vBulletin 4

I'm doing this poll to find out just how many of our members and clients intend to upgrade to vBulletin 4 after it's release.

This is important to me, because I will be porting over my free styles and updating custom themes for clients who upgrade. But before I can do any of that, I'll have to take the time to learn the new templating system.

So please use the poll and comment or ask your questions below.

Thank you! :)

Yes, i do plan to upgrade but that really also depends on what jelsoft plan to charge existing customers for this!

I will upgrade eventually, but may wait a couple of versions

Not sure how much it'll cost.

None of us knows yet Mikey, however, I have it on good authority that special discounts will be applied to active licenses. So be sure that your license is active before it's released.

I am hesistant. If it is low priced whilst my license is still active I might do it. At the moment, it is working fine. And I am always skittish about updates and upgrades, one never knows just what kind of Pandora's box is opened!

Quite simply, I'm not going anywhere Peggy doesn't go. :D

We are a very small private board, so unless there was some security issue or some other very compelling reason to change to a total new vB, I'm not going to be the first one to jump.

I do like the new styling of the calendar and the more modern look to the V.4 board message area.


I am the vote for "Other"

Wow that's nice! lol

i am still waiting. for this release...
I will upgrade.. insha Allah

is going to charge extra for this!! :confused:

They haven't said yet. You should check the threads on vB.com in the Licensed member area

Does anyone know what VB4 is going to look like? I haven't seen any screenshots yet on vb.com. I may have missed it. Thank you:)

Does anyone know what VB4 is going to look like? I haven't seen any screenshots yet on vb.com. I may have missed it. Thank you:)
You have to look in the blog entries for vb 4 updates. Here's Kier's last update, showing sneak peeks of the vB 4 style. I love it, personally.

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/blog.php?b=2360

Thank you so much for the link Peggy. Not sure I like it. I don't like the forum home at all and prefer columns.... Well see how it goes.

Thanks again! :)

You're welcome!

I have seen the sneak peak on vbulletin.com but i will wait and see what will it offer to current license holders and then finally upgrade.

Waiting to upgrade is, imo, a very good and smart idea. It will be a while, probably, before custom skins can be updated. vB 4 is a whole new ballgame. Very little that works with 3.8x will work on vB 4.

I'm going to be updating very few, if any, of my current styles. Simply because there is no updating. They'll have to be designed all over again. I'd rather just start new.

I plan to upgrade. I am not sure on the time frame. Depending on the functionality of the new asset manager, what the cms looks like and bug reports on some of the installed modifications I have.

I will need your help depending on cost of coarse.

I'll be glad to help. As soon as I get a handle on it myself.

I didn't even upgrade to 3.8.....my 3.7.1 is working fine and provides about everything i need and as someone stated..seems once you update it cause a new set of problems. I have a lot of custom themes and mods ..so i have to keep them working..so i don't see me updating anytime soon ..unless i have a server crash and lose everything and have to start fresh.
To me there is too many updates that don't support current Mods..it becomes a hassle, I have other things to do beside try to fix my non working mods/Themes due to a update.

IF they implement some of the features as well as they are showing them off to be it looks like the new version will have several nice new improvements. The asset manager as well as the CMS look like they will add several things to my site that have needed to be improved upon. I just hope they do not implememnt some of these things like they did the social networking system where functionality was limited or non-existant.

They are expressing how nice all the new features are just like they did with the social networking and I fear these will again be half made or permissions will not be properly implemented.

Owning a few forums ill stick with the 3.8.X series with all but one. I will be upgrading to the new 4.0.X the day its released on my webmasters forum though. Bugs or not ill want to dive right into it. Check it out and get some feedback. Work on whipping up a custom style or two. Then ill look into upgrading the other forums.

Sounds like a good idea, I'll probably hold off for abit before I make the leap .

I am currently looking at other solutions for software and working with a couple of other systems. I just can not afford the amount of money vbulletin wants. I look and see to upgrade my 3 sites it will take $130 each but the next release I am thinking the discount will not be as pleasurable and with other solutions it will only be a small fee to keep up with current versions as I move forward and each vbulletin licence expires. I will sell the main lincense but the other two I will just let expire and remain dormant for the time being.

