Really don't know what to do about vB 4

I'm really at a loss as to what I should do in regards to the vB 4 upgrade... :nailbite:

I have three forums. Two of them are on owned licenses, and will probably stay with 3.8 for the rest of their lives.

The other one is AdminAddict. I originally planned to use the vB 4 suite on AdminAddict but there are several factors that are contributing to my reluctance:

• I honestly don't think vB 4 is that great. There's nothing that excites me, it isn't much of an improvement, and who knows what the future holds.
  • vB 4 is very "different" and would require some re-learning of how things work for members. This makes the decision to convert to something else a bit easier.
• The direction that vBulletin may be heading is a huge turn-off. We have all witnessed what IB has done in the recent months, and I feel crazy for even giving them any chances anymore. Whether we support them or not, we all know that what they did was wrong - that's a fact. Anyways, that's not what this thread is about.
• If I acquire vB 4, I'll also need a style. Considering the fact that a $500 custom style is a "great deal", it's clear to me that a custom style is nowhere within the reach of my budget.
• The $160 to upgrade is also hardly within reach, to be honest.

So there are at least four downsides to purchasing vB 4. More importantly though, is it bad if I don't upgrade AA to vB 4? Will people think we are sub-par and deem us "ancient and unusable" ? Should we really keep up with the latest-and-greatest?

If I had to spend $160 on something, I'd much rather purchase an IP.Board license rather than a vB 4 license. Speaking of switching to IP.Board... I'm not sure how the community would react, and the last thing I want is to 1) turn people away or 2) end up having to switch back to vBulletin.


Any advice? I have no clue what to do, and the pre-sale ends tonight (I think ?) so I'm fairly rushed.

 

Nick,

I can't argue anything to support going with vB4. Your points are my points.

I honestly do not think if AA stayed at 3.8 or went to IPB that it would impact my participation here. FWIW, the upgrade pricing was doing it's purpose, put people into situations like yourself, which is alot of people. I feel they (IB) is betting on people to *throw up their hands in surrender* to take the offer.

If you do decide to go with upgrade, then you'll still be supported. I'm sure I speak for everyone that you'll do what you feel is best for you, your staff, and your site. End of story.

Ciao


Edit: If there is one thing you could demonstrate, then it would be stability, ergo confidence. Take that how you need to.

 

I know you have paid subscriptions and advertising, but if you DID decide that you wanted to upgrade to vB4 (forums-only or suite), or even wanted to move to IPB, I'd be willing to bet that if you asked for member donations for that purpose that you might be surprised at the results.

I'd personally be willing to chip in.

I love vB (tho I'm not a worshiper as some would think), but I'm also very interested to see what IPB is like. Who knows...people may take to it and there might be a mass-exodus of AA vB admins to IPB.

I know that for my newest forum I'll be sticking with 3.8 for a while; at least until most of the mods on my board are ported over to vB4.

 

Thanks, Chani. I've thought about this, but considering the recent accusations of me "selling out", I decided it wouldn't be best for my or AA's image. If I have to forfeit using vB 4 or IP.Board just to keep a few members happy, then so be it.

 

Nick, I think you already know what my feelings were about changing (I just can't bring myself to call it an upgrade) to vB 4.

I decided to take a leap of faith and switched all four sites over to IPB. And I am as pleased about the conversion as I was when I switched from phpBB2 to vB 3.0.5.

It's an interesting situation to be in, trying to attract admins of all platforms to participate in a single community that may or may not be running the software of their choice. Is your use of vB turning admins of other platforms away? I doubt it. So I don't think your choice of software will have much effect on anyone. Functions are different enough in vB 4 (which I view as a real shortcoming, BTW) that people are going to need to learn how things work with it, as much as they would with a different software platform. Actually, that helped me decide to convert to IPB. If my members were going to need to learn new things, then it was time to step up and let them learn IPB.

 

That's a very good point. I never thought of that. Let me add it to my list of reasons not to upgrade to vB 4.

 

If you really can't decide what to do, have you thought about a poll? That way you'll not only get active posters who you prolly know their view anyway, but you'll also get some of the silent majority who lurk, but not post (or not post often).

 

I ended up getting the upgrade to the Suite for one forum yet to be launched. It's going to be a local forum for residents of my borough of New York, and I figure I'll want the CMS and maybe blogs eventually.

I had originally thought I would get it for my most active forum, but seeing all the complaints and the lackluster software, I realized I should hold off on using the Suite on that one. (Besides, I already paid good money for GARS, and have several mods my users wouldn't want to give up.)

