Convince me to move to VB5!

[Zackw]

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.

[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 ?

[chriske]

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.

[Zackw]

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.

[man1c]

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).

[Zackw]

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?