| Advertisement |  |
Click to advertise with us! |
The Upgrade Thread
- Thread starter Ed
- Start date
4.0.3 isn't exactly a .1 release, but the nomenclature is variable. For example:saxhound said:
4.0.3: The "4" is generally a major rewrite. The "0" is generally a feature update. The "3" is a bug-fix revision. Usually. Note that we're currently using 3.8.4pl2. The "pl2" means "patch level" -- a fix, in this case, issued to fix a security problem. Following the nomenclature I used in the "4.0.3" example, I would have called it "3.8.5". Or, following some Unix releases, 3.8.4.2 -- and the ".2" entry means, "Not a bug fix, but a fix because of an external problem."
In any event, I probably wouldn't have noticed the search engine problem if I wasn't specifically looking for it, because I rarely use the search engine here.
Because of the reported problems, I did a LOT of research on the 4.0.x vBulletin release and I've not been thrilled with what I've seen. One of the problems seems to have been that they completely changed the way that the product was developed and "farmed out" certain aspects of the design to other folks ... that seem not to have used forums much. Another way of me saying that it's excusable to have a bug where if two people post at exactly the same time, the result will be disappearing posts from both sides. It's not excusable to have a search engine that doesn't search or returns improper results.
However, vBulletin is a lot more robust than the alternatives and support people are on call to help. I really like phpBB and IPB and some of the others, but if you b0rk your forum in phpBB, it's your problem. In vBulletin, they're supposed to help fix it.
In any event, provided that vBulletin does release 3.8.5 and still does support this architecture, that works fine for me: I can do more 4.0.x testing. That means that y'all will eventually have a better product!
Yes, and no. With paid support it's like with cosmetics - they sell hope.
I'd rather pay a person to do it for me than pay for a product I still have to install myself and with which I am out of luck when my data goes haywire, regardless of the manufacturer's post-b0rk support.
It's like paying your repair person vs buying a Musicmedic kit.
I definately prefer having my main repair peeps (three of them) doing 80% of my repairs. I just don't spend enough time to get any good at it. Pete is my go-to guy for all thangs forums.Yes, and no. With paid support it's like with cosmetics - they sell hope. I'd rather pay a person to do it for me than pay for a product I still have to install myself and with which I am out of luck when my data goes haywire, regardless of the manufacturer's post-b0rk support.
It's like paying your repair person vs buying a Musicmedic kit.
I also think of it this way:Yes, and no. With paid support it's like with cosmetics - they sell hope.
I'd rather pay a person to do it for me than pay for a product I still have to install myself and with which I am out of luck when my data goes haywire, regardless of the manufacturer's post-b0rk support.
It's like paying your repair person vs buying a Musicmedic kit.
I'm a computer tech with 25 years experience, 12 or so certifications, and a degree in information technology. If you were to ask me to work on your computer, I charge $70 an hour, one hour minimum. IF I like you. (And I'm cheap.) Otherwise it's $7000 an hour.
I've mentioned that it takes about 2 hours to do the backups/install and maybe another 1/2 hour to configure. And you have me tweaking stuff and I'm on call (yes, Ed's called me before -- although I think that was when I was doing this on SOTW).
Seriously, setting up and installing the software and/or doing backups, etc. is easy, if you know how. Just time consuming. I think I've also mentioned that most of the folks that have had problems with the vBulletin 4.0.x install were just doing it wrong.
So, I'd almost be independently wealthy if Ed hired me to just do it.
It's the difference between an experienced repair tech doing his repairs on his horn and only havening to pay for parts or sending it out to have someone else do it at the other tech's rates.
The vBulletin support really can be, "If you can't figure out what's wrong, you can give us an admin account and either we'll fix it or tell you how to do it." That's kewl. And we got the package at a discounted rate, with the software. Less than the cost of Microsoft Office, IIRC.
...I was not referring to the specific WOOF situation. Just what I'm observing in my daytime job (which adds to my own 25ish years' experience). We get paid to perform what a customer wouldn't dare to touch (I wish) themselves.
I did not see a significant difference in the different types of software - open source, off-the-shelf commercial software, rent-per-month. In many cases, the vendor would pull an undocumented trick to make stuff work or claim it wasn't supported with Swiss regional settings or the like. Some "vendors" (including folks releasing freeware) behave more professionally than others, regardless of what the "earn" with their applications.
