The next version of vBulletin?

[Fusion]

I believe the next version will be significantly different (dare I say superior?) to that of the current version, so it would be logical to label it version 4. Just as they did when 1 -> 2 -> 3 etc.

[birdie]

Why wouldn't the next version be 3.8?.

The announcement was they going to 4.0

[legionofangels2]

Why wouldn't the next version be 3.8?

Are they just going to skip to 4.0 for fun or what?

I'd like the next vBulletin and each version of it to change it's image and layout. That way if the core is changed, modified styles and such of the core will look noticeably different from older versions of the product.

I'd like Threads to be flash operated, I want to scan through posts faster, meaning load all the posts on like a 3D wall and be able to scan left to right all the posts in the thread.

I want a lot more, but what's the point? It won't get made.

[Floris]

Yep, you show up licensed now. Thank you for taking the time to set yourself up again.

[Vtec44]

Klisis,

I'm using PhotoPost vBGallery and it's pretty much integrated completely like a simple plug in. I've never used PhotoPost Pro, but it was designed as a general purpose gallery script that will fit many forums. That maybe the reason why it didn't feel as "integrated".

[klisis]

klisis you currently show up unlicensed. To show you're licensed please set yourself up in the priority support form from the members' area. Thank you.

Forgot to update e-mail address on the forum account when Steve merged two of my Vb licenses.
I have two owned and active licenses. It should be showing me as licensed now.

[Floris]

klisis you currently show up unlicensed. To show you're licensed please set yourself up in the priority support form from the members' area. Thank you.

[klisis]

I am a long time Vb customer. My first forum was UBB and moved to Vb in 2003. I've liked Vb and I still like it. However, unfortunately I have switched my site's forum to IPB.

My reason was that I needed fully integrated galley as well as few others. I've tried Coppermine and Photopost Pro. They integrated alright but not fully. Besides, there was always this feeling of ... incompleteness with Coppermine and Photopost Pro.
Again, I like Vb, but I had to move away from Vb because it was no longer meeting my needs.
I've purchased license for IPB, IP. Gallery, and IP. Download. To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised how fully integrated they were. It was pretty much what I've been hoping for since early 2005. Though I must admit that as a forum software, Vb is currently superior than IPB.

I dislike to say this but I do not regret moving over to IPB with integrated Gallery and Download manager. As I said, those were what I had wanted for few years.

[Grover]

SEF urls is almost certainly going to be included - Invision have just announced it and vB can't afford to get left behind.

Personally I want to see a more unified approach to data, very much like Drupals system. I hate the fact that we can't move blogs to forums to projects, imo this is really stupid - the whole point of having one provider for all these scripts is max integration with each other.

As much as I love vB and wish the development went more this way, I have been following Drupals development for a while and am in two minds whether to drop using vB to power my sites and go with Drupal instead. Of course they will take a different direction - which is actually what I want... forums are not enough by themselves anymore. The only thing holding me back is the time needed to learn Drupal to the level I want for customisation - I've used vB for years, and have learnt a great deal about it over that time, and we can now pretty much style it to exactly how we want (including for other publishing areas, such as articles). It would take at least 6 months of Drupaling to be able to do the same for Drupal imo. Downside to drupal is user interface is not as nice, and the forums are basic (which would mean running phpbb and a bridge, or even vb) obviously the emphasis of the sites would move quite a way from the forums anyway.

If only Jelsoft would take time out to talk to customers, and act on feedback - it could help them hold on to them. I guess firstly they need to ascertain which customers are most valuable to them and which ones they 'need' to keep. I know Drupal thrives on the type of sites I want to create.

I guess I am just holding out to the announcement from Jelsoft - to let us know what they have planned before I make a final decision.

Well, I am almost more or less in the same boat. IMHO Jelsoft waited much too long to develop their Blog and SN stuff. I still remember the vision of some staff-members stating that 'vB is forum-software only' although it was very clear that reality had surpassed that vision years ago. Social Networks were popping up all over the place and as a vBulletin customer I could not offer any social networking stuff on my site, apart from the forum. People were actually leaving my site, in favor of social networking sites like Hyves (biggest SN site in The Netherlands).

