Upgrade Question - What Is The Best Option?

[victorfrankl]

Hello. using vb4 and vbseo on my forum. majority of my visitors are now mobile so i'd like to keep up with the times. which upgrade would be best? stick with vb4 and purchase the mobile addon? ($199) or go with vb5 (since it's responsive) ($209 upgrade cost) i assume it'd be worth it to just upgrade to vb5 and get what i think i'll get by sticking with vb4+mobile addon (is this addon the same as the vb5 mobile suite bundle? - if so, then the choice is clear then and go with vb5?) and the next question would be...what to do with vbseo? majority of my traffic is from natural search. would dbseo be worth it or it'd be a similiar story later on down the line if dbseo isn't supported anymore and it's better to just bite the bullet and go with vb5 alone. it's been a few years so I haven't been able to keep up but searching the forum to catch up. in my members area i see a "vBulletin Mobile Style Premium"....i'm assuming that's not needed?

[BirdOPrey5]

Mobile Style Premium should be completely ignored. It hasn't been relevant since early versions of VB 4.1.x.

The ideal way to access VB5 is probably via the mobile browser on most mobile devices due to the responsive design.

The Mobile Suite is the same for VB4 and VB5 however when used with VB5 additional features become available such as push notifications that aren't available on VB 4.x.

The Mobile Suite is only necessary if you want an "app store" presence but is by no means required to use VB5 on a mobile device.

VBSEO is already insecure and a big risk to be running. However you are correct to be concerned because by default VB5 URL structure is different that VBSEO URL structure and by default VB5 will not be able to redirect VBSEO URLs to VB5 URLs.

I've read some reports fo people being able to use an .htaccess file edit to redirect VBSEO URLs to default VB4 URLs which would then redirect to the appropriate VB5 URLs but I do not have additional info on this, it is outside the scope of a regular upgrade.