Was going to use vB, then saw it was nearly dead...

I agree that VB5 may not be suitable for people to convert to if they have a big board, and I tend to take that expression with a pinch of salt, simply because a board has been going a long time, it's posts per day that qualify a board as big, not the number of members no longer posting.

I'm not sure where you get the feeling that it's not powerful, perhaps not being a coder I misunderstand what you are trying to say, As an admin you are able to create any number of pages you want, using the php and HTML modules, surely thats as flexible and as powerful as any platform, if it's not I need the difference explained to me.
As Admin you can also use HTML in articles, if you so wish, giving you a lot more control.

The HTML used in VB5 is HTML5 so that is better for SEO, you can for example use multiple <h1> tags, use of the <article> tag allows you to talk about different stuff on the same page, that are similar, under more headings :

http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/artic...ple-h1-tags-in-the-html5-era--webdesign-16824

That has to be a plus.

As previously said, I find all the talk about big boards a bit nauseating, it's been discussed ad infinitum that forums are losing popularity, so they are becoming a niche in themselves, the amount of people using and joining forums is falling, so the reality is does a platform need to be able to cope with 2000 members online at any one time, form what I can gather a lot of that is down to the server anyway, most forums I visit the biggest number of visitors are guests, which 99.9% of the time will be bots. Even the most popular soccer forum I know rarely has more than 50 members on at one time.

Why is not being Safari compatible a show stopper? I don't see the logic, if only one country in the world drove on the left, would car manufacturers build cars for it ? I'd bet that only one or two would.

 

It's not exactly "walking in front of a car though is it ?
Using VB5 is not a life threatening exercise, like jay walking !

Besides using it, I am learning, my HTML has improved since testing/playing with it, it is after all a test forum for my benefit, if I decide to launch it, all the fixed stuff is saved as HTML pages, so that can be moved to VB4.
If I were to launch this as a real forum it wouldn't be until mid August when the season gets going again, so I have until the end of July to make the real decision, but I will make it based on my experiences, not what other people are telling me.

 

You've already hinted at the answer to that in you previous paragraph. What is the key factor to running a successful forum? It's member activity. It's therefore imperative that you try and cater for as many browser types as possible.

 

Well vB5 works on Safari on iOS devices. I use it all the time. Not sure about MACs though. Safari for Windows is obsolete and therefore unsupported.

 

I can tell you with absolute certainly that Safari on any device running iOS 7.1 is not compatible with vBulletin version 5.1.2 Alpha 5 and as far as I'm aware, they are the latest versions of the software in question.

Here's a simple test, try editing your content.

 

I don't see how it is necessarily VBs fault though.

for example.....I prefer IE 11 as it works perfectly when I need to snap stuff in with windows 8 except it doesn't work very well.
I can post on it except I have to use the BB Code editor to quote, I can't change text color or easily insert images.

I don't blame ipb as It seems to work fine in chrome(ew lol), Firefox and others.....and I assume this is the same with IPB.

.it is imperative to try and cater to all browser types, this is true. But it is also BEST to make sure the largest browser works perfectly(which is IE or if stats are accurate, unfortunately Chrome). So I don't necessarily blame VB or IPB for browser issues. My question is it truly VB or is there something in IOS 7 that may be the issue? Does/Did it work in previous IOS versions.

 

Editing and line breaks has been a known bug since 5.0.0. It's not actually related to safari, it's all mobile devices.
It doesn't mean it's not compatible, and what's more it's fixed in 5.1.3.

 

@Soren - As you can see, you started a heated debate.

You are very correct about your impression of the vB community. It isn't dead. It was killed. And the reasons for the killing are still there, waiting to happen again. If you don't want those reasons to have any effect on your future project, then avoid vBulletin, until, maybe, you see the community coming back.

On the vB5 mod front you mentioned. vB5 started out with a few mod developers wanting to make mods and/or adapt their older one's to vB5. The reason for them leaving are not because bug fixes ruined their mods. That is part of a modder's life. The reasons, IMHO, are more likely the frustration of trying to make mods in general for vB5. There is no decent documentation about how the APIs work and the code itself is poorly written, which makes extensibility complicated. And the biggest reason for modders not taking on vB5 mods is vB5 is a venerable flop. Who would want to support a flop?

So, you are now most likely looking at IPB, XenForo or Burning Board. All have their advantages and disadvantages. From my experience, they are all run by companies, who care for their customer community. That, as the basis, is a good start. If you have time, try and wait for IPB4, as you might miss an opportunity. It does look promising.

One point to make, although XenForo has built in some capabilities to extend the core "thread" as a content type (like the page content type), it is still "just a forum". If you are looking for a wider spread of applications under one hood, then IPB and BB have more choices.

Scott

 

There's actually a staff reply to a post I made on vbulletin.com stating that vB5 isn't Safari compatible. Editing and line breaks are not the only issue e.g. pinch & zoom should have a admin/stylevar toggle if it's to be disabled, which it is. At least these problems are slowly being fixed I guess but it's coming too late in the day for most people.

It's hard to say with any real authority if it's an issue with the CKEditor or vBulletin's implementation of it. As Mark has said it's fixed in a later version so I'd suggest it was a problem with vBulletin's code.

 

Safari - I'm sure that reply must be relating to Safari on Windows. Even then it mostly works, it's just that the version of WebKit is way too old now.

Generally if it works in Chrome it ought to work in Safari. Maybe it's just not on the official list of 'supported browsers' or something, but on iOS devices that wouldn't work.

CKEditor - it's a bit of both. The fix to the code required the CKEditor update. If you search CKE's forums you'll find a fair few people reported the same issue at the time. I'll be glad to see the back of that bug, 5.1.3 looks to have a fair few decent fixes in it.

 

I am a former VB 3 admin and SMF admin, and a current MyBB admin. As in outsider looking in, and having looked into this a little, the platforms to look at are Invision Power Services, Woltlab Burning Board, and Xenforo. That is assuming you want commercial software. You can visit their sales sites, see what the prices are, and see what they can do without mods. The other part of the equation are reliability, support, and outside resources. I can't answer this, but I'm sure others can.