Convince me to move to VB5!

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  • Zackw
    Senior Member
    • Aug 2010
    • 150
    • 4.0.x

    [Forum] Convince me to move to VB5!

    After VB5 has been out for what, like 2 years now? We avoided upgrading until initial bugs and features were squared away. I'm thinking 5 is pretty stable now eh?

    With the recent breaking of Facebook connector, and endless spammers getting in to our site despite Spam-O-Matic, StopForumSpam, and Akismet, I'm hunting for a replacement forum.

    The VB stopped any work on VB4 except the most egregious security bugs. But I can't help thinking there will be some exploit (if not already) that is helping sneak spam into the forum. We can hardly manage it any more.

    We use a heavily modified custom, purchased 3rd party theme for our VB4. One of the things that held me back from VB5 is thinking we'd be stuck in pretty basic theme-editing capabilities. Branding is important for us and I don't want too many limitations as far as design.

    We have not used the CMS part of VB4 so that is not a huge concern.

    We HAVE used a lot of the advanced configurations of VB4, the forum-level and user-group level permissions to change who can do what and what forums are hidden and to whom. We use the calendar, and user-created groups. We use the reputation and reporting system for moderators to keep and eye on things.

    But there are also other things that are broken. The WYSIWYG editor has trouble, button icons missing, sometimes people can't even enter a new line, we have to switch to advanced or simple editor etc. I'm tired of stupid bugs like this.

    There has always been a kind of limitation on the entire search system, with what it's able to index and search. We have a million and a half posts with over a hundred thousand threads and I never did try to move us to any alternate searching/indexing tools. So I also want very robust searching, fast indexing, etc.

    I want the mobile responsive support, since users don't like Tapatalk and their popup banner on every page load.

    So basically, I'm wondering, if I move to VB5, what could potentially be missing that VB4 has? Can we do all the same advanced permissions and such? Will we be able to fully migrate all users/forums/threads/posts/attachments/calendar/gallery/permissions/statistics/etc etc etc? Can we even migrate passwords so people will be able to immediately log in to the new forum?

    Do we have complete control over the theme? Are there many 3rd party theme creators yet? Are there full-width themes available?

    Is anything in VB5 completely buggy still or broken?

    How is the API, for building my own plugins? Is that robust?

    I'm just wondering in a general sense, if it's worth upgrading. Did anybody else on VB4 in here do it and find it was amazing?
  • man1c
    Senior Member
    • Apr 2005
    • 134
    • 3.8.x

    #2
    You should start by signing up for a trial and testing it out for yourself - http://www.vbulletin.com/en/vb5-trial/

    Then check vbulletin.org to see if the addons you currently have with your vb4 site have been remade for vb5 (not many have).

    Comment

    • Zackw
      Senior Member
      • Aug 2010
      • 150
      • 4.0.x

      #3
      I am very busy. Even a trial probably wouldn't give me enough time to attempt a full migration and look for issues. All we can do is poke around the vanilla product and try to do feature-by-feature comparisons.

      I guess I'm asking, for as long as VB5 has been out now, I know a ton of VB4 users were reticent to change and there were bugs and lack of features. I'm wondering after all these years if VB5 is a good strong product yet, ready for VB4 migrations.

      Comment

      • chriske
        Senior Member
        • Oct 2008
        • 466
        • 5.6.3

        #4
        Recently upgraded to vb5.
        Here are some of my opinions about it.

        - The styling is easy,
        - The sitebuilder is good, but to slow when editing.
        - I like the ease of adding new navigation items
        - I like the add module, but it could be improved by letting the same ad instance be used on multiple templates.
        - There are a lot of new phrases, so if you use a different language there is quite some work in it!
        - I like the comment function and the like function.
        - Private message system is better.

        What is missing:
        - My topics button.
        - A short url structure. (https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/sear...ssage%22%5D%7D)
        Is not a very clean link for new topics (this is already requested in Jira btw)
        - Not much add-ons on vb.org. This used to be way better in vb4.
        Even though there are quite some helpful people around here, I used to have a better feeling about the vbulletin community a few years ago.