Which other solutions do you have in mind ? I'm just curious :)

To upgrade all three sites right now with the discount will be $390 for the current discount.

When version 5 comes to debut or when all three become end of licence It will be close to $675 to remain current and keep blogs and the cms.

I can not afford that. I am looking at invision or going to phpbb.

I have already purchased a basic starter pachage for a month at invision to test things out and push the buttons.

For $10 to push the buttons and test it out while I consider what to do I look forward to not beeing told that their way is the only way. I can have any software I want and make it look any way I want it. For $700 I can buy peggy a lisense, have her train on the skins for a month or two and create me a new skin and still come in under budget for what vbulletin wants for me to upgrade.

I see where you're coming from but I certainly would never go back to phpBB. It's a good free forum but in all honesty it just never had the power and features of VB.

With regards to IPB I have one IPB forum and I must admit it's a nice piece of kit but again the support for free plugins and mods is much less than VB, so I found that a big turn off. (plus their not that cheap either)

Also if you buy three owned licenses now you'll have your VB fully updated for at least 1 year and you know it's not essential to upgrade your VB version or be up to date all the time. I've personally got sites still running on 3.7.1. There running fine, no problems, and still making money. I generally don't renew every year, usually every other year, makes the cost much cheaper and affordable.

Obviously I completely understand where you're coming from but I just wanted to give you my views on it :) and even now I'm not going to upgrade to VB4 on my own sites for a while (unless you're waiting for a feature in VB4, I don't think it's worth it)

I can see that I do not have to have up to date software on every site or in every way but some of my end-users are hard core conservative or liberal mentality.

It is either up to date or they will not log in and as it turns out most of these people are my most active users and at least two of the forums I have.

Without up to date software and support they would drop and run. I just do not have the money and will not advocate the moeny to be spent on a product that is yet to be proven.

If I purchase the current upgrade package that will lock me into the blog/cms package for all three domains that I have a forum on. That would mean when version 5 comes out I am at the mercy of vbulletin to either provide another discount or pay the full price.

I can not afford $1000 at a time for a hobby site that might make me a few hundred a year at the most with ads.

With invision I will at least get locked into a set price scheme where upgrades will always cost me the same amount.

Copier your logic and reasoning is without a doubt spot on. I mean in your shoes I probably would do the same thing. $1000 for a hobby site surely is a lot, in fact I've only got VB on sites that actually earn me a profit so for me I'm sure you can understand my reasoning is a little different.

However saying that, and I have absolutely no idea what your niche is (so its a stab in the dark). Is it possible that you're putting too much faith into these hardcore members. I mean from what I've learnt from the net it's that a) members come and go anyway, but b) as long as you have good content and a decent community most people don't really care what version of VB you're running.

In fact even i've had guys who've complained on my sites that the VB version is not the latest. They complain yes, but don't leave or threaten to leave as at the end of the day they enjoy the community and not the software version :)

Anyway it's just food for thought. And overall I wish you luck with your decision, because as I've said before IPB is a great piece of software and if you ever need it skinned let me know, because I can do that too ;)

My niche is the copy, fax and printer industry.

I am not saying that it will coswt me that much for one license. What I am saying is that to take advantage of the current schedule it will cost me $130 for 3 sites.

Take into consideration that with current events on vbulletin it looks like that with to push this type of ugrade schedule so I will have to maintain either my current licnese or upgrade and when I upgrade to this package I am looking at the long term cost of the full suite once I purchase it.

If I purchse , like peggy is looking at with her forums to upgrade all my forums to the current level it will take me two years of ads to pay off what vbulletin wants for one license. I can not afford that. I would rather take all revenue, upgrade to a new solution so that next year I can clear enough profit to pay peggy to create me a new and improved skin.

That is how I paid her last time and I plan to do it again. I paid with revenue generated with the community and passed it on to this one to keep it going. I wil not be able to do that with what vbulletin wants to charge me for a new blog/cms that I already own.

look at it this way.

