I don't bitch about vB, I praise it. Or used to at least. I agree that multiple threads should be placed into one central one though Liam
If it wasn't for those "fanboys" who have been volunteering their time beta testing & speaking up then your beloved vB5 would be in a far worse shape than it currently is.
Totally agree. I'm still on vB4.2.1 and waiting for it to update compatibility with PHP 5.4 and 5.5. However, I've already started the process of looking for alternatives (1) in case vB4.2.2 is delayed too long or (2) when vB4.2.1 hits end of life. Xenforo just looks like a stripped down beta concept to me still. On the other hand, I hadn't taken a look at IPB for a good few years (since before vB4.0 certainly) and I must admit I am very impressed with how much IPB has improved - almost a counterpoint to the gradual decline of vBulletin since they started development on vB5.
I'm on vB4, and our members absolutely love it! It's intuitive, full of mods, and really attractive. It does everything we could want for our community. I also like xenForo and IPB. I don't understand why it needs to be a mutually exclusive competition. They all have some awesome qualities!
Its on the agenda, I keep pushing it, and I'd love to tell you when, but the reality is, I cannot atm.
While waiting for updates I just get myself busy putting up small incremental improvements for our user experience. It's a lot more fun than waiting for something that we all know is being worked on or being planned. Instead of making myself hostage to their timeline, I just do something productive. Oh, thank you Paul. I hope management has learned something over the past few years and actually start to listen to those that are in touch with reality such as yourself.
I can tell you with 100% certainty that they listen - they read the forums, they read the results of surveys they send out, and Wayne, myself and others (such as Allen) often provide other feedback as well. From all of this, and other feedback & factors, they make their decisions. You may not like the decisions, but thats another subject entirely, one Im not going to debate here. One of the decisions was to update vB3 & vb4 for php 5.4 compatability, tagged onto that for vB4 was the issue of IE10 and CKE. As a result of that decision, I worked on, and released, vB 3.8.8. The updates to vB4 were a lot more substantial, so it was decided to release all the work that had been done so far (last year) as vB 4.2.1, for various reasons, the rest went on hold. There are only so many resouces for all of vBulletin, and they have to be balanced and prioritised - right now they are concentrated on improving vB5, that is after all, the current version. At the same time they are monitoring the planned uptake of php 5.4 by large hosts, such as 1&1, and the uptake of IE10.
That's good to know. I am not the whiny type but I do hope that this gets to the management as well. Your biggest assets and brand ambassadors are the Big Boards. Now, however that's defined is highly subjective. These guys are usually fast to adapt to new backend updates but are usually the slowest to upgrade to the latest version. This is where your product(s) are usually gauged by upcoming community managers. They look at the big boards list and see who uses what. I hope you will find that it makes sense to take on issues that are critical to these customers of yours. In any case, most of us have a lot of time to weigh things. I just hope that most of us don't have to lean towards moving to the competition.
I can tell you that no big board owner I have talked to is going to vBulletin 5. Most haven't even gone to vBulletin 4. What they are doing is looking at xenForo and IPB because those companies have proven to not be inept at their job. It is good though that they finally started to work to support the actual usable versions of vBulletin that many large forums use instead of abandoning their largest customer base when it comes to software versions.
I do not think that any Big Board owner in their right mind would switch to vB5. vB4 is highly useable though and there is still a lot of room for improvement. You still have to give it to vB when it comes to security issues. I think they are two steps ahead of IPB in this department. As for xF, while it is a neat product, it lacks a lot of the useful features that we need. In the end, it all boils down to preference.
I agree that xenForo is not there yet for everyone and have made comments in the past that it is personal preference. However, those that are on vBulletin 3.x and 4.x should be looking ahead and that future is not with vBulletin. While vBulletin 4 works well enough and is still be shown some attention to, you are not going to see any ground breaking features from that version line. Mostly maintenance releases and security updates. If you want to look at the future of forums, IPB and xenForo are who everyone should be watching.
True and we are watching closely. But who knows, maybe vB has something up its sleeve and surprise us. ^_^
I really like vbulletin its great its got some features which other forum softwares don't it may be unfinished but its pretty good.