Oh so no facts whatsoever, just your opinion, I can respect that if it there is nothing backing it up.
its not very encouraging when the latest version has a lot of bugs and is not working properly and you cant see all the features working etc, if it was working properly then at least you could do a like for like comparison and make a decision, but i was definitely going to get vbulletin installed on a site (and looking forward to it) then i found out that there was a new version coming out - so i waited then when it comes out every person that has commented on their site has bad words to say about it. (lots of bugs) in the meantime the bugs are being treated, but who knows what it will end up like when it is finished ? - and when ? yours heavily in anticipation - or shall i just go for the version 4 because at least its stable ? (and also im not sure if a lot of the stuff they have put on the new version is relevent/needed on a forum (?) )
I've been running Vbulletin on three websites almost 8 years now. I'm definitely not upgrading to VB5 mainly because I'm losing trust in anything VBulletin is doing as a company. Their customer service and support is getting worse every month and they don't seem to have a clear direction on where they want to take VB5. VBulleitn's focus seems to be on getting completely new customers (that don't know as much about what's been happening) and ignoring the current customers as much as possible.
Getting a response after a week on critical issues is not support. Not releasing upgrades to VB4 (primarily to fix issues with the Mobile Suit) to put all employees on VB5 is not support. Our users complain on a daily basis about the issues with the mobile suit with no word from VBulletin on a fixed version. Even when there is a response from Vbulletin staff, it's with a boat load of attitude and a tendency to write a 4 word reply instead of a writing one or two lines of detail response. We have to go back and forth for a two weeks just to get a response worth anything list goes on
The problem isn't with support staff or customer service. They actually are doing a fairly good job in spite of what management and developers are doing.
I think vB 5 is moving in a wrong direction and prefer vB4.x over it any time. (not with the default skin though) Every vBulletin major release comes with tens of exploits and hundreds of bugs that take them another 3 years to fix. vBulletin 4.2 is at the end of its development-cycle and is relatively stable platform to develop on. Besides everything, most of the vBulletin 5 updates seem to be front-end updates, not much has changed imo – nothing that's not already possible on vBulletin 4. Not worth the $250 price tag in a million years while I own a vB4 license.Only good thing is that the default skin is responsive, though it looks awful and isn't very userfriendly. (same old same old in usability department) About vBulletin 4 and responsiveness – I found a cool skin for vB 4.2 that will be released in the first half of december according to its author (a small company named Themecrate). Imo it looks very neat and it's responsive. Can't wait to get it. Have a look at the skin and make sure you play around with your browser width to enjoy the responsiveness: http://demo.themecrate.com
I looked at the code and a lot of the backend stuff is what they used almost a decade ago when they released 3.5. I'm disappointed at vB. Will definitely not upgrade.
Nothing would be wrong with that, if they wouldn't ask you to pay another $250 for a trivial update - for something that's already possible with mostly front-end coding in vBulletin 4.x.
I mean the Style Generator and Mobile Style mostly. I think it was Steve Machols other half who worked for VB too? I might have that wrong it was a while ago; but she'd messaged me to tell me my footer copyright links on a couple of my forums were dark text on dark background (not invisible but not obvious, and certainly not intentionally like that). I said it's funny you should say that as I used your Style Generator you've made and it pushed that CSS out like that, she said 'oh, it's not been finished yet'. Still to this day it's the same. I added CSS to make it white text on blue background. It's just a bit of a oo-ar. Seems to be the way IB is going. Can't find many good threads about VB5 and I am trying. I wanted to like it, I just don't. The fact the dev team are not making VB4 what it should be, is a real shame, and it feels like I've not long bought a couple of dozen VB4 licenses in hope for something a bit awesome and already it feels like I'm being told 'it's 5 now we care about, be ready for it, it's coming soon' and that feels a bit like 'oh, heard that before'. I loved VB3 though looking back now. And I hope Xen keeps working on it the way they are. It'll be a refreshing change for the old IPB/VB options we've mostly had paid-wise. IMO, of course.