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  • tonmo
    Senior Member
    • Dec 2004
    • 235
    • 5.0.X

    vb5 Feedback

    I'm a vb forum owner since 2002. vb3 was great, but lacked a CMS and so I relied on vbadvanced for years, plus some good ol' hand-coding. Eventually that got old so was excited about vb4. vb4 was rough going, and IMO never reached its destination, but I got it working, mostly.

    I've always been an instant-adopter of new vb software. When vb5 came out I waited awhile because of the ambiguity around "gold" and comments from others regarding whether it was really ready. Plus, I had created at least a couple dozen articles in the vb4 CMS.

    In early June I finally went for it an upgraded to vb5... So painful. I'm stopping short of calling it a "mistake" though. I regret the pain I've put the community through (have lost tons of traffic and goodwill over two months), but for me there's no way to go but forward. I'll decide in the coming weeks whether I want to resurrect my old articles via hand coding (again) or wait for vb5 to deliver more robust features around page publishing.

    The aforementioned pain was that the site simply didn't work. Posting replies would result in long delays, timeout errors, json errors, memory allocation errors, etc. etc. Pages would disappear and reappear again. After multiple rounds of optimization tweaks (via an epically long ticket in the support system), both with the software and on my server itself, and then upgrading my server (in vb's defense, I was very due for this), I have *finally* got the site functioning again, which is nice.

    Now I'm focused on some of the basic issues, which really should be table stakes (not to mention CMS):

    - ability for logged in users to quickly view a list of unread posts. Not posts since visit, or posts in the past day, but all unread posts for that user. The vb team really should focus on things that cater to loyal / active vb forum users, such as this one. There should be a widget or whatever for this.

    - the file/photo attachment system seems weak, and there is no admincp Maintenance feature to re-do all thumbnails. I have a ticket opened on this, maybe I'm missing something, but right now photo attachments are a huge problem (not to mention the lack of a gallery).

    - need to get a mobile strategy underway. The responsive design isn't terrible, though... seems better than what vb4 was offering.

    - who's online now doesn't work and it's a known issue? Lame! Anything that blatantly doesn't work should simply be suppressed until it does.

    I'm optimistic that vb5 is building toward a more extensible platform, and now that there are plugin tools available, I hope there will be more mods and innovation coming from the dev community for this. I also hope vb will get on a more rapid cadence of updates to its software. Every release seems to knock out 150 bugs or so, which is nice and concerning at once.

    Anyway, that's my feedback. Looking forward to each release in hopes of more, better features and less bugs.
  • DemOnstar
    Senior Member
    • Nov 2012
    • 1912

    #2
    Originally posted by tonmo
    I'm a vb forum owner since 2002. vb3 was great, but lacked a CMS and so I relied on vbadvanced for years, plus some good ol' hand-coding. Eventually that got old so was excited about vb4. vb4 was rough going, and IMO never reached its destination, but I got it working, mostly.

    I've always been an instant-adopter of new vb software. When vb5 came out I waited awhile because of the ambiguity around "gold" and comments from others regarding whether it was really ready. Plus, I had created at least a couple dozen articles in the vb4 CMS.

    In early June I finally went for it an upgraded to vb5... So painful. I'm stopping short of calling it a "mistake" though. I regret the pain I've put the community through (have lost tons of traffic and goodwill over two months), but for me there's no way to go but forward. I'll decide in the coming weeks whether I want to resurrect my old articles via hand coding (again) or wait for vb5 to deliver more robust features around page publishing.

    The aforementioned pain was that the site simply didn't work. Posting replies would result in long delays, timeout errors, json errors, memory allocation errors, etc. etc. Pages would disappear and reappear again. After multiple rounds of optimization tweaks (via an epically long ticket in the support system), both with the software and on my server itself, and then upgrading my server (in vb's defense, I was very due for this), I have *finally* got the site functioning again, which is nice.

    Now I'm focused on some of the basic issues, which really should be table stakes (not to mention CMS):

    - ability for logged in users to quickly view a list of unread posts. Not posts since visit, or posts in the past day, but all unread posts for that user. The vb team really should focus on things that cater to loyal / active vb forum users, such as this one. There should be a widget or whatever for this.

    - the file/photo attachment system seems weak, and there is no admincp Maintenance feature to re-do all thumbnails. I have a ticket opened on this, maybe I'm missing something, but right now photo attachments are a huge problem (not to mention the lack of a gallery).

