vBulletin 5 Is on the Horizon

So I just found this over on vBulletin.com.

I have to say that I personally like the new interface. What do you guys think?

 

It doesn't show a lot, really.

I mean, sure it'd be interesting to see what they come up with. But half of the time, upgrading tends to break things. And it's equally important to know if the trade-off is worth it.

I wonder what features they plan to add, overall. The module editing/adding seems simple and clean, but that's something that it should have been from the start.

 

is the way that you're making me feeeeeeeeeeel tonight...

Anyhow, I don't like the interface. I know it's just the standard model to show things off, but I hope KHV never looks like those pictures.

 

vBulletin really, in my opinion, has dropped the ball with vB4. Them releasing vB5 after what, two years of vB4, reminds me of the Windows Vista debacle--they put out a crappy system and, instead of fixing it and releasing an update, move to something new because they know about the low opinion they've received. vBulletin 3 was released in 2004; vBulletin 4 didn't come out until 2009. vBulletin 3 was getting outdated towards the end, but it had a long run, and enabled a vast repository of modifications, skins, improvements, etc., to be released. That's what made it a solid platform. vBulletin 4 still lacks a great deal of features, and while independent developers have released some very impressive modifications to fill that void, it's only just getting started. vBulletin 5 likely would not be compatible with any of them, essentially erasing the hard work many people did to improve upon the vB4 product.

vBulletin 3's last version also was, if memory serves, 3.8.7. vBulletin 4.2.0 was only just released.

Having short time between releases is all well and good, but upgrading will break most customizations people have, and will run a nice chunk of change. The screenshots look nice, albeit a bit too professional to seem useful for a site like KH-Vids, but that's the base product--skinning and customization go a long way. vBulletin is in hot water right now with IPB vastly improving and the very promising Xenforo, and a lot of customers are abandoning them for those products. Willing to keep an open mind about vB5 but I do not have high expectations, and releasing it so soon after vB4 just seems wrong.

 

Also, from what I hear, they'll still continue to work on vBulletin 4 and move on to 4.3.0.

 

I'm sure the forum is receiving upgrades as well but right now it seems that vBulletin is attempting to move into offering a full suite of products, instead of being just bulletin boards. Which is unsurprising, many of the major forum software developers are doing the same thing. Their CMS addition was pretty crap, so I'm not surprised that they would put a lot of work into it for future releases, and show vBulletin 5 as the CMS you wished vBulletin 4 was.

I really can't say anything about the potential of upgrading, that's up to Ron simply because it would cost money, but given how heavily modified our site is it would be a task. If vBulletin 5 proves to be something special I wouldn't mind doing a lot of work to upgrade, because I get frustrated with the vBulletin 4 product, but again, it's a question of money and feature availability.

 

Not to mention the new and latest vb4 security patch v1+ has been causing vb user a lot of problems and errors and right now my site is down because someone I'm not saying who wouldn't get off my back about installing the new patch after upgrading so now I have to work with the little time I have during the day due to being so busy with work and helping my family with rl issue to fix the god damn problem and the patch was the main cause of the prob because it happened to somehow corrupt some or all of the files on my damn server.>:[

 

Those screenshots shown are mock-ups. It's likely that the end product will be somewhat different. It's not functioning yet.

So we have to be patient and see if vB5 actually delivers.

 

But if it does that means a week of downtime while they update =.=

 

Our upgrade from vBulletin 3 to vBulletin 4 only had us out for a day, and we were on an extremely slow and uncooperative server at the time. The upgrade process really only takes a few hours maximum (including times for backups etc.) if you know what you're doing. It's having everything set up from the time you reopen that's tricky--but things have changed for us and we could technically prepare things on a test site before upgrading the live site.

 

Well apart from vB's new interface (new= version 4 and above), which I despise much, there hasn't been a single version of vB4 that does not have at least one security hole and needs constant patches. The version KHV is running is not safe either, so it's not a bad idea to take a look into it.

 

We actually upgraded to 4.1.11 not too long ago.

Also, from what I've seen, 4.1.3, which was what we were running before, is the only version, that I know of, anyway, that didn't need to receive any security patches.

 

From 4.0, all the way up to 4.1.12 + 4.2 are vulnerable and need patching. Some can be exploited in one way, others in another way. And some in many ways.
You can't blame a website for not applying the patch or updating, vB's developpers are just scratching all day and wait for hackers to do all the job and find the newer version's hole so that they can fix it.

 

I thought this might interest you guys.

Here's a preview of the Site Builder.

 

wow it looks pretty terrible. do not want.

 

We don't have access to that thread, post a screeenshot instead.

 

That's odd. Rainshine can, but you can't?

Anyway...