I'm sorry, I just don't like this...

[rudedog1968]

Unless I've been coming to the wrong site for the past 10+ years, when will people realize this is the official site for vB, good or bad. It's not a fan site to only praise what vB does.

[omegatron]

No one else validates their html, in some cases it is not possible to be 100% valid if you want a document to do all the things you need it to do in a real world.

Neither XF or IPB pass validation either according to a checker. The real test is if the software looks consistent and behaves the same across browsers.

Our CSS does need some work though.

Its more important to write semantic html that works across the big 3 browsers, than to make sure it meets an ever changing html5 spec.

Thats a pretty interesting answer. I always validate anything I write.

I can easily write html and css that validates across all 5 major browsers. It is not hard at all if you know what you are doing.

The point I am making is the customer service is not fantastic and releasing an alpha and calling it beta and releasing a gold software that is at max is a beta and then releasing 1000 fixes after the fact is not good practice. I mean that is what happened with vb4 and seems to be happening here with vb5.

Your expecting customers to pay high prices for substandard software.

[djbaxter]

Unless I've been coming to the wrong site for the past 10+ years, when will people realize this is the official site for vB, good or bad. It's not a fan site to only praise what vB does.

It's also not an anti-vB site where lately every thread seems to have to turn into an IB bash sooner or later.

As has already been said, if you have a suggestion for improvement, suggest away, here or in the Tracker. If you find a bug, report that. If there's something you don't like, report that too.

But really, if you really hate EVERYTHING about vB4 or vB5 or whatever version is being discussed at the moment, what do you hope to gain by stating that repeatedly? If you're really going to switch to a competitor, just do it. I've looked closely at the alternatives and I don't like any of them. But I'm not over on those forums telling everyone there why I hate their product.

[rudedog1968]

If you're really going to switch to a competitor, just do it. I've looked closely at the alternatives and I don't like any of them. But I'm not over on those forums telling everyone there why I hate their product.

That's the point many people have spent money with vB and there are still issues needing fixed for the people using 4.x. I agree if you have not spent money on those other forums then you should not be over there complaining.

[Deimos]

It's also not an anti-vB site where lately every thread seems to have to turn into an IB bash sooner or later.

How can you praise or recommend improvements to such an inferior and amateur product? You DO remember it took almost TWO years to get Vb4 into a state which most would agree, was "Gold".
It's like trying to suggest "recommendations" for Windows ME, which everyone seems to agree, was a god awful product.
If anything, VB4 was the equivalent to Windows ME, VB5 is like Windows Vista, neither were good.

[rudedog1968]

How can you praise or recommend improvements to such an inferior and amateur product? You DO remember it took almost TWO years to get Vb4 into a state which most would agree, was "Gold".
It's like trying to suggest "recommendations" for Windows ME, which everyone seems to agree, was a god awful product.
If anything, VB4 was the equivalent to Windows ME, VB5 is like Windows Vista, neither were good.

I would not put this on the same level as ME, that was vB4 at first. This is more or less on the level of Microsoft BOB, with all it's drastic changes not many seem to want, understand or need.

[Alfa1]

The past with vb4 already showed that there was reason to be very cautious with my expectations for vb5. My big board has not been upgraded for 5 years. I never upgraded my big board from vb3.8 to vb4, because only 3 years after release of 'vb4 gold' and after thousands of bugs were fixed I consider 4.2 as gold. vb4.2 would be a viable foundation to build upon if there would be several years of active development by IB coming. A major upgrade costs me 6 months of rewriting addons. Unfortunately, now that it has a reasonable state with only 850 bugs, its basically pronounced dead by the focus on vb5. Therefore after 3 years of waiting for vb4 to be fixed, vb4 is still not a viable upgrade for my needs. So the focus is on vb5.


The information given before the release of the beta certainly gave reason to be hopeful and even excited.

I think there are a lot of good ideas in vb5, including:

1. Everything API, so that it becomes easy to replace or modify much of the front end.
2. Site builder
3. Modules/apps
4. Shift from forum oriented to content type oriented. (as this allows custom content types and improvement of blog, groups, etc)
5. Replacing the vastly outdated vb4 styling
6. Updating to modern technology, including jquery, php5.4, CSS3, html5, etc.

These 6 points above are gold in my opinion and if executed well are very good reasons to upgrade to vb5.


Then the 'beta' came out and showcased the really poor state that the product is in. While the above 6 points are very attractive aspects of vb5, it seems to me that vb5 has no future for the reasons below. I am hereby asking staff, management and customers to alleviate my concerns below, cause like Mert, Shawn, Scott, Gladius, and many other big board owners, I am halfway out the door.

