Maybe vBulletin v5 changes my feelings, but I will not support vBulletin 4, and until future notice, the entire vBulletin software. vBulletin 4 fails on being framework, on being customizable software; and it’s fault is on the interface designing team and stylevars.
The Good
The concept of the stylevars system is great, it gives a lot of potential for different levels of expertise and potentially perfect control. The conversion of tables to CSS-only is perfect and a much needed change to give potentially limitless design possibilities.
The Bad
The stylevars system is far too big and needlessly complicated. It attempts to be easy, but it falls short with how it’s labeled, navigated, and the general UI communication. More so, the CSS itself is a cluttered mess of concepts and reuse inappropriate rules that will fit the needs of vBulletin’s default skin but never the needs of a custom skin. I fail to see how anyone qualified as a UI designer was chosen for this job, as the system lacks many standards and common sense required.
The Ugly
It’s been a year, people were hired, tons of feedback, and 4.1’s revision of the stylevars system was released in 4.0.8; yet there has been no success in this revision. I’ve moved onto IPB for reasons of frustration towards IB’s continued lack of care in product quality. While IPB doesn’t have a stylevars system (that I’m aware of) and I do not completely favor their software for personal reasons, their organization of classes, Markup and CSS is leaps better than vBulletin 4 could ever be without a complete revision. vBulletin 3 series might have had the whole tables thing that was old and limiting, but at the same time, the style managing system actually worked correctly and made sense. It might have been more limiting, but it was much more effective.
Why are you here complaining? We don’t care!
I’ve been a customer for vBulletin for 5 years with 2/3 licenses, and this is a customer feedback forum. I may not be registered for a vBulletin 4 license (the experience has been with contracted work) and for obvious reasons, will not gain one. I had hope, and continuously see it pushed away with each advance of IB’s work on vBulletin. As a customer, I wanted to give my opinion towards their continued progress and why they will not earn another sale from this customer.
extremepixels owner had also voiced issues with the styling system of vBulletin 4 for similar reasons as for what I’ve presented here, and some long time vBulletin fans had left for similar reasons as well. While all decisions are for IB to make and not all customer feedback is agreeable, I’ve given ways to enhance the system and make it more useful in the past. But their denial of quality is reason to basically say I cannot respect this company nor their product.
Hope the rest of you are happy with minor changes that take hours to conduct, as in the end that’s all that matters; Your customer base.