But again, I was just musing about the world as a whole.
I did not see a significant difference in the different types of software - open source, off-the-shelf commercial software, rent-per-month. In many cases, the vendor would pull an undocumented trick to make stuff work or claim it wasn't supported with Swiss regional settings or the like. Some "vendors" (including folks releasing freeware) behave more professionally than others, regardless of what the "earn" with their applications.
But again, I was just musing about the world as a whole.
No prob.
It's all dependent on the level of expertise. If I knew nothing about, say, car repair, a car technician could take advantage of me.
Open source v. commercial is an interesting debate. As far as forum stuff goes, we had phpBB, which is an open-source product. It does have great features and looks good. Unfortunately, if you have a "large" forum with "lots of" traffic, you have to start tweaking things to make it work right. And, considering it's open source, you could pop onto the phpBB support website and get no answer, 5,000 answers that don't help or incorrect answers that break your forum more.
However, it's free. Free isn't bad. If you know what you're doing and understand the limitations.
It's all dependent on the level of expertise. If I knew nothing about, say, car repair, a car technician could take advantage of me.
Open source v. commercial is an interesting debate. As far as forum stuff goes, we had phpBB, which is an open-source product. It does have great features and looks good. Unfortunately, if you have a "large" forum with "lots of" traffic, you have to start tweaking things to make it work right. And, considering it's open source, you could pop onto the phpBB support website and get no answer, 5,000 answers that don't help or incorrect answers that break your forum more.
However, it's free. Free isn't bad. If you know what you're doing and understand the limitations.
Referencing an earlier comment I made, I got official confirmation from vBulletin that 3.8.x (what we're currently running) will be FULLY supported until 4.1 is available. That means we can stick with what we've got and if it unexpectedly breaks, we can still open "help desk" tickets with them and not get a, "Well, you've got 3.8.x on your forum. We could fix your problem, but you have to move to 4.0.x, instead."
Additionally, while playing around on vBulletin.com, I found that there's another problem that's related to usergroups and that's been confirmed as a bug. While that wouldn't have been a deal-breaker for me (I haven't had to fix our usergroups in months), it's a heavy annoyance.
Finally, while vBulletin has seriously pushed back the 4.0.2 release date, I doubt that the problems I discovered will be fixed, even in that update, because they're concentrating on some bugs they have in Internet Explorer (sorry, Jim, they are). Hey, I might not even bother with the 3.8.5 update, unless there's a major flaw being fixed.
So, what I'm doing is trying to make some improvements, here, that I've been waiting on 4.0.x for: I've uploaded the notehead smilies and got a nice RESIZE BBcode coded. I might upload a few more themes, too.
Additionally, while playing around on vBulletin.com, I found that there's another problem that's related to usergroups and that's been confirmed as a bug. While that wouldn't have been a deal-breaker for me (I haven't had to fix our usergroups in months), it's a heavy annoyance.
Finally, while vBulletin has seriously pushed back the 4.0.2 release date, I doubt that the problems I discovered will be fixed, even in that update, because they're concentrating on some bugs they have in Internet Explorer (sorry, Jim, they are). Hey, I might not even bother with the 3.8.5 update, unless there's a major flaw being fixed.
So, what I'm doing is trying to make some improvements, here, that I've been waiting on 4.0.x for: I've uploaded the notehead smilies and got a nice RESIZE BBcode coded. I might upload a few more themes, too.
Attachments will be fine. There's a setting change that has to be made. (You can take a look in the test forum; everything should be there. If they aren't, I'd like to know -- but remember that the test forum is using a month old database.)
The same setting is available in this forum and I'm going to try it at some point. I want to have backups, first.
IIRC, Harri did the vBulletin update on a LIVE forum. I can say that if all his attachments were in the SQL database (table) and he did the update, there probably would have been problems: that database could have been in the several gigabyte range and backing up/restoring a several gigabyte database is a problem in many ways.
Could I fix it? Possibly. I'd charge my standard rate of $7,000 an hour, 1 hour minimum.
The same setting is available in this forum and I'm going to try it at some point. I want to have backups, first.
