Bring back all the features you had in 4!!!! (Doesnt upgrade mean keep old features and add more or better?)

[jdj]

I'm still testing vB5 out on my test site, vB4 is still on my live site. I can already see that vB5 isn't perfect but the truth is that if I ignore the amount of time between when I actually purchased my vB5 licence and the point when I could try it (when the 'CMS replacement' became usable and stable) then I'd probably be reasonably happy with vB5 as I can see I can use it, except for one thing.

I get the concept of vB5 and the channels. The truth is that there's not much difference between forum content, blog content and articles content because the latter two types of content are really just different presentations of similar types of content. The problem is though that the difference in presentation between a blog/forum post and calendar/events function is so great there's no way you can make the most of the software without it. When vB3 was out we struggled to make a success of the calendar. When vB4 came out and we could create tabs to our calendar we put some effort behind it and it became successful. What we're left with today with vB5 is implementing a workaround.

When mobile became popular that meant that people could be wandering round with their tablets and smart phones and seeing what was on and where in whatever business, hobby or sport they happen to be active in and possibly engaging with their chosen forum. So potential vB 'forum' (blog/article/calendar) users could be wandering around with their smartphones thinking "...where was that event happening that I saw discussed on the forum/blog/press release on www.mysite.com." But that' s now much more difficult to achieve because the functionality isn't there.

I get vB5, I can see it's not perfect but having gone through the transition from vB3 to vB4 I'd probably be happy with it....if it had the calendar.

[rmwebs]

If you require all the features in vb4, then use vb4, thats why a choice is provided.

vB 4.x is EOL, so support and updates wont happen - this was confirmed a few weeks ago by one of the staff here (cant remember who...possibly Wayne or Mark). This is the problem. The development path is terribly planned out, if it was even planned out. Right now people have a choice with vBulletin, and not a great one:

- Use 4.x and risk having to do manual code changes (presumably you're still doing security patches given the age of the software? You've got no docs on what your long term support policy is at all so it's hard to trust you as a company)

- Use 5.x and suffer from major speed issues and a lack of common features you previously had.

- Use 3.x and have a very feature rich site, that's fast and stable. But with no support at all.

As I said, it's a pretty poor set of choices. What's even worse is all people keep getting told to do is 'add it to Jira' - license holders shouldn't need to do that. That's a job for staff. Especially when it's bug reports.

[Mark.B]

4 hasn't been declared EOL. It would normally be by now, in line with the standard processes used for a decade or more. It is, however, not likely to see major development work now, as the focus is on vB5.

[rmwebs]

4 hasn't been declared EOL. It would normally be by now, in line with the standard processes used for a decade or more. It is, however, not likely to see major development work now, as the focus is on vB5.

So just what is the official EOL policy, and why isn't it published anywhere? It seems to be guess-work based from the sounds of it :/

[rmwebs]

Looks like there isn't one...why am I not surprised.

[Wayne Luke]

How you guys gonna leave the refferal look up in search user.. but theres no refferal options? How you guys gonna leave the password feature on forums out??


Theres soo many things.. i already had a vbulletin 4 license and i decided to come back and pay for the upgrade to five thinking it was better.. How you gonna leave old features out and call it an upgrade?

Come on boss... i dont wanna have to go with xenforo..

There hasn't been a lot of request or traction for bringing back the Referral system. To get that, people need to vote on this issue: http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBV-2623

There are other issues that have more community support higher up in the queue though.