        What is wrong with vb5:
        - 3 ways to upload attachments, via share photos, upload attachments and in the editor (image button)
        This drives my members nuts. Because they want to drag thumbnails uploaded via Share Photos to the text editor en edit them.
        What happens is they drag a thumbnail and resize it and the image quality sucks. A design flaw I.M.O.
        There should be one way to upload attachments, and from there let the user decide how to process the images etc,,

        My advice: take your time to test it, if you don't have the time don't do it. It has been a lot of work for me to get my vb5 forum to where I am satisfied enough.
        Last edited by chriske; Wed 1 Feb '17, 1:18pm. Reason: Found the my recent posts button
        Please vote for:
        - Lightbox for all uploads
        - Attachment permissions for unregistered users

        Comment

        • Paul M
          Former Lead Developer
          vB.Com & vB.Org
          • Sep 2004
          • 9886

          #5
          No one is here to convince you to move to vB5 - in fact that would be terrible reason to do so.

          You should only ever upgrade if you have a very good reason for doing so.

          If your current site is running well, then why are you wanting to disrupt it with a major change ?
          Baby, I was born this way

          Comment

          • Zackw
            Senior Member
            • Aug 2010
            • 150
            • 4.0.x

            #6
            Originally posted by Paul M
            No one is here to convince you to move to vB5 - in fact that would be terrible reason to do so.

            You should only ever upgrade if you have a very good reason for doing so.

            If your current site is running well, then why are you wanting to disrupt it with a major change ?
            Quite simply, it seems vbulletin is all but given up on VB4 except for maybe serious security bugs. This isn't good enough. I mean maybe I can get a little more time out of it, but when plugins stop getting updated, no more features being fixed/added, things that need to be fixed just won't any more, etc.

            We've dealt with a huge influx of spammers and even though Spam-O-Matic seems to be working, it's hard to tell if maybe there is some exploit I don't know about and nobody is researching or fixing. Nobody is fixing the mass of IE bugs. Nobody is fixing the WYSIWYG. Nobody is fixing or improving anything at this point.

            Plus there are known problems trying to do fulltext search with the default MySQL update, after about a million rows. I know there are some plugins and DB things that can be done but I'm afraid that our searching/indexing is fragile.

            There are lots of reasons to want to upgrade our forum, it's just that I don't know if VB5 is ready for a direct switch without losing features we use.

            This may not be the place to discuss but the forum Discourse is becoming very popular too and that's on my radar as well. I really just need a modern experience with good mobile support, themeing, security, and smooth experience. I don't feel I'm getting any of that on VB4 any more.

            Comment

            • Paul M
              Former Lead Developer
              vB.Com & vB.Org
              • Sep 2004
              • 9886

              #7
              Given up on vB4 ?
              Either you are just saying things you have no idea about, or you are seriously not paying attention.
              There are two versions in various stages of RC or Beta, a huge amount of time has been spent on vB4 updates for PHP 7 & IPv6, plus many other minor fixes.

              IE bugs ?
              IE is a dead browser walking, I doubt anyone is fixing many IE bugs now.

              What "known" problems with search ?
              vb.com had almost 2.5 million rows before it updgraded to vB5, and that was on what is now an old version of mysql. Search worked just fine.

              I hope you research your alternatives a lot better than you did vB4's status.

              Baby, I was born this way

              Comment

              • Zackw
                Senior Member
                • Aug 2010
                • 150
                • 4.0.x

                #8
                Originally posted by Paul M
                Given up on vB4 ?
                Either you are just saying things you have no idea about, or you are seriously not paying attention.
                There are two versions in various stages of RC or Beta, a huge amount of time has been spent on vB4 updates for PHP 7 & IPv6, plus many other minor fixes.

                IE bugs ?
                IE is a dead browser walking, I doubt anyone is fixing many IE bugs now.

