Bug Lifetime licenses for mods not supported in VB5?

[joshtrav]

Have this for our v4 forums, and planning to transition to 5. Are you requiring a separate purchase for the v5 version even though you offered 'lifetime' purchase options?

 

[Fillip H.]

Have this for our v4 forums, and planning to transition to 5.

I would strongly recommend avoiding vBulletin 5 at all costs. vBulletin 5 is not suitable for custom modifications, as evidenced by the fact that there are 3.5% the amount of vB5 mods compared to vB4 mods.

Last time I checked, there were 73 vB5 mods compared to nearly 2,000 vB4 mods.

Please do not transition to vB5 unless you are prepared to uninstall every modification, both our own and others, and run a completely "vanilla" installation.

Even if you did go for our vB5 compatible versions, they would have a reduced feature set compared to the vB4 version, which you can read all about under the "Missing Features" headers in the vB5 mods' feature lists. We make no attempts to hide this fact, and even alert customers in red text that it is impossible for us to create feature parity even 5 years after the initial Developer Preview release of vB5, due to the fact that Internet Brands do not care about custom modification development in vB5.

For the best evidence of how little Internet Brands cares about 3rd party developers, please refer to this JIRA ticket: Login Required - vBulletin JIRA

On the 14th of May 2015, vBulletin 5.1.7 was released with a critical data loss issue where if you installed a new modification, then uninstalled it, it permanently erased all the display elements of your forum. Literally nothing in the front end would ever display again, it was completely gone. No forum list, no thread list, no post list, no nothing. Gone.

What would be the appropriate response? Shouting expletives in the office and immediately rush to release a Patch Level release because you value your customers' data?

Pffft, as if.

The correct response is obviously to wait until the 11th of August to release a version containing the fix. Nearly 3 months.

Sure, if you installed 5.1.9 it would restore all the vBulletin default display elements that were lost, but any customisations you made were gone forever.

In other words, our vB5 mods are in bugfix-only mode as we cannot justify spending time & resources developing new products or updates to existing products for a platform that clearly has absolutely no regard for its 3rd party developers. As far as mod development is concerned, vB5 is dead, both to us and to every other developer.

If you are looking for a more modern forum platform, I recommend XenForo.

Are you requiring a separate purchase for the v5 version even though you offered 'lifetime' purchase options?

Yes, due to the fact that almost none of the code used in the vB3/vB4 versions could be used in the vB5 version, the vB5 version is a completely separate product that requires a very small upgrade fee if you wish to transfer your licences from vB4 to vB5 (again, I strongly recommend you do not do this).

You can find the exact cost per licence by going to your Client Area and clicking Renew / Upgrade Licence, which will show you purchase options for vB5. The "Dual Licence" option exists if you wish to keep your existing vB4 licence while adding a vB5 licence.

If, against all sense and all recommendations from literally everyone who doesn't work for Internet Brands, you choose to transition to vB5, please do be aware that not all of your purchased mods have a vB5-compatible version - namely vBSuperPMs.

 

[DragonByte Technologies]

Hello joshtrav,

This ticket has now been closed with the status Not A Bug.

We hope your issue or question has been addressed to your satisfaction. If not, please feel free to re-open it by clicking this link.

If you have any further issues or questions, please feel free to start a new support ticket via the button at the top of every page.

Thank you!