1. Many senior developers including Rafio, Shawn(digitalpoint), Floren state that vb5 has horrible code quality and is the code/design of the software is a complete disaster and that it would be best for IB to scrap it and start over. (and similar conclusions)
   You can fix bugs. You can hardly fix bad software design. I thought that the main reason for rewriting vb4 was the fact that various issues can not be resolved without resolving bad software design. vb5 seems like a shaky foundation to build upon, which predicts problems for the future.
2. Judging by the poor state the 'beta' is in, it seems to me that it will take years, before vb5 will be bug free and have all needed functions.
3. It remains to be seen if IB will keep developing vb5 after the initial wave of sales.
   vb4 took 3 years to get to a somewhat reasonable level of bugs (850 at present) which included about 2 years of IB barely raising a finger while customers struggled. IB even went completely silent and unresponsive towards customers for quite some time here. The seem to have no problem with advertising malfunctioning products like the mobile suite. Management seems to be of the opinion that releasing bug ridden products is OK.
   It seems that vb5 will be released with a massive load of issues and an absence of features. After the initial wave of sales, there is no financial incentive for IB to do anything again. Therefore it makes no sense to purchase vb5 before its bug free and feature complete.
4. Despite various requests from customers vBS has not taken away concerns about possible user data mining or data use by Internet Brands and its affiliates/websites. Internet Brands operates thousands of websites and competes with vbulletin customers. vbulletin makes up a tiny fraction of IB's interests. A simple statement here and in a privacy policy that applies to vb5 would take away these concerns. The fact that vBS / IB does not make it crystal clear that vbulletin customers their website data is safe/protected against use by the Internet Brands network or affiliates, is very worrisome.
5. Advertisements by IB announce 125 new features for vb5. Yet, IB refuses to say what these 125 new features are. To me this comes across as very shady and adds to the uncertainty.
6. vb5 will change all urls which will make all inbound link juice go dead. A second concern is if Google will successfully reindex all pages and internal links. This remains to be seen.

For the reasons above it seems to me that vb5 has no future.
I would be happy if my concerns are alleviated.

[steven s]

^^^^^^^^^^
Very well written!

I'm a small board owner. One running vB3 and one vB4.
Normally I would have purchased a new license to test and maybe even help report or verify bugs.
Not this time.

I will continue to run those versions and watch on the sideline.

Again. Very well written post above mine.
I think it sums everything up and could put this thread to rest.

[DeltaHawk5]

I, for one, are looking forward to going live with vB5 on my site when it is ready. Cheers to the dev team.

[M@tthew]

From 2002 - 2007 I used Invision Power Board on my main forum (which is now 10 years old). I switched to vBulletin from 2007 and I'm extremely happy currently using vB4 and over the last 5 years I was glad I switched on many occasions.

I'm frankly amazed at this 'beta' release; I too think it's cosmetically dreadful and from the comments I've read is far from perfect (a 'beta' release should be more progressed than this, surely?). Perhaps I'll download it and test it, but I can't say I'm overly encouraged to do so at the moment.

I agree with the OP - change is good and that's what drives things forward, I personally embrace it - however, at this rate I don't see why I should pay (again) to 'upgrade' my licence to vB5 when I have all the bells and whistles already, including copyright removal licences, etc.

So my choices are - 1. Stick with vB4 (eventually this will be phased out?), 2. Return to using Invision Power Board (looking more likely).

I will keep watching for now!

[motowebmaster]

The vb5 demo does seem to be functioning better, but is looking more like IPB with an alternative skin

[SpaceStar]

I often wonder how good VB4 would be by now, had they spent all that development time on VB5, on VB4 instead.

I am absolutely with you. This is beyond any sincerity towards vBulletin customers, who are working and paying from their own pockets. VB4 has huge room for improvement, you will not even find a variety of themes to it and suddenly they come up with a new version. And just look at the prices: A new license $249 and upgrade $209!!! If you never bought a VB4 license before, you are better equiped. Coz this version includes a vb4. What about those of us who have already spent 100s of hours of getting this to work??? Should we now have to pay another $209 just to get an upgrade. And spend another 100s of hours to get the new version working????? What will happen in about 1 year when Connect 5 have been through a series of betas and patches, will they come up with a VB6 or 7? Not even Microsoft do things such as this. Absolutely no sincerity towards customers. Thanks VB.

[soniceffect]

The vb5 demo does seem to be functioning better, but is looking more like IPB with an alternative skin

as well as looking like xenforo, facebook, and some others apparently..... Not entirely sure how it can look like 4-5 peices of software LOL

[woffie]

I often wonder how good VB4 would be by now, had they spent all that development time on VB5, on VB4 instead.
It truly might've been the best/most powerful forum software out there, but sadly...what a waste.

How would they get more of our money if they did that?

- - - Updated - - -

The vb5 demo does seem to be functioning better, but is looking more like IPB with an alternative skin

It looks A LOT like IPB! That is why I don't like it. I came to vbulletin from IPB when IPB came out with 3.0. When vb 4.0 came out, I game my members the choice of going back to ipb or moving to 4.0. They picked vb. I setup test sites of both so they could compare. Now I am going to take them back to the crappy IPB type forum anyway? NO! I am keeping 4.X until end of life then moving on to something else or just outright retiring for running a forum.

[beishe8]

How would they get more of our money if they did that?

Changing their policy on the right way: Back to renewals.