Инфо Релизы vBulletin 4

Выдержки из темы на офф. форуме по vb4
Yes, we ditched vBulletin 4 and regret deeply upgrading. It wasnt the cost that made us work so hard to use it although that was a factor in us trying so hard to make it work for us. I have just always been the kind of person that goes for the best and in the past, vBulletin software was the best.

I was very disappointed in this release.

The CMS you gave us isnt a CMS at all, its like a cheap newspaper script. A lot of people would have rather seen vBulletin allow easy integration with Joomla or at least a CMS that had some functionality other than straight articles with some simple blocks down the side. VBulletin's CMS is ugly, blocky, plain and lacks even rudimentary means of customization.

The forum is slow and uses too many queries. Members that had older computers had a hard time navigating the overly busy layout that was STOCK. While the CMS was by far the biggest disappointment for me, the forum software itself was a letdown. Skinning it to look like anything but recolored stock is a nightmare and gave it inexplicable bugs. (example: turning on "store CSS as files" would make some things work and other things error, turning it off has the same result.)

So I gave it time. Used it. Added stuff, took stuff away, tried to pare down the add ons to decrease load times but it just wasn't working. So once again we have installed Joomla and PHPBB3 and functionality is better, looks have improved greatly and load time is down to 3 seconds.

Maybe vBulletin 4 is good for programmers or people who really understand the coding? I'm not either of those people. I just run a website for my gaming buddies and your software no longer seems made for someone like me or my visitors.
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My first impression of VB4 (forum only, I will write my own CMS as I completely agree with the OP's opinion) so far: It's a cheap (and poorly done) visual redesign of VB3.8 with the sole purpose of plugging your CMS. In VB3.8 I had a complete restyling of the forum done in a matter of hours (not just recoloring), in VB4 I've spent 3 days so far on the forumhome, forumdisplay and showthread. Your new template system is crap, the stock template is even worse. It's a big mess of rubbish XHTML, far too many elements cluttered into one. Whomever did the html and css needs to get himself a course in proper html/css as it's far too cluttered. There are far too many dom elements on every page in the forum, there's too many css rules working on a single element, requiring template developers to create very large css files to customize things. To sum it up in one word: Rubbish. Trash it and try again, this time with your existing customers in mind: those who want a forum, not the rest of the junk you've ruined VB with.
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I've used vBulletin ever since i can remember owning a site back when i had 3.0.0 i remember it looked so much nicer than its rivals IPB and it had a massive selection of add-ons for free, What bugs me most about IB's takeover was their greed in making us pay to upgrade to vB4 whereas when Jelsoft was around they never charged for new versions if your license was within the date of the upgrade (example going from vb2 -> 3) They would of made so much more money by leaving things as they were.

Sure vB4 i believe looks nicer than 3.x.x but 3.x.x just worked, you could easily get a style that looked like vb4 does now. I also don't see the point in charging customers extra for "Suites" like "CMS" and "Blogs" surely these should be in a forum package as standard, this to me would deter potential buyers from ever purchasing these since you can get a nice CMS free at vBadvance, you can also get Blog addons free somewhere on vBulletin.org. Sure maybe vB's features and intergration are better but the price for it is so steep.

The main thing that really dissapoints me with vBulletin is the stupid Stylevars and trying to skin things. i hate the fact they removed 3.8's stylevars bit which they left as a reference to dangle in your face the fact it was better. I used to be an avid skinner for 3.8 i'm not a massive coder and i found making 3.8 skins so easy and i could create some really nice skins with little no how. Completely new looking skins took me around 1-2 hours tops. I've tried making a skin look different from stock using vb4's new system and i have yet to manage it because the stylevars system is so confusing and pointless.

Sure some of the things like the "New thread" button and "post reply" buttons take away images that save on load times but.....to be fair i enjoyed making my own buttons and things in 3.8 because i could customize every aspect of it with little effort.

My Dream for vB4's improvement would be to revert back to 3.8's way of styling but making it even more customizable, or at least if IB insists on having this stupid stylevars system they add some hover over elements that show you exactly what the hell most of them change without you trialing and erroring every single stylevar to make simple changes.

Overall i'm happy with the v4.x product as a whole, its clean, it does what i want (apart from styling) looks nicer than 3.8 nice features that i wanted to see in 3.8 (for instance SEO improvement and overall feature improvement) but something inside me still prefers 3.8 and when Jelsoft used to be around, Obviously Takeovers are never easy and i understand IB needs time to adapt and get things right. But if you look over at Zenforo (most of Jelsofts employess left IB and started their own stuff as they didn't like IB so i heard) that software is very similar to how the good old 3.8 used to be with a vb4 type style infusion.

IB needs to look at its comeptitors and re-think about how it charges users for things as well as the features competitors have that vB doesn't, I think vBsolutions seems to think because they merged or bought out Jelsoft and have taken over the Best Forum software to date that they will easily stay ontop with their way of doing things because vBulletin has such a big name, alot of people are dissapointed with the addition things like Mobile suites and the blog/cms thing and i would never pay extra for those as i don't see the point if they aren't standard in a forum package, i'll stick to using my free alternatives.

Heres a Small list of things i feel IB should definatly Mull over with their next version(s) and consider:

1. Completely scrapping Stylevars system and vB4's aweful skinning system (yes even the crappy style generator which also is pointless) and either downgrading back to 3.8's skinning solution and modifying it to make it better or re-doing the entire skinning system to be like 3.8's (alternatively just give us back 3.8's functionality in the ACP so we can choose to use either crappy stylevars or good 3.8 style vars).

2. Giving Users Blogs or a CMS as standardwith their package as foruming is all about communication and blogging is a big part of that which should be standard with the forum package and not a chargeable extra, its like saying "oh heres a bike with your money but the wheels and pedals are extra".

3. Give paying customers ticketing system as standard without charging us for ticket support. in 3.8 i believe this was standard and free and even the toll free phone support wasn't as expensive as vb4's.

Advanced Users:

Files updated in the patch for vBulletin 3.8.7 * 4.0 - 4.1.12 (Suite & Forum).

• includes/class_dm_threadpost.php
• includes/class_floodcheck.php
• includes/version_vbulletin.php

Files updated in the patch for vBulletin 4.2 (Suite & Forum).

• includes/adminfunctions.php
• includes/class_dm_threadpost.php
• includes/class_floodcheck.php
• install/includes/class_upgrade_420a1.php
• install/init.php
• install/mysql-schema.php
• vb/activitystream/populate/forum/thread.php
• includes/version_vbulletin.php

Licensed customers can discuss the security patch - HERE