Yesterday Internet Brands (owners of Jelsoft) released their vBulletin 4.0 Gold edition just like they promised us earlier this year. Less than 24 hours we had our first patch release; I wouldn’t be surprised if they had another update or two before the end of the year.
There has been a lot of negative discussion about the iNet take over and it all started for me with the leaked screenshots back in May. At the time I was a little upset about the price hike but looking back, it really wasn’t that big of an issue. I don’t currently have an active vBulletin site, but I do have a dev site setup with vBSEO and I’m testing a customized setup of URL setting based off what Brent uses on Mustang Evolution. These will be very short URL’s and easier to remember. I don’t have plans as of now to open up a vBulletin forum, but I need a dev site to stay up to date if I’m going to continue offering vBulletin services.
What are your thoughts on the new 4.x series so far? I like the forums; I think they could use some fine tuning. I haven’t tested the blogs but from the quick glance it didn’t seem like they changed much. I don’t really care for the new vBCMS. I don’t like the fact that you can’t place your CMS in the root and forums in a subfolder. It just seems rough around the edges but what better what to get feedback than to release the product to the masses if it works like advertised or not.
I’ve been playing around with IP.Content on IPBSetup.com and it isn’t sold as a CMS, but you can make one with it pretty easily. That’s what I’m using on the home page, and here is a demo page I had made a few days before testing things out. Right now I’m just using a free CSS template I found on google, but you can see I’m able to add blocks (like the recent post feed on the right hand side of the home page) I can make database pages to, I need to play around with it, but I like that you can just past HTML into an editor and make a page. This is another thing the new vBulletin CMS is lacking.
AWS
December 23, 2009 at 5:46 am
Good writeup. There are several things wrong with this release. 9 years using vbulletin and this is the first time I have ever seen utter garbage released. When I was testing vbulletin 3 as part of the private tester pool even the first betas were stable enough to run on live sites. I know I ran the first beta on a million post forum. I bought one suite license for vb4 just to make sure that my suspicions on the quality were correct. They were and in spades.
vb4 at best is beta quality. In all fairness the forum only isn’t all bad although highly touted features do not work correctly.
Brandon_Sheley
December 23, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Thanks for your comment AWS
I can only hope for the best, I know it will take time but I think iNet will produce a quality product again.
AWS
December 23, 2009 at 5:46 am
Good writeup. There are several things wrong with this release. 9 years using vbulletin and this is the first time I have ever seen utter garbage released. When I was testing vbulletin 3 as part of the private tester pool even the first betas were stable enough to run on live sites. I know I ran the first beta on a million post forum. I bought one suite license for vb4 just to make sure that my suspicions on the quality were correct. They were and in spades.
vb4 at best is beta quality. In all fairness the forum only isn't all bad although highly touted features do not work correctly.
Brandon_Sheley
December 23, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Thanks for your comment AWS
I can only hope for the best, I know it will take time but I think iNet will produce a quality product again.
zander
December 25, 2009 at 11:51 am
It is definitely going to be a slower path than usual to recovery this time around, with the ver. 4.0 release. So many bugs and such holes in the usability. The vbulletin.org is working double overtime just to patch those usability holes.
I’ve always loved vbulletin; still do. I still believe that it offers unparalleled admin options. Those seem to have come at a cost this time, though, and this has, for the first time in almost a decade, sent me to seriously start exploring other board software options. I’m testing IPB currently. It is a bit of a wake up call, coming from the vast vB admin CP cockpit. We’ll se how it goes…
zanderlicious
December 25, 2009 at 11:51 am
It is definitely going to be a slower path than usual to recovery this time around, with the ver. 4.0 release. So many bugs and such holes in the usability. The vbulletin.org is working double overtime just to patch those usability holes.
I've always loved vbulletin; still do. I still believe that it offers unparalleled admin options. Those seem to have come at a cost this time, though, and this has, for the first time in almost a decade, sent me to seriously start exploring other board software options. I'm testing IPB currently. It is a bit of a wake up call, coming from the vast vB admin CP cockpit. We'll se how it goes…
Anonymous
January 5, 2010 at 4:17 am
I think the new 4 series are great except of some tiny problems which can be fixed pretty easily, But overall its very nice! and i like the new blog system they’ve come up with.
Josh112
January 5, 2010 at 4:17 am
I think the new 4 series are great except of some tiny problems which can be fixed pretty easily, But overall its very nice! and i like the new blog system they've come up with.