Caron Diacritic Diplay Issue + Member ID Question

[Hikarin]

I tried asking this question on vBulletin dot org originally, but never got a reply. So, here I am.


Firstly. There seems to be a problem on mine and other vB4 forums that I know, in which the caron diacritics for ǎ, ǐ, ǒ, and, ǔ display as though separated (it displays fine over ě, though). See the attached image to know what I mean.

The odd part is, is that it only looks that way when viewed through Chrome and Opera. It looks fine if you're looking at the page on IE or Firefox.
What is Chrome and Opera doing for it to affect it like this? You can view these carons fine on other websites on said browsers, so what is the conflict?

I still don't quite understand, but adjusting the font should solve the issue. But that's only a band-aid fix. I SHOULD be able to use any of those fonts, like I am able to when viewed on IE and Firefox.
Logically, all fonts should support all Latin diacritics, and it seems that it is not always the case, but that hardly appears to be the issue when displayed correctly in other circumstances.
The caron splits from the letter in the both the Georgia and Verdana fonts. Again, I would like to understand why this is font-related, but also a browser-specific issue.




Also, as a separate question, I have sort of retconned my website. As such, I have deleted the old members but kept the base idea of the site active. I have also had to delete a number of bots, unfortunately.
However, any new members I add are added by the next available user number (e.g., let's say there were 30 members before I deleted them, the new member receives the ID number of 31).
Is there a way to reset this count?

[Wayne Luke]

The problem is that vBulletin 4.X does not support UTF-8 characters. It never has. It tries to approximate these with HTML Entities but that won't always work. All versions of vBulletin will convert UTF-8 characters to HTML Entities if the database isn't one that supports UTF-8 characters based on its defined connection, character set, and collation. With new installations of vBulletin 5.X, we set the database character set to utf8mb4 for the best support across languages. At least if we can. This is more complicated on upgrades.

Chrome and Opera use the same browser engine - Chromium. They will exhibit the same issues when displaying HTML entities. IE and Firefox each have their own browser engines. Though IE has been deprecated by Microsoft and isn't in development anymore.

You can try to convert your database to UTF-8 and use a UTF-8 character set and locale within your language. This may help with new content going forward but won't affect old content. However for the best UTF-8 support, you need to upgrade to vBulletin 5 and then convert your database. We have some tools to help with this.

[Hikarin]

With new installations of vBulletin 5.X, we set the database character set to utf8mb4 for the best support across languages. At least if we can. This is more complicated on upgrades.

You can try to convert your database to UTF-8 and use a UTF-8 character set and locale within your language. This may help with new content going forward but won't affect old content. However for the best UTF-8 support, you need to upgrade to vBulletin 5 and then convert your database. We have some tools to help with this.

Hmmm... I still greatly prefer the overall look of vB4 though. There also still appears to be a significantly shorter list of mods. I'm not convinced that an upgrade is the right choice right now.

If I were to upgrade, you mention changing the database to be more complicated on upgrades than fresh installs. How so? Would it be very problematic?

[Wayne Luke]

How so? Would it be very problematic?

Really depends on the site. If the site uses English, which vBulletin 4.X was developed around then it isn't problematic at all. If the site uses a language like Arabic and doesn't use UTF-8, then it is little more problematic. If you use vBulletin 4, Arabic, and a Latin1 database, the system doesn't store characters at all. It converts everything to HTML Entities. The browser then converts these to characters on display. If you're using a language like Arabic with a UTF-8 database, then it becomes a lot more problematic.

The problem in the last use case is that basic UTF-8 characters take between 1 and 4 bytes to be stored in a database when using a UTF-8 character set. If you used subset of UTF-8 like Windows-1256 as your HTML character set, then we don't know where each character starts or ends. In 2010, MySQL tried to stabilize UTF-8 by introducing the utf8mb4 character set. They didn't change the default to UTF-8 until much later. This was after vBulletin 4 was developed and released. Today I believe that MySQL 8 uses utf8mb4 as its default. I don't think that vBulletin 4 will actually install on MySQL 8.

On top of utf8mb4, the UTF-8 consortium has added character combinations for those characters that require more than 4 bytes to be stored. Basically you store two separate characters and the client combines them into a single glyph or image. This is how the majority of Emojis popular on mobile devices are actually drawn. Because new glyphs are added to UTF-8 every year, then a new version of utf8mb4 is released on a regular basis. I believe the current character set is utf8mb4_900_ai (the ai stands for accent insensitive). There are also ci (case insensitive) versions.

We spent 9 months developing and testing scripts to make these conversions on vBulletin 5. The original scripts took about a week to develop but only worked in about 10% of the test cases. Getting that number significantly higher after obtaining test databases took significantly longer. Even then, I consider the current scripts as Betas. Due to the fact that the database structures in vBulletin 4 and 5 are dramatically different, we won't be investing the resources to develop conversion scripts for vBulletin 4.X.

---

As for aftermarket modifications, vBulletin 5 is actually more extendable than vBulletin 4. Not only can you add to its code but there is a lot you can do without even knowing PHP. For example:

1. A template can obtain data from a database table or API, process that data, then display it on the page without the administrator ever writing PHP.
2. Templates can also be inserted directly into Modules on a vBulletin Page.
3. Or you can call place a template on a Template Hook to include it in many locations throughout the software.
4. Custom pages can be created using drag and drop tools.
5. The software ships with 15 different Themes.
6. New styles can be created by editing 15 Style Variables.
7. Icon colors can be changes by editing Style Variables, no graphic editing.
8. HTML and Ads can be added using standard Modules in Site Builder.
9. If you need to use PHP, you can use a PHP Module instead of creating a complete add-on product.