IIRC, Harri did the vBulletin update on a LIVE forum. I can say that if all his attachments were in the SQL database (table) and he did the update, there probably would have been problems: that database could have been in the several gigabyte range and backing up/restoring a several gigabyte database is a problem in many ways.
Could I fix it? Possibly. I'd charge my standard rate of $7,000 an hour, 1 hour minimum
.
Ah, 4.0.2 is now available (as of 2 hours ago). Fix list:
I'm still EXTREMELY wary. I'll be checking the vBulletin forum to see what other people are experiencing and also install 4.0.2 on the Test forum.
- [Ads] Quote and Advert in First post content
- [BB Codes] BB Codes tags should count against minimum text requirement
- [CSS] CSS Caching Bugs
- [Fixed Width] Doc Width - bug [HASHTAG]#35038[/HASHTAG]
- [Groups] The "View All Groups" page needs significant improvements
- [Hook] Hook memberaction_dropdown_items unset problem
- [IE6] Various IE 6 Compatibility issues
- [Languages] Stripped characters - ä,ö,å
- [Language Support] Additional Charset Support
- [Lightbox] Date and name overlap in the Lightbox if the picture is relatively small
- [Member Profile] Fixed Blog Tab and Custom Tab problem in Member Profile page.
- [Polls] Fixed issue with poll question too long error
- [RSS] Fixed RSS support to CMS
- [RTL] Fixed various RTL issues
- [Search] "Find All Threads" by person
- [Search Results] Miscellaneous Search Bug fixes. The ones I reported! I hope! (They're still broken on the vBulletin forum ....)
- [Settings] User link broken in Settings -> New Visitor Messages
- [Signatures] <p> cannot be used to enclose signatures
- [Smilies] Smilies not resizing in Smilie Box
- [StyleVars] Removed Hardcoded StyleVars in Groups
- [Tags] Edit Tags Degradation -> You cannot add any tags.
- [Updated UI] User Settings Pages
- [Updated UI] Registration Screens
- [Updated UI] Advanced Search Pages
- [Updated UI] Moderation Pop-up Menu
- (new) [CMS] Articles can be sorted "Alphabetically"
- (new) [CMS] Added Pagination to Section Pages. Pagination replaces the "View All" link.
- (new) [CMS Widgets] Recent Forum Posts Widget. This new widget improves CMS performance.
- (new) [CMS Widgets] Recent Forum Threads Widget. This new widget improves CMS performance.
- (new) [CMS Widget] Category Widget (Show All). This new category widget will show all categories regardless of which section you are in.
- ...and about 200 more bugs
I'm still EXTREMELY wary. I'll be checking the vBulletin forum to see what other people are experiencing and also install 4.0.2 on the Test forum.
Yessir. They do.
Additionally, I was cordially informed by them that the search issues they fixed were OTHER issues and they haven't fixed the issues I reported. In other words, the search engine is still broken, but it's not as BADLY broken as it was before.
Oh. I should also say that the fixes caused some other problems, as well, and they were reported within hours of the new version being posted.
Officially, let's wait for 4.1, when we HAVE to upgrade.
Additionally, I was cordially informed by them that the search issues they fixed were OTHER issues and they haven't fixed the issues I reported. In other words, the search engine is still broken, but it's not as BADLY broken as it was before.
Oh. I should also say that the fixes caused some other problems, as well, and they were reported within hours of the new version being posted.
Officially, let's wait for 4.1, when we HAVE to upgrade.
3.8.5 is now out. It's purely a 3.8.x bugfix upgrade:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1943966
I checked around on the vBulletin forums and there are supposed to be no cookie changes, which was done in the 3.8.4 patch that I installed and caused problems for some folks (sorry; allegedly the security problems fixed were worth the cookie problems).
I'm going to give it another week. I'm tracking all the 3.8.5 issues on vBulletin.com. Doesn't look like any major issues, three days in.
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1943966
I checked around on the vBulletin forums and there are supposed to be no cookie changes, which was done in the 3.8.4 patch that I installed and caused problems for some folks (sorry; allegedly the security problems fixed were worth the cookie problems).
I'm going to give it another week. I'm tracking all the 3.8.5 issues on vBulletin.com. Doesn't look like any major issues, three days in.