4.

Now that they are going to be changing even more stuff, it might be more like July, August or September before I will update my forums. Which really BITES, because I want the article system and want my members to have their own blogs.

 

There are over 2.500 bugs in vb 4.0.2. Thats a lot more than a month ago. I guess that is because many admins are trying vb4 out and therefore finding bugs faster than IB can fix them. Out of the 2.500 bugs, 850 bugs are marked fixed, but are pending. 250 bugs will be fixed with the next release.

 

To me, vB 4 is just a flop overall. Regardless of whether there are no bugs, five bugs, or five hundred bugs, it's just so very unappealing. There's really nothing great about it, to be honest. I decided long ago that there isn't any point in wasting energy in considering the implementation and use of vB 4; I'm just going to wait until vB 5 and see what it brings to the table.

 

IMO... it's garbage.

 

Well being I paid the money for the licence I figure I would try it... I'm on the fence about it really... Bugs and problems on one side and the fact the VB 3.8.x is coming to EOL... Being i've always want a Vbulletin site well now I got one but exactly pleased either... But now the members bought I'm must push forward...

 

Call me a glass is 1/2 full kind of person but I think some things are progressing on the 4.0 front. Granted, my site is still at 3.8 and will be for quite some time as there are just to many mods the members like to toss them just for the sake of moving to the latest vB version.

Am I happy I spent 130 bucks only to sit and wait, not really, but I do not have the all encompassing feeling of dread I one had about 4.0.

 

I said it before 4.0 was released, and I'll keep saying it
vb4 won't be "gold" (publicly stable) until at least 4.1, probably later.

That said, I did switch one (under construction) site to vb4, and found that they have a pretty major flaw in their system. Running adbrite code (and probably other forms of code as well) in ads causes the system to just not work. YPN seems to work fine, so google probably would, but google's no friend to publishers.

This is the only major flaw I've seen so far, but I'm sure there's quite a few others, as I haven't done a ton of in depth work on the site I've got 4.0 running on.

 

I've found that my users were really happy with a "complete" 3.8.5 product that simply works. vB 4 has a lot of glitches. Templating is a nightmare and we found out quickly that all the designers were worked with did not plan to do any vB 4 template conversions until vB working out significant flaws in their new templating engine. That could be many months away.

It's your call. If you are willing to wait to develop your site, which could be a long way, then perhaps it's a thought. otherwise, an investment in 3.8.5 without an upgrade might not be a bad thing. I think other publishing engines are going to be better than the suite part of VB for a long time - a lot of catch up. It's not worth it for my sites. Everyone needs to make their own call.

 

Vb4.0.3 is very good. I use it on my boards. so smooth, no glitches, no bugs, and Easy StyleVars Embedded System with PDF file to fully explain it in the vbulletin Manual. Many Tabs, Better Looking than that of 3.8.x, however 3.8.x is a great version indeed especially the last 2 releases. 3.8.4 and 3.8.5.

The only problem that is found in vb4.0.3 is the missing of Profile Customization for Users, So they use the default Profile Page Style (i.e:- No Profile Styling) but I do not think that this is a big deal..

Hope that my reply interested you

 

I 'upgraded' from vb3.8 to vb4.0.3 just under a month ago and until the last few days have regretted the decision big time.

My host had suddenly got hosting problems again just after I upgraded so I wasn't sure the dramatic speed decrease was them or vb4 and it turned out to be a right headache working it out and getting the hosting company to take my concerns seriously.

Anyway, short of it is the hosting seems to be better and vb4 was still running like a dog compared to vb3 until I found the marvellous life saving post from Digitalpoint regarding optimizing vb4 and it worked a treat to the point where there is still a noticeable difference in speed but nothing that would put users off.

I'm not a fanboy of vbulletin don't get me wrong but the last month I get the feeling they are as much as putting their hands up and saying we messed up, as much as a corporation can do and they're now listening to the community again to a small degree.

My advice is if you don't need to upgrade (ie you don't need a cms etc) then don't until the next release 4.0.4 and see what people like myself say.

And if you do upgrade find that post by digital point as it really does help speed up the forum AND the cms!

 

We've recently upgraded to VB4.0.3 on our forums, it has overall been well recieved, but I had been testing it since the beta stages and was aware what issue we were going to face and what needed to be done to speed things up.

We only run the forums as we have no real need for the suite so it would have been a waste of money for us at the time.

We haven't implemented any of Digitalpoints solutions as yet, at the moment the main one I will be using is the groups page one as that take noticeably longer to load up than the other pages. As for speed over vb3.8.5 to me the pages load exactly the same speeds as they did before, we did have a few complaints about speed when we first went live with it, but after some minor tweaks and optimisations it is now almost the same.

 

Links to these "life saving posts" please...

 

It is in the licensed customer feed back forum, only viewable by vb owners. "Have any big board owners upgraded yet?", something like that. I have not looked at their forums for weeks.

 

I'm a licensed vb owner...
I have seen that thread. Didn't see any tips last time I looked...
I did find this thread tonight... vBulletin Community Forum which has a link to here Articles - vBulletin 4 Optimization , I guess I will try these out...

The thread you are referring to is here... vBulletin Community Forum

 

Maybe around the time this post was made? I assume when he makes a post that sounds completely foreign to me, it was an important post.
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/show...upgraded-yet&p=1948058&viewfull=1#post1948058

Sounds like you found what you need though.

 

I'm with you on that. that pos is almost out of my understanding. But, judging on what I read tonight, his "fix" will be in vB 4.0.4