Updated our vBulletin software to 3.8.7

[Alex]

I just updated ninjette.org to the last version of the 3.X releases of vBulletin. Minor bugfixes, security fixes, I don't expect users to notice any difference. In fact, if you see anything different, let me know.

I'm a bit depressed, as at some point in the not too distant future, I'll have to make some decisions about upgrading this board to either the 4.X line, or move to another forum software altogether. I run a few vBulletin sites, and updated one of them to the 4.X version a few months ago (www.cal24.com). Overall, not as happy with it. The interface seems clunkier and busier. In a perfect world, I'd stay on 3.X for years and years, but as security holes become discovered and eventually exploited over time, you can't sit still forever. If vBulletin support no longer exists for it, there really isn't a choice.

All of the links to our custom mods like the wiki, arcade, some of the other niceties may not work without additional custom work, so it's something I will plan to put off as long as I can. One advantage of 4.X is that they have released a profile that works much better with mobile phones. The one we are using now is quite a kludge, so I would welcome that functionality.

We'll see. Check out www.cal24.com if people are curious.

[gfloyd2002]

We're all appreciative that you pay for vBulletin on our behalf and don't run one of the free alternatives with fewer user features.

On v4, Facebook connect looks like a cool feature, and mobile performace improvement would be good, but v4 was a disaster launch, with a ton of bugs that it seems still aren't all ironed out. It just seems like it might not be as good of a product after iNet took over Jelsoft. In fact, have you considered IPB for when you are forced to move from vB3.8? I've run an IPB board and it was very easy to administer. It had great integration with social media and mobile, too. I'm no expert, didn't do too much modding, didn't need support help, etc., but features seem to compare very well. Our members could benefit from spellcheck, for example.

Anyway, thanks again for the time and energy (and money) on this.

[Alex]

I dunno - I'm most familiar with vBulletin, have used it since the early 2.x days where handcoding was necessary during each update. Even at that point, it seemed slicker than the other options out there. From a stability, security, and feature-set viewpoint, it was hard to beat. It has (IMO) gone downhill since IB took over, but I'm not sure if it's as much the new company as it is the loss of the key people who built vB in the first place. The most key ones have founded a new forum company, check out www.xenforo.com. If I were to switch platforms, it would get a strong look.

But none of that is going to happen for quite a while.

[CZroe]

I just wish every vB forum would disable that !@#!%$ing auto-complete Javascript thing when typing a username into an advanced search>user field. It causes frustrating problems in EVERY browser... mobile of desktop. Sometimes it DELETES most of the username I typed, other times it forces me to press ENTER three or more times before it will finally search. One of the additional presses is usually to replace username with the one it found with ever-so-slightly different case even when you don't have "exact match" checked,but even that is frustratingly random. Sometimes it never popped up a suggestion and yet it ignored my ENTER key press. I press it AGAIN and it finally starts loading my search results and only THEN does the suggestion pop up, so WTF held up my first search? Sometimes, if I'm fast enough, I can just type the name and press "ENTER" and it will take me to the results like it did before vB added this frustratingly broken feature. Even the few times I've wanted it to suggest a few similar names because I wasn't quite sure of the spelling of the username I was searching for, it causes FAR more frustration than it eliminates.

Oh, and did I mention that I sometimes have the COMPLETE username typed when I press ENTER and it picks one of the names in the list that was still showing when it was only a match to the first few characters of what I typed and should have already disappeared? Well, it does. *grrrrr*

On my iPhone, Jscript is so slow that it often NEVER shows the suggested names and yet I *still* often have to press "Search" a few times (same as ENTER).

[Alex]

Jet needs more coffee. Or maybe less coffee. Hard to tell.

I like that AJAX stuff, and haven't run into any of those problems in multiple browsers.

@gfloyd: I enabled the Facebook Connect stuff on www.cal24.com today, it does work better than it did when it first rolled out. The only thing that I've kicked off there is for people to be able to link their FB accounts to their vB account, and also people can "like" threads, which publishes a link to them on their FB wall. There are a ton of options for people to post to FB when they start a thread, post a reply, etc. But I don't think a whole bunch of forum traffic makes sense in the FB context. I do very much like the ability to post a notification for a new blog entry, I can see how that would be useful.