    - need to get a mobile strategy underway. The responsive design isn't terrible, though... seems better than what vb4 was offering.

    - who's online now doesn't work and it's a known issue? Lame! Anything that blatantly doesn't work should simply be suppressed until it does.

    I'm optimistic that vb5 is building toward a more extensible platform, and now that there are plugin tools available, I hope there will be more mods and innovation coming from the dev community for this. I also hope vb will get on a more rapid cadence of updates to its software. Every release seems to knock out 150 bugs or so, which is nice and concerning at once.

    Anyway, that's my feedback. Looking forward to each release in hopes of more, better features and less bugs.
    Nice! And in that lies the hopes of every community member, support member, team member, would be forum owner, would be community builder but not many OAP's.

    Great post!


    Comment

    • Ig@r
      Member
      • Feb 2001
      • 37
      • 4.2.x

      #3
      Thanks for sharing. I'm so glad that I decided to stick with Vb4 and not to upgrade. Not going to upgrade till I clearly see that VB5 is actually a better software.

      Comment

      • dbe
        New Member
        • Aug 2013
        • 7
        • 5.0.X

        #4
        Originally posted by tonmo
        - ability for logged in users to quickly view a list of unread posts. Not posts since visit, or posts in the past day, but all unread posts for that user. The vb team really should focus on things that cater to loyal / active vb forum users, such as this one. There should be a widget or whatever for this.
        I totally agree.

        as of today I can not go live with VB5 because users would kill me for not being able to view the latest activity. It is so demotivating to have that fresh installation rotting uselessly on the dev server.

        Think of the latest activity module - it only sorts activities by date of thread creation - what a shame. The new features are absolutely cool but these basics are what keeps the community together and keeps a vital difference to facebook and other communities.

        Comment

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

          #5
          You could increase the range of the "Today's Post" query... For instance, this string does 10 days of unread posts:

          http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/searc...ssage%22%5D%7D
          Translations provided by Google.

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

          Comment

          • tonmo
            Senior Member
            • Dec 2004
            • 235
            • 5.0.X

            #6
            Does that take into account *unread* posts, or is it showing all posts for the last 10 days?

            Also, it would be cool if we could suppress the "Keyword / Members / Tags" drop-downs for search queries that we'd like to make staple destination pages... it's disorienting for people just looking for the results. Thoughts on ways to accomplish that? (I feel a plug for vb.org coming on! :-D)

            Comment

            • tonmo
              Senior Member
              • Dec 2004
              • 235
              • 5.0.X

              #7
              Judging by the URL string you provided, it doesn't seem to be omitting read posts, but I could be wrong?

              Comment

              • Yves R.
                vBulletin QA
                • Nov 2003
                • 3855
                • 5.6.X

                #8
                From Wayne's example:

                http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/search?searchJSON={"date":{"from":10},"exclude":[35,38],"view":"topic","sort":{"lastcontent":"desc"},"exclude_type":["vBForum_PrivateMessage","vBForum_VisitorMessage"],"unread_only":"1"}

                Added the 'unread_only' parameter in the URL. It should return only unread contents.

                vBulletin QA - vBulletin Support French - Lead Project Tools developer

                Next release? Soon(tm)

                Comment

                • tonmo
                  Senior Member
                  • Dec 2004
                  • 235
                  • 5.0.X

                  #9
                  Did you put that URL in your browser? I doesn't work for me, just spins.

                  Tried it on my own site, didn't return posts I hadn't read. Just said "no posts found"... the URL for the results page is /search?searchJSON= and ends there.

                  Comment

                  • tonmo
                    Senior Member
                    • Dec 2004
                    • 235
                    • 5.0.X

                    #10
                    Found this, seems related: http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBV-8137

                    Comment

                    • Phases
                      New Member
                      • Jan 2012
                      • 7

                      #11
                      Just using this particular thread of the several I've read to make this reply but.. I was very open to purchasing the full VB5 Connect until I read all this feedback. I'm disappointed, but considering what all I've read about IB the past couple years - I guess not surprised. Looks like I'll have to heavily debate XF vs vb 4 in comparison to 5, now - which isn't something I was really looking forward to doing.
                      http://b2gcommunity.com <-- Interested in Mozilla's new mobile OS? ..VB 4.2

                      Comment

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