I'm staff on a VB forum, and we never installed VB4 because the owner procrastinates. So I have no direct experience; I only hear from others. I know admins who upgraded and are thrilled with VB4. Others see it as unacceptable. I don't know why there is such a difference.
The fact that you can't see what's wrong with vB4 makes you look like - I'm sorry to say - a clueless person. You honestly think that vB4 looks good? Sit there and tell me. I'm telling you from first-hand experience, that running a new-born vB4 is such a pain in the baby bottom... because your visitors, your followers, your members can't see past vB4's horrendous design. I've launched a Modern Warfare 2 forum on vB4 with vBSEO installed... I only made color changes on vB4 - nothing worked. When in contrast, a vB3 forum can just be a color change, and nobody would complain. That's the whole problem with vB4, that a typical user can't get past the ugliness of vB4.
It's good that the owner of the vB forum procrastinated on his forum upgrade. If he upgraded when you tell him to, and vB4 is such a mess - visitors would leave that site in droves, and faster than the rate of eating food. vB4
killed a lot of big sites, including my CODForums. Which I spent over a thousand dollars just to own. I bought it in a package, but that's not even the point.
Hmmm. I just remembered. I was an admin briefly on a VB4 forum. Just long enough to install mods for the owner, and chat a little in the staff room. I guess the main thing I noticed wrong was they wrecked the theme styling feature.
It's not just skins. It's a server resource hog. My users reported a lot of problems with vB4, that once 4.1.4 came out, it broke my
entire site. I couldn't even use it as administrator in the ACP!
So, recap:
- Styling vB4 was, and still is a pain in the back.
- It's a resource hog. Large forums suffer from this.
- Hacks, mods, or plugins don't play nice with vB4.
- Lots of bugs on the users' end.