                What "known" problems with search ?
                vb.com had almost 2.5 million rows before it updgraded to vB5, and that was on what is now an old version of mysql. Search worked just fine.

                I hope you research your alternatives a lot better than you did vB4's status.
                All I ever hear from support when people report VB4 issues is "well no guarantee that will ever be fixed" and "maybe go find someone to edit the core" and "maybe someone else will make a plugin" and "we have no plans for supporting that". And then of course the latest with the Facebook connector dying, "maybe you can go dig in the core and update the code for the new protocols, we have no plans to fix that".

                Maybe you are the one out of touch? All I've seen for the past year or two is how VB4 is not getting anything done to it, and most efforts are going to VB5, and we should all go find programmers on vb.org to hack things up for fixes we want.

                If that is not what's really going on, then you guys are not only the worst salesman, but the worst support as well, with the worst branding! The entire impression I've got from VB support for the last year+ is that VB4 is all but abandoned. 4.2.3 was released a year and a half ago and I've only see a few security patches since then. EVERY email I get from the vb company newsletter is about VB5.

                And yes, we've been told for ages that the search and indexing capabilities of VB and MySQL fulltext are limited and so we should be moving to Sphynx. Just like Mark and everybody else would suggest to people with search issues.

                And how many times has this graphic been shared? https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/file...3&d=1372119352

                And another quote from Mark "You might as well do this right now. Search isn't going to change in 4.1.5. the greater likelihood is, it will not be until after vB5. Now that the editor is done, what you see with vB4 is pretty much what you're going to get"

                Hence, why would customers like me ever get the impression VB4 is being abandoned?

                Look, I'm not trying to be a punk, if I'm wrong, then this is good, I'm happy to hear there is still some work on VB4 even if it's slow. But you are still terrible salesman. It's like you're saying "hey, VB4 seems to still work, so meh, ignore VB5, it doesn't have anything to offer.". That's what I got from this thread so far.

                If anything, you should be praising how amazing VB5 is compared to VB4 and all it's new awesomeness and that we're highly encouraged to upgrade, etc etc!

                Comment

                • Paul M
                  Former Lead Developer
                  vB.Com & vB.Org
                  • Sep 2004
                  • 9886

                  #9
                  I am not a salesman, nor have I ever said otherwise.
                  You can believe what you will, do as you wish. Your choice.
                  Baby, I was born this way

                  Comment

                  • Mark.B
                    vBulletin Support
                    • Feb 2004
                    • 24286
                    • 6.0.X

                    #10
                    vB4 isn't abandoned, as referenced by the two current development releases 4.24 and 4.2.5.
                    However, it isn't going to get any major changes or new features, because it is simply not the current product line. There are only enough resources to focus in one product line, and that is obviously going to be vB5.

                    Facebook is just ludicrous, they move the goalposts every couple of months and it simply takes too much time to try and keep up with it all. We just about manage it in vB5. If it was up to me I'd drop Facebook entirely, it doesn't bond well with forums and forum owners generally only use it because they see Facebook as taking all their traffic and think allowing people to register with their Facebook accounts will change that. It won't. Probably best for another thread though.

                    MySQL fulltext search is always going to have limitations, on any platform. The basic search built into both vB4 and vB5 is adequate for small to medium sites but if you want better you need Sphinx. Nothing anyone can do about that.
                    MARK.B
                    vBulletin Support
                    ------------
                    My Unofficial vBulletin 6.0.0 Demo: https://www.talknewsuk.com
                    My Unofficial vBulletin Cloud Demo: https://www.adminammo.com

                    Comment

                    • Zackw
                      Senior Member
                      • Aug 2010
                      • 150
                      • 4.0.x

                      #11
                      Thanks Mark, I understand the points made.

                      I'm just curious why it seems like nobody wants to come in here and promote VB5? This sends the impression that either nobody thinks VB5 is actually good enough or worthy to promote, or they think it has nothing better to offer over and above VB4.
                      Paul is being nice and saying it's all up to me, well of course it's up to me, but in order to make an informed choice, someone still needs to be a salesman and tell me the benefits of upgrading and why I might want to.

