vBulletin 4.0 Publishing Suite and Forum Classic Review Written by: Orion, final comment by Josh
vBulletin Solutions is releasing its new version of vBulletin, vBulletin 4.0 quite soon. In this review, you will learn the pros, cons, and the core features which are being updated and added to the new version.
View the list of pros and cons to educate yourself regarding vBulletin 4.0.
Pros:
1)VB 4.0 is a “Scalable Solution” hence database/web servers can reside on separate machines, and you are not limited to keeping them together.
2)Still written in PHP, therefore, it is as fast and efficient as ever.
3)Has forums, photo albums, groups, calendar, events management, and polls all included.
4)Includes a blog and Article-based CMS publishing (Only 4.0 Publishing Suite).
5)Simple and easy to use. Members can register and sign on quickly, while the license owner can give specific permissions to different groups and use the single-administration panel efficiently.
6)The ability to cross-publish (4.0 Publishing Suite). Webmasters may also create matching themes across articles, blogs, and forums.
7)Multi-Roles Control Panels (Administrative, Moderator, User).
8)Unified permission system, so you can easily set who can do and see what you want them to. Unlimited roles, permissions, and groups.
9)Power Template engine for Advanced Customization.
10)Search Engine Optimization friendly URLs.
11)Easily create Custom META keywords and description tags.
12)Submit a sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools with the Automatic Google XML sitemap module.
13)Duplicate content link removal.
14)Much more secure than any previous vBulletin software.
15)Spam prevention (Captcha, etc).
16)Everyone who buys a license receives vBulletin’s outstanding support (for at least a month) and professional services/code skeletons.
17)Tons of flexibility! Webmasters have the flexibility to have extensible user profiles, URL rewriting, interface localization, reuse of content, content in different languages, and Metadata.
18)XHTML Compliant.
19)Content syndication: RSS, atom, XML.
20)Unlimited hierarchy of forums, in addition to private ones.
21)The ability to embed a video into a post on the forum.
22)Member profile pages have been updated. Information can be viewed from the member list. Users can create a custom user title, home page, date of birth (DOB), instant messaging, location, occupation, biography, interests, specify version of vBulletin.
23)Administrators can define custom user fields.
24)Users have more options, such as Daylight Savings options, forum style chooser, selection of notification types for PM, emails etc, thread display options, WYSIWYG editor options, language chooser; vCard downloads to allow the user profile to be placed into an address book.
25)More privacy for the administrator, as well as users.
26)Private messaging is even better than ever! With pop-up notifications, message tracking, and private message custom folders, you will be able to satisfy your private messaging hunger.
27)Attachment management includes statistics (see limits and used space), link or thumbnail view, or removes any attachments.
28)Admin and Board maintenance: use a task scheduler, control panel with moderator and task logs, board statistics, maintenance (backups and repair), and post pruning.
29)Import facility: import posts and members seamlessly upgrade from other bulletin board systems, including Infopop's Ultimate Bulletin Board, UBBThreads, OpenTopic, ezboard, and Ikonboard.
30)Styling and templates: powerful template system, conditionals supported in templates, proprietary template engine, thousands of templates and skins available or create your own, design independent (can support any web page design), full CSS layout and design, site wide templates (you can create an entire site using default template sets), multiple templates (webmasters can create individual templates for any part of their website), powerful, fast, and suitable, and a variety of plug-ins.
31)Language and phrase management: language management (allows you to easily translate your forum in any language), multiple languages supported, phrase manager.
32)Help and FAQ: editable FAQ and context sensitive help throughout the Admin Control Panel.
33)Integrate payments and advertisements easily into your board by using Paid Subscriptions Capabilities (PayPal, WorldPay, NOCHEX and Authorize.net) and Google AdSense Integration.
34)Advanced calendar features.
35)Advanced CMS (Content Management System) features (4.0 Publishing Suite only).
36)Advanced blog publishing (4.0 Publishing Suite only).
Cons:
1)Can only be run on a machine which supports PHP and MySQL (ex: Solaris, BSD, Linux, Windows, Mac).
2)Customer Ticket Support is only available vBulletin 4.0 Forum owners for 30 days, after that you have to pay for it. It is available to vBulletin 4.0 Publishing Suite for life.
3)Most of the features related to the forum were available in previous versions of vBulletin.
As you can see, from the pros and cons, if you have the money, you should definitely invest in vBulletin 4.0. The biggest con of the new version is that many forum features were already available. However, the publishing suite has been updated and is much more advanced than anything vBulletin offered previously. vBulletin truly is the most powerful community software! Pre-order yours today in order to save money on the license!.
vBulletin 4 is in many ways more advanced than vBulletin 3.8x. The admin panel is more complexed in many ways than vBulletin 3.8x and considering you can make vBulletin 4's homepage into a blog - it has many pluses. Writing a blog with vBulletin 4 looks even easier than WordPress, which is a huge plus considering it is more powerful than WordPress.
However, the price for vBulletin 4 has risen since vBulletin 3.8x, although, it does come with an inbuilt SEO package, and if you buy the publishing suite of vBulletin 4, it ends up a lot cheaper than buying all of them separately with vBulletin 3.8x. If you are looking to just run a forum, however, vBulletin 3.8x is easier, so unless you are great with technology and coding I would stick with vBulletin 3.8x until they have fixed all future bugs (which may or may not happen). Overall I would say vBulletin 4 is better in so many ways than vBulletin 3.8x, not only is it that much cheaper it is also more advanced.
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Originally Posted by dunk3r23 
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