Then finally, if you really need to you can create PHP Packages to expand vBulletin with API Extensions, third-party logins, file system tools, integrations, and more.

Some of the popular Add-ons from vBulletin 4.X are actually standard features in vBulletin 5. What add-ons are you using?

[Hikarin]

Some of the popular Add-ons from vBulletin 4.X are actually standard features in vBulletin 5. What add-ons are you using?

My plugin list, since you asked :


Add View Forum Threads to Memberaction Dropdown
Admin Max-Min Character and Image Override
DragonByte Tech: Advanced User Tagging (Lite)
Forum Runner
Forum Tags
GamerCards in User Profile and Postbit
GlowHost - Spam-O-Matic
Hasann - Sort Who's Online BY X
Hasann - Username Html Markup
Inactive User Reminder Emails
Make Prefixes Clickable to Filter Forumdisplay
Mod-Mall BB Code Spoiler
Move smilies below textarea
Must Vote In Poll to Post (and more)
New reCaptcha for Human Verification
SE Smilies Picker By Group
vBadvanced CMPS
vBulletin Blog
vBulletin CMS
View User's Visitor Messages (vb4)
VSa - Advanced 'New Posts'
VSa - Advanced Forum Rules
VSa - Advanced Forum Statistics
VSa - Advanced Permissions Based on Post Count
VSa - Advanced Registration
VSa - Attention Zero-Posters
VSa - Auto Birthday Greeter
VSa - Auto Reply
VSa - Check If Already Posted
VSa - Jump to My Last Post
VSa - Last Post Info Enhancements
VSa - Login To User Account
VSa - Moderating Stats
VSa - PM System Enhancements
VSa - Prevent Posting to Wrong Forum
VSa - Sub-Forum Manager
VSa - Thread Listing Make-Up
VSa - Top Posters of the Month/Year
VSa - Visitors in Last X Hours
Yet Another Award System

[Wayne Luke]

Well Forum Runner no longer exists so you can delete that addon. When it did exist, it was included in the vBulletin 5 download.

1. vBAdvanced CMPS is equivalent to the existing CMS and Site Builder in vBulletin 5.
2. GlowHost Anti-spam features are built-in.
3. "New" Recaptcha is built-in.
4. Blogs and CMS are built-in.
5. User Mentions (tagging) are built-in
6. Birthdays can be acknowledged with Notices and Modules. Notices work in vB4 as well.
7. Admins can set min and max characters for content as standard feaures. They can override images. This is possible in vB4 without addons as well.
8. Smilies are below the text area in vBulletin 5.
9. You don't need an addon to add a Spoiler BB Code. you can add your own custom BB Codes in the AdminCP.
10. You can view a user's visitor messages with the enhanced Search Engine in vBulletin. Same with all their topics.
11. Prefixes are clickable to filter forum display (this happens by default in vBulletin 4 as well)
12. Promotions can apply permissions based on post count. (These exist in vBulletin 4 as well)
13. vBulletin 4 and 5 support using Notices to draw attention to posting if a user hasn't made any posts.
14. Forum rules are just HTML. You can make this as advanced as you want already.

don't know what the rest do specifically so can't comment on them.

[Hikarin]

Okay, so a lot of my plugins were added on so that I had less work to do. Even the ones you mentioned already being featured to some extent in vB4 were only extensions of those functions.
Still, they are ones that I chose to make my life easier. Settings and featured were tied to plugins rather than me trying to keep track of changes that I had made myself.

Just how much can you get vB5 to resemble vB4?
Can you add forum stats and who's online to the bottom of the forum board?
Can you change the user postbit to resemble the vB4 features?
I also find all the sidebars unsightly. The whole thing just has too much of a social media feel to me, when what I want is a classic forum vibe.

I realise that there is a trial that I can download, but that's a lot of work to play around with for something that might not even pay off.

[Mark.B]

5.5.5 - release due very soon - features the option for a classic homepage which is more like vB3 and vB4 in terms of what it displays (it doesn’t mimic the styles though).

So you get no sidebar and then the blocks at the bottom for Who’s Online, Basic Stats etc.

I currently have it set at my demo site:
https://www.talknewsuk.com

[Hikarin]

5.5.5 - release due very soon - features the option for a classic homepage which is more like vB3 and vB4 in terms of what it displays (it doesn’t mimic the styles though).

So you get no sidebar and then the blocks at the bottom for Who’s Online, Basic Stats etc.

I currently have it set at my demo site:
https://www.talknewsuk.com

Okay. That looks a lot more agreeable, actually. It's more of the simplistic look that I'm going for.

[In Omnibus]

Okay. That looks a lot more agreeable, actually. It's more of the simplistic look that I'm going for.

You can make vBulletin 5 look like anything you want. Since the entire platform is page and module based you can have as much or as little as you like on every page.

You can also use a number of different layout templates to achieve the desired placement of each module. It's a major upgrade to vBulletin 4 in terms of what can be done, even if your end goal is to resemble vBulletin 4.

[Wayne Luke]

Just how much can you get vB5 to resemble vB4?

Since vBulletin 5 doesn't actually use images for much of anything, you can make it look like vBulletin 4.X with some style variable changes. I mean, it isn't much different as it is. A few more gradients , different colors, different icon colors, and module layout. The first three are controlled by Style Variables and CSS. The last is controlled in Site Builder.

vBulletin 5.5.5 includes an alternate homepage, called Classic, based off of vBulletin 4.X's forum listing.