                      Comment

                      • Wayne Luke
                        vBulletin Technical Support Lead
                        • Aug 2000
                        • 73981

                        #12
                        The bonuses of vBulletin 5 are:
                        • Site Builder - Build and customize pages across your site. A number of content modules are provided so you can achieve unique content delivery.
                        • Responsive - All themes in vBulletin 5 will work across a variety of devices and screen sizes including phones, tablets, and PCs.
                        • Themes - Multiple themes are provided. We make sure they are up to date and work properly between versions. As your site has a custom style currently, this may not be a benefit.
                        • Fully CSS Driven Layout - You can customize pretty much everything without ever touching the default templates.

                        Moving to vBulletin 5 is more of a conversion than an upgrade. The database and file structures are completely different. During the process, you will lose your custom style as well as any add-on products. You won't be able to go back. The way things work is different and there is a learning curve. So it isn't as simple as uploading files and running the upgrade script then being online.

                        However, I would say that the upgrade is worth it just for the mobile support. You won't need external apps and it works across many different devices. We undertake a lot of effort to make sure content shows properly in responsive modes. One thing that 5.2.5 doesn't have is a Calendar equivalent. We did add events in vBulletin 5.2.6. These would be the equivalent but they don't need to be in a "Calendar" to be viewed. You can add Events to any forum, group, blog, or article.

                        Another new feature that you might like is vBulletin Messenger. This works on mobile devices as well as the desktop. You can start chats using the Messenger system and it is built on top of the existing Private Message system. Each chat can have one or more members in it.

                        Permissions and Usergroup Promotions are very similar to use. Search is completely redone. Reputation has been changed to Likes and works a little differently. Reporting works but shows in a Message Center.

                        It would take some evaluation on your part. I recommend using our vBulletin 5 Connect Trial and trying the system out for a week.

                        Translations provided by Google.

                        Wayne Luke
                        The Rabid Badger - a vBulletin Cloud demonstration site.
                        vBulletin 5 API

                        Comment

                        • Mark.B
                          vBulletin Support
                          • Feb 2004
                          • 24286
                          • 6.0.X

                          #13
                          Originally posted by Zackw
                          Thanks Mark, I understand the points made.

                          I'm just curious why it seems like nobody wants to come in here and promote VB5? This sends the impression that either nobody thinks VB5 is actually good enough or worthy to promote, or they think it has nothing better to offer over and above VB4.
                          Paul is being nice and saying it's all up to me, well of course it's up to me, but in order to make an informed choice, someone still needs to be a salesman and tell me the benefits of upgrading and why I might want to.
                          As support, we will never try and sell you something IF we don't think it will suit you. I'm not necessarily saying that vB5 won't suit you, what I'm saying is, please don't upgrade for the sake of it. People do that, get it wrong, kill their sites and either close them or move to another platform. That does us as a company no good whatsoever.

                          There's a lot of very good vB5 sites about and it has many benefits. If I was starting a new forum today, I'd go with vB5, without question. It has some of the best page configuration tools on the market, in my view, creating (as an example) a custom portal page takes minutes in vB5, in vB4 that required a ton of custom code and / or an add-on such as vBAdvanced.

                          I have a good list of vB5 sites that are nicely customised and running well, sadly without the client's permission we can't publish the URLs, but I do have one I *can* publish as the owners gave permission - www.hdherd.com. This site was on vB4 and upgraded to vB5 on their own host, they subsequently moved to our vBCloud platform, and the site is active and there's a great little community there.