My hobby site made funds from ads to pay peggy to create me a skin.

I paid that out of funds that ads paid for from the site.

With current upgrade levels with vbulletin, I can not do that. I broke even and even invested a little of my own funds to pay peggy for the skn she made me.

That would make the habby sites like mine not able to pay peggy and the other developers of skins and products that we enjoy a marketable product.

license _ $130
shoutbox _ $25
Skin _ up to peggy
vbadvanced _ free but I also like some of his other products for my members $100

and the list goes on.

I can not afford that.

Yeah that's fine, like i said your reasoning is sound. And remember even though I'm a fan of VB, I'm not even considering moving to VB 4.0 myself for a while. I want to see how things work out over the coming months :)

Peggy,

We made the leap to 4.0 today. A little aggravating, but overall I like it. I'm going to start playing with some custom skins for our board while you're learning too.

Nice work, how long did your migration take ? care to share the link to your site ?

It took me about 3 hours, including the time to run a full SQL backup and bring up the database on a virtual machine here at home and make sure it was OK before proceeding.

I did a full SQL export, imported it into the SQL server on my machine and did a close examination of the tables first. Call me paranoid, but I have worked in IT for many years. That's the other caution - I do this for a living (well, more Microsoft than php, but certainly can play DBA when needed), so when I hit a couple of errors in the install, I fixed them and didn't freak.

We were at 3.8.4, and fully patched (again, my personal paranoia), so according to vB, ready to go. Edited the config file and started pushing the files to the ftp site, which really seemed to take a long time last night. I should add that we took advantage of the presale (like we had a choice - pay now or pay much more later, even though our license was only a couple of months old.) We bought the full package, not just the forum. I wanted to play with it. It's a hobby site, for bird lovers, that I co-own with a friend.

Ran the install scripts, had a few hiccups, but nothing major. Just took a while. The upgrades run sequentially, through the alphas and the betas, and RCs. Looks like it changed the entire attachment system too, and added/dropped some tables.

So it's up. It looks really vanilla after having some really pretty themes on it. Oh well, we'll address that soon. Still have the vBulletin logo on it, need to get in there and figure out where that is in the new and radically different templates so I can put ours up instead.

Also, the Front Page created by the CMS comes with all sorts of content in it so you can see how to use it. We're going to try to work on that today and customize it for our site. Looks pretty powerful, and users seem a little stunned, but cautiously optimistic.

I'd love to work with you guys as you start rolling out themes for 4.0. I plan on trying to work on ours in my "free" time. LOL. I have colors in mind, now just need to get it done.

We are at www.featheredkingdom.com/forums. It's a free forum for bird lovers, both educational and social. You are always welcome to stop by.

Nice work, I'm personally not going for VB4 for a while, yes for this site we'll be doing custom work and even releasing some new themes for VB4 in the new year but me personally I just don't feel ready to go to vB4 quite yet :)

Nice work, I'm personally not going for VB4 for a while, yes for this site we'll be doing custom work and even releasing some new themes for VB4 in the new year but me personally I just don't feel ready to go to vB4 quite yet :)

Ditto, whole lotta work and headache for very little benifits personally...

~Surreal

LOL. I'm a glutton for punishment I guess. For us it was either go now or go in January. I had a couple of days off work now, so I figured that I'd have more time now than in January with the software releases I have scheduled there.

I am working on my own custom theme (which I have hidden for now). We'll see how that goes.

good luck with that, I'm really scratching my head now as to the true benefits of going to VB4 :)

I do not intend to upgrade to vB 4 on my forum.

awww now i wish i didnt upgrade peggy :( i love your themes! wish i could downgrade my site.. i really like the girly themes, my sister is all women

Well I upgraded. I miss the old styles!

I think I am going to upgrade pretty soon, if only because I like the mods and plugins that are being made for it better than for the 3.8 series. I came here to see if Peggy had made some themes for it... so I might just wait awhile LOL