vBulletin v4 vs v5

[conozo]

If we were to upgrade from v4 to vBulletin v5 what benefits would we see?

Would the site work better on mobile devices, would search work better, etc?

I know we have been on v4 for quite some time and vBulletin only has v5 out, do they actively develop the software anymore?


I like the updated logo above by the way.

[87accordlxi]

I've worked on vb5. There isn't much difference to the users, other than looking a little slicker. The admin side is less friendly. Overall, not sure if it's worth the risk of haywire happening if something goes wrong during the upgrade unless we're forced to do it. And then there's the hours (days) of work to get the site back together visually after the upgrade, testing custom forum permissions, subscriptions, uploads, email, etc. If the host phases out our version of PHP, it would force us onto vb5. We're on a VPS so I choose the PHP version, so I don't see that on the horizon. But anything can change.

The old logo was cool, but it was up for 13 years and it was time for an update. Plus I wanted something that took up less vertical space.

[conozo]

Thats a fair answer.

Yes the logo takes up much less vertical space which i noticed right away.

What makes this site look old is partially the colors but its mostly the boxes in boxes for all the content, everything is in boxes. The style not a big deal to me, I care more about the functionality. I wanted to bring this up because i hear over and over again on the 3geez facebook that this site is the gold mine of information but nobody can find anything. Many of them don't even try to come here anymore, they just wait for those on both to find and feed them information. I myself have a very hard time searching for anything even a post that i just saw a few days ago. I even try the google search and still have a hard time. I'm not sure how to make that better which is why i thought maybe v5 has better search.

One feature request. Can we get rid of or lower the time restriction between searches at least for those who have accounts and are logged in.

[ShiRen]

What I would like to see is actual BBcode support, what the site has right now is really half baked, cant even specify image sizes

[87accordlxi]

Thats a fair answer.

Yes the logo takes up much less vertical space which i noticed right away.

What makes this site look old is partially the colors but its mostly the boxes in boxes for all the content, everything is in boxes. The style not a big deal to me, I care more about the functionality. I wanted to bring this up because i hear over and over again on the 3geez facebook that this site is the gold mine of information but nobody can find anything. Many of them don't even try to come here anymore, they just wait for those on both to find and feed them information. I myself have a very hard time searching for anything even a post that i just saw a few days ago. I even try the google search and still have a hard time. I'm not sure how to make that better which is why i thought maybe v5 has better search.

One feature request. Can we get rid of or lower the time restriction between searches at least for those who have accounts and are logged in.

Yeah, as far as I can tell, there is no improvement in search effectiveness in vb5. It's a very common complaint with vbulletin, and I think their argument is that they have to balance effectiveness with server load. Forum owners don't have Google's server resources, basically.

And I lowered the time limit to 5 seconds between searches.

[Oldblueaccord]

Thats a fair answer.

Yes the logo takes up much less vertical space which i noticed right away.

What makes this site look old is partially the colors but its mostly the boxes in boxes for all the content, everything is in boxes. The style not a big deal to me, I care more about the functionality. I wanted to bring this up because i hear over and over again on the 3geez facebook that this site is the gold mine of information but nobody can find anything. Many of them don't even try to come here anymore, they just wait for those on both to find and feed them information. I myself have a very hard time searching for anything even a post that i just saw a few days ago. I even try the google search and still have a hard time. I'm not sure how to make that better which is why i thought maybe v5 has better search.

One feature request. Can we get rid of or lower the time restriction between searches at least for those who have accounts and are logged in.

If you roll down to the left there some other choices like the "at night" version.

[ShiRen]

Yeah the night racer theme hasnt aged well. Would be pretty easy to write styles for the site though, given the tools Id do it.