                          So if you want salesmanship...there it is. However, I'd implore you to think long and hard and make the decision that's right for YOUR site - not anyone else's, and not even us!
                          MARK.B
                          vBulletin Support
                          ------------
                          My Unofficial vBulletin 6.0.0 Demo: https://www.talknewsuk.com
                          My Unofficial vBulletin Cloud Demo: https://www.adminammo.com

                          Comment

                          • glennrocksvb
                            Former vBulletin Developer
                            • Mar 2011
                            • 4011
                            • 5.7.X

                            #14
                            Originally posted by Zackw
                            How is the API, for building my own plugins? Is that robust?
                            You can call the API in different ways:

                            1. Call API via HTTP (AJAX or cURL):

                            Endpoint format:
                            Code:
                            /ajax/api/class/method
                            For example:

                            Code:
                            /ajax/api/user/fetchUserinfo?userid=1
                            All API calls require POST method.


                            2. Call API from another application within the same server:
                            PHP Code:
                            <?php
                            $vbpath 
                            'path/to/vbulletin';
                            require_once(
                            $vbpath '/includes/vb5/autoloader.php');
                            vB5_Autoloader::register($vbpath);
                            vB5_Frontend_Application::init('config.php');
                            $api Api_InterfaceAbstract::instance();
                            $userid 1;
                            $userInfo $api->callApi('user''fetchUserinfo', array($userid));
                            var_dump($userInfo);
                            Another example is to login to vB from an external site: https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/blog...n-your-website


                            3. Call API from template using vB template syntax:
                            Code:
                            {vb:set userid, 1}
                            {vb:data userInfo, user, fetchUserinfo, {vb:raw userid}}
                            {vb:debugvardump userInfo}

                            4. Call API from frontend controller (/includes/vb5/frontend/controller).
                            PHP Code:
                            <?php
                            //this file should be named mycontroller.php and saved in /includes/vb5/frontend/controller directory

                            class vB5_Frontend_Controller_MyController extends vB5_Frontend_Controller
                            {

                                public function 
                            __construct()
                                {
                                    
                            parent::__construct();
                                }

                                public function 
                            actionHello()
                                {
                                    
                            // access db
                                    ///global $vbulletin;
                                    //$sql = "SELECT ....";
                                    //$result =  $vbulletin->db->query($sql);

                                    //call api
                                    
                            $userInfo Api_InterfaceAbstract::instance()->callApi('user''fetchUserinfo', array()); //get userinfo of current user
                                    
                            $this->sendAsJson($userInfo);
                                }

                                public function 
                            hi()
                                {
                                    
                            //call api
                                    
                            $userInfo Api_InterfaceAbstract::instance()->callApi('user''fetchUserinfo', array());  //get userinfo of current user
                                    
                            return $userInfo['username'];
                                }
                            }
                            Then call the methods in frontend controller from AJAX, cURL or templates.

                            Template:
                            Code:
                            {vb:action username, mycontroller, hi}
                            <h1>Hi {vb:var username}!</h1>
                            AJAX/cURL endpoint:
                            Code:
                            /mycontroller/hello

                            Other things to note:
                            • Creating mods/plugins is still the same using product XML.
                            • PHP Hooks system is implemented in vB5 but it's not full-blown yet. You have to request vB for PHP hook locations before you can fully utilize it.
                            • There's Template Hook system which has been there since 5.0. It's works similarly with PHP hooks but the custom code is in the template using template syntax and hook locations are in the template.
                            • You can also create Modules or Widgets that can be used in Sitebuilder and be dragged and dropped onto any page.
                            Last edited by glennrocksvb; Thu 2 Feb '17, 10:49am.

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                            Comment

                            • webmastersun
                              Senior Member
                              • Oct 2013
                              • 135
                              • 4.2.X

                              #15
                              Originally posted by Paul M
                              No one is here to convince you to move to vB5 - in fact that would be terrible reason to do so.

                              You should only ever upgrade if you have a very good reason for doing so.

                              If your current site is running well, then why are you wanting to disrupt it with a major change ?
                              I have to agree with Paul on this point.

                              No one can decide to move to vB5 for you, it depends on you and you need to right reasons why need to upgrade to vB5. If no, stay with vB4 or vB3 versions.

                              Only thing to make a move is unless it wasn't supported any more.
                              Best Internet Marketing Forum & Webmaster Forum for webmasters and Internet Marketers discussing and trading!

                              Comment

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