vB 4?

[refreblast]

Are there ever any plans to upgrade to the newest or newer version of vBulletin?

[techgnome]

touchy subject - VBF is one of some 20+ forums that they run (I think that's right.. seems like the number grows everytime some one asks this question)... I think it's also one of the most heavily modified... and they do A LOT of testing to make sure things don't break. even when they do start the upgrade... VBF is usually one of the last, if not the last. Oh, one more thing, there's a certain amount of "if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it" ... there has to be a really good reason for them to want to upgrade.

-tg

[akhileshbc]

The new interface (or theme) of vB4 is looking great. I think, its time for vbForums to migrate to a new stylish and modern theme.

[RhinoBull]

What's wrong with the "classic" theme we have now? It's simple and fast.
And who's going to pay for the upgrade - you don't want more ads on each page, do you?
After all this is a technical board - people's most concern really should be content not the look...

... mho anyway ...

[techgnome]

agreed - function over form.

akhileshbc - do you remember the flap that was created when the ad words showed up? and that was a minor change... VBFers are a picky lot.

-tg

[Merri]

It is the reason I installed YesScript :P I'm fully tired of having the top navigation bar hitting ads in them almost every other page – blocking the usability of the site while they're at it. An effective solution is to disable JavaScript and imo I have every right to do so.

Anyway, as far as the vBulletin 4 goes... it doesn't look that much better to my eye. Current template in grey + some added darkened borders and a few simple gradients. As for what RhinoBull said about simple & fast, the new theme doesn't seem to go that far away that it would worsen browser performance – if there are usability changes, well, I didn't check for them throughoutly. Just a quick peek on the three most important views (forums listing, forum view, thread view). It actually looks a lot like the default SMF theme.

The only reasons to upgrade to vBulletin 4 are A) end of support for vBulletin 3 (not gonna happen soon I guess) and B) the new advertisement possibilities... feature wise I don't see anything that VBForums could take advantage of.


Edit!
vBulletin 4 actually performs better in browsers than the current vBulletin 3 theme, because the HTML has been rewritten to be non-table based & cleaned up while at it. The code is much shorter and thus loads faster (unless you happen to use some ultra fast connection; I have a mobile 3G, VBForums is the slowest site I visit).

[RobDog888]

There are alot of improvements in vB 4. From bug fixes to new features. The software has been completely rewritten with CSS and very very limited tables used. Its more W3C ccompliant than vB 3 could ever be which means it will be better viewing on more browsers and even phones!

True, we have alot of customized features but even on my site with only a few basic modifications, everything from the plugins to the standard vB 3 themes are not compatible. It will ultimately mean a complete rewrite of all features and our current default vB 3 theme is vastly improved witht eh default vB 4 theme (its still blue though).