Convince me to move to VB5!

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  • albanah
    Senior Member
    • Jan 2010
    • 337
    • 5.7.0

    #16
    vb5 layout is very difficult to set. I have been using vb4 since its launch and tried vb5 in my test site. I found it very difficult to use and confusing. Support advised me to re-upload my database every time I have problems, as they do not have solution for simple issues such as resuming default layout. Changing home page is very strange and ruined my site. Also could not get drop-down menus for navbar in vb5 in vb.org.

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

      #17
      Originally posted by albanah
      vb5 layout is very difficult to set. I have been using vb4 since its launch and tried vb5 in my test site. I found it very difficult to use and confusing. Support advised me to re-upload my database every time I have problems, as they do not have solution for simple issues such as resuming default layout. Changing home page is very strange and ruined my site. Also could not get drop-down menus for navbar in vb5 in vb.org.
      Your issues were not related to the layout of a page.
      Translations provided by Google.

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

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      • meissen
        Senior Member
        • Dec 2005
        • 215
        • 3.5.x

        #18
        Upgraded from vB 4.2.x to vB5.2.6 and it's been so-so.

        For a 3 year old product, I wouldn't expect to be chasing problems like [quote] and [img] tags being broken after upgrading. EDIT: Turns out a subforum's settings were changed to turn bbcode off during the install somehow which is what broke the quote and img tags.

        I'm severely disappointed in the lack of add-ons available at vbulletin.org. There's ~75 add-ons available, seemingly half of which are for older versions of vB5 and the dev's websites are defunct broken links. The only really active dev for vB5 is Filip from DBTech. Thank God for him developing in vB5 or else it'd be a total waste to upgrade unless you're OK with having a completely vanilla site.

        I installed vB5 to a new directory per upgrade recommendations (switched from mifbody.com/vbulletin to mifbody.com/forums) so I am 100% sure I didn't use any vB4 files.

        If I were to list the issues I've experienced since upgrading:
        • Trying to figure out where image files are supposed to be uploaded is a total crapshoot. I moved my smilies into mifbody.com/forums/core/images/smilies which I thought fixed a lot of the broken images, but then I discovered other smilies were wanting the images to be in mifbody.com/forums/images/smilies. The same applies for avatars, signatures, etc. There's no rhyme or reason to it. Logically you'd think the images all go in the "core" folder, but apparently not....
        • Random images/icons in the site are still showing as broken... Using default Black Red style and the image source is "http://www.mifbody.com/forums/core/http://www.mifbody.com/vbulletin/images/icons/icon6.png"
        • A ton of user-uploaded attachments are now broken
        • Forum/channel settings don't transfer over correctly, one of my subforums' settings was changed to turn bbcode off during the install which then broke IMG and Quote bbcode (including any other bbcode used)
        • I had mod_deflate installed, but the instructions didn't mention that mod_deflate requires an additional apache mod enabled (mod_filter I think it was?) so I had an internal sever config error on my site thanks to the .htaccess file and nothing was being logged for it which made troubleshooting that much harder.
        • Hidden forums were suddenly visible in the Forum home list - I have users now asking about forums that were previously hidden from the Forum home list.
        • Open threads that users are saying they can't reply to. Admins can reply to the thread perfectly fine. I closed and re-opened the thread in hopes that it'd fix it, waiting for users to report back. (FIXED - Had to reset permissions on the specific forum the thread was in...)
        • AdminCP Settings drop-down shows random blank lines, broken menu items apparently for vb4 modifications, etc
        • Although the Style Variable Editor is a lot better, there's still a lot of hard-coded colors in the CSS files. My additional.css template seems to grow daily to fix hard-coded colors.
        • Lack of 3rd-party development (mods / add-ons) is a HUGE turn-off to me.
        Last edited by meissen; Mon 20 Feb '17, 10:20am.

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

          #19
          QUOTE and IMG tags are absolutely not "broken out of the box". I install multiple copies of vB5 every week and not once is there ever a problem with either of those tags.

          Most of the issues you mention are not things we see on a day to day basis.
          Third party add-ons are, as their name suggests, not provided by us and we have no control over this.
          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

          • meissen
            Senior Member
            • Dec 2005
            • 215
            • 3.5.x

            #20
            Fixing my post to reflect the more accurate situation -- A forum was erroneously updated by the upgrade script which turned bbcode off during the upgrade which then broke Quote and IMG tags.
            Last edited by meissen; Mon 20 Feb '17, 10:39am.

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

              #21
              Originally posted by Mark.B

              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!
              Well the main issue is VB4 is only going to get older. Mobile is a big issue, as will be moving to full HTTPS. People don't like Tapatalk. And I wish for the general UX to be a bit more modern, maybe more reactive and living, so to speak. Things like chat and events would be nice, and real time notifications. Better quoting/replying system and stronger search features. Stronger spam control too, and social features.

              Even today I have a super weird issue on VB4. Our main admin (the boss) is seen in the moderator logs deleting posts and threads willy nilly, like hundreds of posts being deleted from a specific user account, and others. But the boss says he did no moderating and wasn't even in the forums that day. Yet the moderator log points to our office IP address so I can't say it's been hacked either? I hate bizarre issues like this. Hundreds of log entries of the boss deleting posts, but he says he didn't delete anything. What gives? I don't know.

              I just get this impression like our forum is slightly out of our control, overrun, aging. And I want a fresh experience for our users. I have Glowhost Spamomatic and lots of customized controls, yet we get a dozen spam posts a day, which many users report, which then sends a lot of emails to moderators. I can't seem to find the right balance of controls.
              For reasons I can't discover, even our primary accounts, moderators and super mods who have thousands of posts, get their posts put under moderation for some reason.

              On the market today are really only a couple decent choices, VB5 and Discourse, maybe a couple others for simpler forums but those are the main two.
              I know the folks here are a bit timid to recommend moving to their latest product, but the bottom line is; is VB5 a superior product or not? I know there could be serious migration issues, I would expect those problems. But at the end of the day I would hope I would be using a superior, safer, stronger, more modern piece of software that is in active, even rapid, development to stay current.

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