Reasons for choosing 3.x over 4.x?

[ShaunR]

So i just got a vbulletin license and i'm going to convert over my existing phpbb forum. I have the ability to download both 3.8.x and 4.x and although i really want to install 4.x because it's the latest version i figured i would ask the community about it first. I would like to hear some of your reasoning as to why i should install 3.8 and stock with the 3.x tree over going to the new 4.x versions.

My site will be a online community with articles, blogs, a store, etc. btw, I didnt purchase the suite version so no need to compare those features.

[Jazzyname]

you may want to search and read for both versions at these forums to formulate your ideas on what your personal needs are.

[borbole]

If I were you I would install both foums and have a look around and see which one I would like best. At least that is the best way in my opinion.

[Zachery]

I would advise you take the time to actually test both versions and make your own decision.

[ShaunR]

I'm not really looking for anybody to make a decision for me. What i'm looking for is responces from guys who have upgraded to 4.x and realized "this thing sucks", or "it's buggy", or "oh i didnt realize this wouldnt work with that", etc... Looking for the hidden stuff i might find. Obviously not everybodys needs are the same, but there may be some big reasons why some would choose 3.x over 4...

[Loco.M]

3.8 works for what I need, plus a few of the mods I like aren't ported to 4.0 yet

[Zachery]

Some of the people i work with are loving vb4, my personal sites are running 4.0. Though I'm sure I am a bit baised

[borbole]

I used vb 3 a couple of times to compare it with vb 4 while deciding which version to choose and vb 4 came winner on all accounts. So I decided to use that and so far I am loving it.

[sarahk]

I'd go straight to v4 because the upgrade from 3->4 will involve testing, finding new plugins etc. Why do all that if you don't need to? I'd rather wait for the interesting plugins to be ported (or do it myself).

I moderate at a vB4 forum and the modcp appears to be unchanged which is a pity because there were some enhancements I'd hoped would be made.
Moderating on the front end is harder and we've found vB's search to be unreliable. However all the things I don't like about vB4 are bugs and will be resolved. Your regular user won't notice them.

[Reeve of Shinra]

I upgraded one forum to vb4, in the process of upgrading a second, and installed a fresh copy on a third.

If I had to choose right now what to use for a new site -- it wouldn't be any flavor of vbulletin. The 3 branch is almost done with and the 4 series has a ton of idiosyncracies. Off-topic highlighted a few good examples in a recent post. I guess one could over look that but the search is broken, the cms uses far too many queries to achieve the same results as a free addon (vbadvanced) and every point release introduces bugs fixed in the last version.

But like the rest of us, you are stuck with a licence that you paid for so your decision becomes:

go with vb3 which is stable and redo everything later on when the 3 series is end of lifed or go with 4 and do your best to fight your way tooth and nail through the challenges that await you.

[ShaunR]

One of the reasons i want to go with v4 also would be that i dont want to customize ver 3 and get my community all up and running on v3 and then be forced to go and redue everything with version 4. But, i cant help but notice that alot of the large sites out there running vbulletin seam to be sticking with version 3. Now that's probably just because of a lazy admin and the whole "dont fix it if it aint broke" thing but it still had me wondering.

As for not using vbulletin, my forum now uses phpbb which is going to require a import. What would you recommend over vbulletin, just curious... VB seams to be the most user friendly, eye attracking forum for mom, pop, and the adverage joe's out there. Even prefure the vb interface over any phpbb forum i've been on.

As of right now, i'm really leaning tword vb4.

Did sombody say the search functions in vb4 are broken? if so thats a huge problem.....

[sarahk]

we've found vB's search to be unreliable.

the search is broken

Did sombody say the search functions in vb4 are broken? if so thats a huge problem.....

It sure is. However I'm confident it's going to get fixed!

And when I find other forums using other software I normally come away thinking how much better vB is.

[Reeve of Shinra]

I imported 429k posts and after 2 days of rebuilding the search index (dedicated server, core2duo), I basically gave up on it. Coincidentally my hdd crashed immediately following my attempt to give up and I spent the next two days restoring my sites. I don't like coincidences like that and digitalpoint has made extensive notes regarding the issues with rebuilding the index. So search is deffinitely an area of improvement.

[ShaunR]

I'm in the hosting industry and from what you just explained it sounds to my like the harddrive was on the outs when you got the server... And if it was on it's way out it will greatly kill performance. Search indexing my phpbb forum that has 2.4M posts it took a few days. That was a full-text index i beleive, the mysql index was alot faster to build.

[Zachery]

I imported 429k posts and after 2 days of rebuilding the search index (dedicated server, core2duo), I basically gave up on it. Coincidentally my hdd crashed immediately following my attempt to give up and I spent the next two days restoring my sites. I don't like coincidences like that and digitalpoint has made extensive notes regarding the issues with rebuilding the index. So search is deffinitely an area of improvement.

I'd really like to know why some peoples reindex is taking so long. I did a 750k forum's post reindex the other day and it took a grand total of 30-40 min.

Though the MySQL drive on this server is dedicated to MySQL only and running on SA-SCSI.