Is VB5 Necessary?

[rexall]

Wed 28 Nov 2012, 7:22 pm

Hi All,

Newbie here. New to vB. Not tech savvy. Be nice, please!

Purchased vB5. Not installed yet. Just finished reading a LOOOONG thread on another forum. Paraphrasing here, but I think the consensus was that the social networking and other fancy features of vB5 have supplanted or overwhelmed the classic forum features that people prefer and feel loyal to in vB4. This included the familiar debate about whether (classic) forums are dead, being replaced by Facebook, et al. Without enough experience to make a proper evaluation, my sympathies were definitely with those who prefer a classic forum without the bloat. Certainly a little bit of something like social networking would be an enhancement, as long as it does not diminish the forum's role as a medium for intelligent discussion as opposed to trivial pursuit. But that's me; I don't even have a Facebook account!

Two questions that will hopefully stimulate some discussion:

1. If for whatever reason I wanted to install vB4, and never upgrade to vB5, would that be reasonable? Would that work indefinitely? Or will vB4 soon become obsolete and unsupported, and I will be forced to upgrade anyway?

2. Do you follow and agree or disagree with he point that vB5 is now less like a forum and more like a social networking hybrid or something?

Thanks for your feedback.

Rex
Khon Kaen, Thailand

[Trevor Hannant]

1. You can download and install any version you like that you have access to. The license is a 'lifetime' license so you can continue running vB4 as long as you like. Be aware however that at some point in the future, vB4 will be classed as End Of Life' and not supported should you choose never to run vB5.

2. It's still a forum - you can still set it up to look like a forum. Admittedly, it's a new look as the company looks to change the perception to some degree.

[rexall]

Wed 28 Nov 2012, 8:16 pm

Wow, Trevor! What took you so long??? Seriously, thanks for the lightning-fast reply! So, my license for vB5 will always be good, I can upgrade whenever, even if vB4 is classified as "end of life" at some point?

Any more discussion about whether it is nuts to NOT install vB5 now?

Cheers,

Rex
Khon Kaen, Thailand

[Trevor Hannant]

Yes, you can upgrade when you like/when it suits you to upgrade

vB5 is still in Beta stage so we would never recommend installing on a live site at this time - although you can do so if you wish however you will not get full support for this.

[Mark.B]

Incidentally it is VERY easy to set vB5 up to look like a traditional forum.
It's literally a couple of minutes in the site builder to provide a traditional-style linear forum layout like this, which is my personal live showcase vB5 site:

http://www.talknewsuk.com/forum/

[soniceffect]

1. If for whatever reason I wanted to install vB4, and never upgrade to vB5, would that be reasonable? Would that work indefinitely? Or will vB4 soon become obsolete and unsupported, and I will be forced to upgrade anyway?

You could run VB4 as long as you wanted even if it did become unsupported in the future obsolete or not to be honest. The likelyhood is it will be supported for a long while yet given past support of products.

2. Do you follow and agree or disagree with he point that vB5 is now less like a forum and more like a social networking hybrid or something?

To be honest no I dont agree with that at all. Its still very very much a forum product, its just the structure of it that has changed IMO.


On another note if you are buying now I would personally install vb4 for a live site and vb5 on a closed development site. This way you can set up on a stable system and take your time to learn vb5 and know when it is ready for you. At the end of the day the labels of beta, gold, .1 etc etc mean nothing and should mean nothing, they are just indicators. Install the software that is currently supported and work from there on your own knowledge.

[oldz442]

It is no problemo to have both vb4 and vb5 installed at the same time for testing purposes? That is why I am doing at present (each behind an .htaccess file with 'Deny from all' except my IP).

[Mark.B]

It is no problemo to have both vb4 and vb5 installed at the same time for testing purposes? That is why I am doing at present (each behind an .htaccess file with 'Deny from all' except my IP).

Technically the license permits one test installation.

However in practice it's never been a problem, as long as all test installs are non-public, and you set specific cookie paths in config.php and the admincp, otherwise you'll have cookie issues.
Also make sure all the URLs are exactly correct everywhere.