Just wondering what the opinion is of some of you long time members on what you feel about vB4?
Personally I was really frustrated with the way everything wasn’t fully thought through when they added the social networking a couple of years ago. I stood up screaming at some of the obvious problems and sure enough most of the things I mentioned would be problems turned out to be problems (but at least 90% addressed from what I can tell).
To say this left me rather frustrated was an understatement. I’m looking at starting a new site, but am seeing the same frustrating pattern as in the past. What really boggled my mind is that vB put a gold label on a product that clearly wasn’t gold! From what I can tell from some of the discussions going on in various threads is that vB4 still isn’t really a “gold” product.
I haven’t installed or played/tested it yet .. So my question simply falls to some of you regular participants here who can give me an honest opinion .. Is vB 4.0.2 what you would consider Gold?
Meaning are there so many bugs, issues and things “they are working to improve” that each update is more of a major upgrade needing to revert 30+ templates among other things?
I see complaints of search not being very user friendly, as well as the asset manager being frustrating to new end users .. are these claims legit .. or are they just the usual complainers from those who complain about anything?
I did look around and ticker around here a couple of months ago when it went gold and was frustrated that as much as I like vB .. vB4 clearly did not merit the gold status it was given and was still Beta in my mind. I could spend a couple of days tinkering again .. but at this point I can’t be bothered wasting the time and would like a simple paragraph or two from some of you summarizing your experience with vB4.0.2 and whether you feel it’s a product worthy of Gold status and thus worthy of my time in developing a new site around it .. or do you feel it’s not really “gold” and that I might be better off waiting a little longer for the product to stabilize a bit more?
Honestly, it’s unclear what IB thinks vBulletin is supposed to be. The road-map released by Adrian is ambiguous, far too generalized, and pretty convoluted. Then, later, he contradicts himself (or at least contradicts IB’s previous statements) and then says that vB5 is going to be a complete forum rewrite again.
There’s a reason why all of the top mod developers jumped ship several months ago. The brain-drain at vB.org is palpable, and a lot of us are just basically hanging on until we see where to go from here, but it’s probably going to be to IP.Board or MyBB, once they reach a critical mass.
Truth be told, I think Internet Brands must have all the current vBulletin users between a rock and a hard place. Think about it, they can’t stay with vB because of the bad quality, bugs and ripoffs, but they can’t go to IPB or MyBB straight away because the communities for them are rather lacking and the mod authors self centered and arrogant. IPB is the better software, but vB has all the community resources for it.