You are so right in saying: 'forums are not enough by themselves anymore.'. Sometimes I felt Jelsoft was too focussed on their 'forum-only' approach. So, although they started too late IMHO I am glad to finally see a Blog and SN stuff in my favorite software. Today's internet-users need more then just a forum. So today's boardadmin's need more then just a board... I need a Blog, I need SN stuff, I need a Gallery, I need a Calendar and I need something that ties this all together... : yes, I badly need a CMS too.

How much further can you take the already sophisticated vBulletin forum product? Well, indeed much further on some aspects, but I think Jelsoft should focus more on the overall line of products. Where is the promised CMS (6 ! years ago there was confirmation of active development on it) for example? We not only need the forum from Jelsoft, we need all the products mentioned above aswell. And these products should integrate much more. One of the main reasons of having one provider for all these scripts is max integration with each other indeed, like Razasharp says.

So, to get back to the initial question : I hope to see a CMS released alongside vB 4.0. That is the most important thing for me. Next to that I hope to see a much improved style for the Blog released (it is really not so good), including the ability to let the users of the Blog style it in anyway they like, or at least offer some default styles they can pick from. And I would like the SN/Blog to have all the functions in it that are common in today's SN/Blog software out there. vB has -finally- become more USER-oriënted, and I do realize the SN and Blog products are just in their very first stage, but on a lot of levels it can be improved greatly to match todays standards as offered by Facebook, Myspace, Hyves and all of those.

Keep up the good work and impress us with vB 4.0!

[xjuliox]

I love my vB but i would not use it without vBSEO! My site's traffic doubled by vBSEO.

[Razasharp]

SEF urls is almost certainly going to be included - Invision have just announced it and vB can't afford to get left behind.

Personally I want to see a more unified approach to data, very much like Drupals system. I hate the fact that we can't move blogs to forums to projects, imo this is really stupid - the whole point of having one provider for all these scripts is max integration with each other.

As much as I love vB and wish the development went more this way, I have been following Drupals development for a while and am in two minds whether to drop using vB to power my sites and go with Drupal instead. Of course they will take a different direction - which is actually what I want... forums are not enough by themselves anymore. The only thing holding me back is the time needed to learn Drupal to the level I want for customisation - I've used vB for years, and have learnt a great deal about it over that time, and we can now pretty much style it to exactly how we want (including for other publishing areas, such as articles). It would take at least 6 months of Drupaling to be able to do the same for Drupal imo. Downside to drupal is user interface is not as nice, and the forums are basic (which would mean running phpbb and a bridge, or even vb) obviously the emphasis of the sites would move quite a way from the forums anyway.

If only Jelsoft would take time out to talk to customers, and act on feedback - it could help them hold on to them. I guess firstly they need to ascertain which customers are most valuable to them and which ones they 'need' to keep. I know Drupal thrives on the type of sites I want to create.

I guess I am just holding out to the announcement from Jelsoft - to let us know what they have planned before I make a final decision.

[Fusion]

Sorry, Floris. Personally I meant no ill will.

[Floris]

Dilly & Fusion, I've deleted both your posts .. behave on these forums; you two should know better.

[manutdvn]

VBB is a different forum product by another company. This is vB (vBulletin).

It means VBulletin Board lol.

[Hayk]

I want to see SEO feature too. I use vBSEO for one of my forum, but it will be great to have default SEO for my two other forums

I think one of the reasons they don't include SEO features, is because they are trying to keep vBulletin as free from HTTPd feature requirements as possible. At present vBulletin will run on just about any web server that supports MySQL and PHP, but if SEO were included, the SEO features would be reliant on the web server supporting URL rewriting features, in a similar or identical way to which Apache does it.

It's easy to allow user to have or not SEO, it could be as vBBlog or v B Project Tools. If your server doesn't allow you to have SEO, don't have it or change server