Is there anything wonderful in vB 4?

I just don't understand forum software enough to be able to evaluate vB 4. I know I don't like the look of it, but let's assume that's a less important point for present purposes.

How about the rest of vB 4? Is there anything there to write home about? If I were to upgrade to the suite, what would really knock my socks off? what has been really improved that someone like myself is not equipped to appreciate right off the bat? how about the suite components -- does it look like they are quality products?

(I keep looking for an excuse to give IB another $130. Based on appearance alone, I'm turned off. What is there that I don't fully appreciate yet, but that would later make me glad I took the leap?)

 

Supposedly it loads faster because of a pure CSS template format (no more tables). Then of course the blogs and CMS, but what has been said is that the forum itself will be pretty much the same until the release of 4.1. I don't know if that still holds true since things are changing so fast right now.

 

With vb4 the things I see us paying for is the updated default skin which I aint very keen on but it hardly kills me browsing when using it, I am glad its tableless now too.

The forum search I think has been re-written and made better and im sure there is other good optimisations too.

The main change that I like is the comments layout for the blogs, its much cleaner and more like Wordpress than the current blogs.

I dont think theres anything in there that I know of that makes me really impressed but surely theres more to come with the further releases.

 

Personally I am excited about vb4, mostly because of the things in the backend.

For instance it may be possible to have 3 character searches on a shared server. Prior to vb4 the choice was between mySQL full text search, which in my shared hosted environment needed to be 4 characters or more, or the vb 3 search which did not always work as well.

So I may be able to search for things with 3 characters without moving to a vps. If so that will save us (me) $.

 

I like the idea of having built in sitemap generator and search engine friendly urls.

Even free software like wordpress has search engine friendly urls, so why has it taken companies like vbulletin so long? I dont knw, but I'am glad its finally here.

 

Just found Ander's blog post at Part 1 vB4mance: Helping communities grow, performance data model changes in vB 4.0 - Blogs - vBulletin Community Forum

 

Personally, I have been waiting for the template engine for three years now. I just asked for about 25 new template hooks to be added to that it is more extendable. There are also over 200 style variables now. Seems like a lot but you can literally customize your entire site without opening a single template using them. Finally, the display is separated from the HTML. It is literally controlled by the CSS.

Want a mobile style? You can do that without editing HTML.
Want to hide certain elements? You can do that without editing HTML.
Change the layout? Yep, without editing HTML.
Want to translate buttons for a different language? No HTML edits, no Graphic edits, no CMS edits. Simply translate your phrases.

To see an example of what I mean, go to vBulletin.com/forum using Firefox and press Shift-CTRL-S. The HTML should lose all of its formatting.

All of that to me is wonderful. The new template engine is probably also the most comprehensive feature in the software. It literally opens up a thousand doors. Other stuff like search engine rewrites, advertising managment, CMS, Blog updates, etc... are nice but really if all it had is the Style, that alone signifies the update.

Now of course, I am a little biased here. I am not a designer and I hate table layouts with a strong passion. Using CSS turns design into code and I can work with that. Much easier to get what I want over using WYSIWYG mode in Dreamweaver or Photoshop.

 

Previous management thought they were unimportant and unneeded.

 

For me:

Search engine friendly URLs - a major, if belated, step forward
Looking at vbulletin.com the forum definitely loads and operates faster.
New, modern style. Whatever people think of the new one, the old one, good as it was, was getting *really* dated and the new one will at least look more modern.

That's just from an end user perspective, which is what matters. I hear all of Wayne's comments on the variables and the templates etc, all of which sounds great, (plus I've heard comments from others on those too), but I'm just looking at the end user perspective here.

For me personally, the best thing so far is probably - not having to create a full set of gif buttons for each of my 17 styles!

 

I saw no difference. (?)

 

wow, another complaint thread about vbulletin

 

I don't get why you would say that, Brandon. The question I asked is a very real one for me. The single most relevant question of all, you might say.

I'm learning a lot from the replies, too. As I suspect other people are also.

 

4.0 is full of lot's of love man! Can't you feel it? :p

 

You've asked a question we all already know the answer to
vBulletin-The Most Powerful Forum Software Available
It's just like all the threads and replies of people bashing vBulletin, just another way to complain IMHO :2cents:

 

The best thing about the prerelease of vBulletin 4 is that it forced me to look at Invision Power Board and I was so impressed by their suite, which exists and works well. Thanks to vB 4 I was able to expand my horizons and that's a very good thing.

 

Turns off CSS for me. Maybe it is an addon but I thought it was a default feature of Firefox. Looks like the attachment when I that key combination.

 

Depends what you mean by wonderful... Obviously not the licensing, but I do quite like the fact they're improving things like the search feature, and while not so much the style itself, I do like how that is now tableless... makes me somewhat seem less hypocritical with my arguments about why using tables for layout is bad then having tables all over the place in the forum.

I do like the fact the video embedding is finally default, and I like the redone blog layout though.

 

Thanks Wayne.

 

If you weight in the VB4 suite then I believe so, yes. One single log in/search/management for the Forum/Portal/Blogs is what I find more interesting about it. It's also nice that they have finally thought about tools to help admins placing publicity.