[CZroe]

OK, so it's AJAX. Speaking of AJAX, it screws up a lot more than just that. For example, I don't have a middle-click on a touchpad, so I CTRL+Click links to open in a new tab. CTRL-click doesn't work for clicking "Advanced Search" in the search drop-down. Right-clicking the word "Search" and opening in a new tab without using the drop-down takes me to advanced search automatically, but CTRL+click doesn't work their either and it's a lot more awkward with a touchpad. I like to do two kinds of searches: An "unread posts" search where I CTRL+click all the interesting threads with new activity and then an ego-search to see any replies that I missed (CTRL+click those as well). I then do another Unread posts search before marking everything as "read" before I start reading all the tabs I have open. When it works rights, I'm happy. I know, many people use subscriptions to manage the threads they've participated in, but I find this to work a bit better for my purposes.

Anyway, here's another example of the AJAX auto-complete thing causing problems: It conflicts with the browser's own auto-complete! For example, in iOS (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, etc) mobile Safari, the dictionary already recognizes the correct capitalization for my username because it's seen me type it so many times, but it's not needed for an egosearch and pain-stakingly getting the caps right on an unresponsive touchscreen is frustrating, so I often don't. I then see iOS's autocorrect suggestion, which will also auto-accept and submit if I hit the "Search" key (equivalent to enter, the caption is just context-sensitive to the button with focus), the problem is that the browser, which often hasn't even shown the AJAX suggestion gets confused and just sits there with the corrected name in the field. When you press search again, sometimes it works and sometimes it switches to some AJAX suggestion that was never visible. It's the unpredictability of it all that frustrates me the most because it thwarts me from specifically knowing what I'm working around (I can't just press ENTER twice for example, sometimes the second press screws up because the first worked and I can't search twice so soon and others it takes a THIRD press to work).

Google's AJAX apps can be equally frustrating. For example, I can't open "Contacts" in a new tab in GMAIL while I'm doing something else with either a middle-click or a right-click context menu. I can center-click Calendar or Reader to open them in new tabs, but the stuff on the left side is just incompatible with that browser standard. It seems that the more interactive things become, the less compatible they are with various power-user browsing techniques.

[CynicalC]

Funny, I was just about to post a thread suggesting a mobile theme. I didn't know we even had one. i-club.com is still on 3.75 and has a pretty legit mobile version. (http://m.i-club.com/forums/) But I do think once support runs dry for 3.x and they get 4.x all ironed out, it would be worthwhile to upgrade. Im with you as far as features go. I hate bloated looking forums and there's no real good reason for them to have to interface with fb and twitter. I would think that after "trimming the fat" you could get it to look and act pretty similar to what we have now, but with some added features and extra security.

You know what they say, if it ain't broke, fix it until it is!

PS as far as anything weird goes, I noticed before that after editing a post, the "submit" button said "vote now" instead. Actually seems like it just pics buttons to replace at random. Weird.

[CynicalC]

Originally Posted by CZroe

It seems that the more interactive things become, the less compatible they are with various power-user browsing techniques.

It's true. I don't know why everyone feels the need for everything on the Internet to be integrated. Every photo hosting site, social network, mobile operating system / app, instant messenger, etc. They're all basically shooting at moving targets trying to make their product work with 4 other products who are also trying to make their crap work with other crap. I wish google and Facebook would just buy everything and combine it into one. Like the world needs 20 different IM clients. >_<

[gfloyd2002]

I migrated from phpBB to IPB on the board I administered, and while the database conversion itself was easy, there were still a ton of little niggly things that needed doing to make it less noticeable to users - member permissions, wiki organization, etc. - that took hours upon hours. Whenever you are forced to change over, let me know if you'd like some free labor doing rote/mundane tasks to help you out.

Xenforo looks great, btw. Reading about the lawsuits that followed Xf's increasing success makes me start to dislike vBulletin's new ownership and want to support Xf. Not exactly written by a neutral commentator, but there is a good blog post on it entitled How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

[CZroe]

Originally Posted by CynicalC

Funny, I was just about to post a thread suggesting a mobile theme. I didn't know we even had one. i-club.com is still on 3.75 and has a pretty legit mobile version. (http://m.i-club.com/forums/) But I do think once support runs dry for 3.x and they get 4.x all ironed out, it would be worthwhile to upgrade. Im with you as far as features go. I hate bloated looking forums and there's no real good reason for them to have to interface with fb and twitter. I would think that after "trimming the fat" you could get it to look and act pretty similar to what we have now, but with some added features and extra security.

You know what they say, if it ain't broke, fix it until it is!

PS as far as anything weird goes, I noticed before that after editing a post, the "submit" button said "vote now" instead. Actually seems like it just pics buttons to replace at random. Weird.