I will have to redo the custom style for the local forum, but I don't have any members yet anyway.

I still have at least three forum ideas I don't have licenses for. Maybe I'll try IPB for one of them.

 

How many times did I gripe about the forumjump menu and the moderation menu being so close as they were? I don't think I was ever going to get used to that. Things were just too different. I am of the not-so-humble opinion that things were getting changed within vB, just so someone could point to yet another change. But some of those changes were a PITA.

People are resistant to change. It's a fact of life. But if you can make a change for the better, people generally adapt to it quite easily.

 

I would personally considering switching to IPB. I don't find it as great as vB3 but surely not as expensive or in an uncertain road as vB4. They have made their mistakes (I registered the first day they created "ibforums"), but it seems they have learnt from them and turned out to know how to respect their customers and listen to their needs now, so that's a big plus.

 

Being an admin/resource related site I would say eventually go with vb4. It's inevitable. I personally think but I guess I would personally make the upgrade when most of the 3rd party addons have been ported to work with 4.0 and when vb4 is a little more feature rich.

I guess this is a case of sitting back and wait to see what happens. How will the company improve vbulletin in the following point releases? will all the top developers/coders upgrade their scripts?. it's basically a waiting game which doesn't help any of us but we all have to do it untill we know the time is right to make the switch.

 

Here is a good example of the up to date IPB forum looks like.I am a 3 year member there.

LINK

Does this help?

 

Please don't take this personally, but I would not buy IPB if that's all I had to base my decision on.

To me, that is too plain, even for a business site, and if that's all I had to go on, I would run, thinking thatIPB was far too simple (read: not enough features) for my needs.

Granted, I didn't dig into the site at all, and only looked at the front page, but isn't that what a lot of people do?

 

You either upgrade to 4, move to IPB, or stay at 3.8. For my two cents, I don't care what software you run I'll still hang around. So a few members like myself will need to get acclimated to IPB if you switch, big deal. It's not all that different mostly just different phrasing compared to vB.

FWIW, I do think it's important that what ever platform you choose you stay up to date with the latest and greatest version only because your an admin forum and probably should set an example plus you can show off new features.

 

Thanks for your input, everybody. It is greatly appreciated.

I agree 100%. A few weeks ago, I had no doubt in my mind that we'd be upgrading to vB 4 Suite, and I have always told myself that a site like this needs to remain up-to-date sporting the latest and greatest. But as you saw in my list, I am completely turned off by vB 4.

So our options really come down to:

• Stick with vB 3.8
• Move to IP.Board

Of those two options, neither require an instant decision, so I at least have time to decide what would be best for us. I hate being rushed - so 'tis good.

 

Out of curiosity, since you never said this... what are your problems with vBulletin 4 anyway?

 

I posted my response to this question here: http://www.adminaddict.net/forum/vbulletin/vb4-beta-3-out-4845/index3/#post58002

 

My Opinion: Don't upgrade to vB4.

My reasoning is simply in the product, though I too feel that what IB did was totally wrong and it certainly helped in making my decision not to upgrade. More importantly along the lines of what you said, the product just doesn't excite me. I am planning to stick with 3.8.4 for a long time. I figure when vB5 comes out I will see how the product has evolved from the 4 series. By then we'll know exactly the direction they're going with it and we'll have a better idea just how many developers are still making mods and skins for it.

As for changing AdminAddict over to IPB, please don't...at least not anytime soon. Maybe do like me and wait till vB5 to make your decision to stick with vBulletin or move on.

 

Why not just stay at 3.8 for the foreseeable future? Yes vB4 is giving the appearance of being a total suck forum software so I'd take it out of the equation all together.

That narrows the choice to staying with 3.8, or advancing with IPB. IP.Board is a extremely nice piece of forum software since 3.0 was released, throw a few of their add-ons in and its an absolute winner.

I don't suggest getting the CCS software, its more of a bare-bones CMS solution, I'd stick to using wordpress, or any other more established CMS software.

either way, switching forum software won't cause many people to quit posting here. Most people dont post just because you're using vBulletin . However one of the worst things you can do is wait and see based off software development. Continue to advance AA and stay current with things, or other forums will pass this one by and members will choose them over

 

I'd disagree with the people who say you can't wait a bit and see. Think about it... in AdminAddict's competition... most are either dead, stuck in the past or too elitist to attract the members this site will get. I think you've got a bit of free time, since most aren't going to upgrade for a decent period, hence they won't pass you by.