It stopped doing that to me when I upgraded to iOS4.2. At least, I haven't noticed it (it was pretty random before).

[Alex]

For the pictures/buttons to appear incorrectly, It's something munged in the browser cache, whether that cache is on a phone or a pc. It's not a site thing.

[wvninja]

We run vb 4.x on our local car forum. We love it so far, but it took a while to get it setup right.

So far I like it.

[bluepoof]

This has nothing to do with vBulletin, but I didn't know you were involved with Cal 24! We have many mutual friends.

[Alex]

Wait, you think I'm friends with those people?

(this will be my 8th year participating in that rally, I have a great time every year. )

[setasai]

I think as long as it isnt anywhere near as difficult to navigate as is ninja250.org, Most of us will be able to figure out the minor differences. How much time do you think we have until you need to do that major overhaul? If it'll be quite some time then I dont see a reason to worry too much about it yet.

[CynicalC]

Originally Posted by CZroe

It stopped doing that to me when I upgraded to iOS4.2. At least, I haven't noticed it (it was pretty random before).

Ah ok. I'm jailbroken on 4.0 and weary of updating. Any suggestions? Not being jailbroken is absolutely not an option :/

[CZroe]

Originally Posted by CynicalC

Ah ok. I'm jailbroken on 4.0 and weary of updating. Any suggestions? Not being jailbroken is absolutely not an option :/

The latest iOS is jailbroken. What device are you using? Do you need to retain your baseband/carrier unlock?

Basically, if you aren't using an unauthorized carrier with an unofficially unlocked iPhone, you just backup with iTunes, update with iTunes, jailbreak (greenpois0n works fine), and restore with iTunes. There's even a JB app that can backup and restore all your JB apps.

If you are using it with an unauthorized carrier like T-Mobile, you are likely using an unlocked phone and you'll need to run something like TinyUmbrella (a PC program you download) to keep it from updating the baseband. All that means is that it will fail most of the way through the update process due to TU blocking communication with Apple's server when it comes time to install the baseband update. After the "failure," the phone will not boot normally until you connect it and run TU again to kick it out of restore/recovery mode. After that, you'll have iOS 4.2 with the older baseband from iOS4.0. Even that won't be needed in a week or so because the hackers claim to have a new baseband exploit and are waiting for Apple to finish and release iOS 4.3 before they release it (so that Apple won't have the chance to fix it and block it with iOS 4.3). 4.3 is due on the 11th, I believe.

The proximity sensor fix didn't work for me and Bluetooth devices still have a ton of trouble staying connected if you dont hold the phone a foot away from the device, but there are still a ton of good reasons to update. For example, more complete Bluetooth AVRCP controlls (I can finally use the Next/Previous Track buttons on my headphones and helmet kit!) and free "Find my iPhone" service.

[CynicalC]

Originally Posted by CZroe

The latest iOS is jailbroken. What device are you using? Do you need to retain your baseband/carrier unlock?

Basically, if you aren't using an unauthorized carrier with an unofficially unlocked iPhone, you just backup with iTunes, update with iTunes, jailbreak (greenpois0n works fine), and restore with iTunes. There's even a JB app that can backup and restore all your JB apps.

I was under the impression that trying to update through itunes would brick the phone or wipe it clean. I'm on a 3gs with at&t and I jailbroke using jailbreakme.com in safari which was way too easy. I can't remember what I had to ssh for but I have cydia, appsync with installus + custom repos, etc.

If I back up with itunes will it back up ALL of that? Or am I gonna have to go through all that trouble again? Will itunes back up my jb apps and all the app data? that's pretty important. Thanks for the help!

[Alex]

Guys - what does this thread have to do with iPhones. Maybe split it off into a thread of its own?

[2WheelGuy]

I've been looking at forum software for a future project. From what I've seen vBulletin 3x is the current favorite. People are divided on vBulletin 4x. IP.Board seems to be the next best contender. I'm curious as to what other forums you are looking at Alex?

[Alex]

I'm not looking anywhere other than vB at the moment, but I am hoping that by the time I do feel compelled to move from 3.X to the 4.X series, that I'm more comfortable with the 4.X series at that point. The first few versions (4.01, 4.02, all the way up to 4.08, IMO) were quite clunky, with scary interface issues and just plain buggy. Now in the 4.1.X series, it's getting closer to what I'd want, but maybe by 4.2 I'll be less apprehensive.