BEWARE - Next Software Upgrade

[GordonGecko]

Hello everyone

There are some awesome changes coming in the near future (new server hardware, better upgraded forum software, etc.), and to compliment that, we'd like to expand our moderator team to ensure that the quality discourse this site is known for stays at a high level.

I just read the above in the new mod draft thread and those changes sound really good, but if you're upgrading to that latest version of vbulletin I personally want nothing to do with it. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE conduct a survey of your users before moving over. I've been on a handful of sites where they "upgraded" and it was the worst change ever made and they lost a lot of users.

My suggestion, come up with a site or two that uses the new version you're thinking of and have people check it out first to see if they like or not and take a poll. You may not be thinking of the new version I've seen on other sites (like baseball-fever or wiredny), it may be a different kind. But lets not get to the point where it's too late to do anything about it

[Jim F.]

Not sure what software or versions those sites used or upgraded to, but let me ask this... what was it about the new version that you didn't like? From what I've seen it's pretty much the same format, with a few added bells & whistles.

-JF

[GordonGecko]

Hey Jim, here are a couple of discussions following the upgrade to vb4:

"This new layout blows"
http://www.baseball-fever.com/showth...w-layout-blows

"Upgrading forum software to version 4"
http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=23578

The main issue was the look and feel. Signatures are hard to pick out and look like they're part of the post. The layout looks a bit dated and people just didn't plain like it. There were also a lot of bugs out of the box that had to be fixed.

I don't know, maybe you can pick out options and colors that won't stir people up so much? Is this version 4 we're talking about here too?

[Jim F.]

Well the overall look and feel will be pretty much the same, so no worries there

[Bub]

I don't know, maybe you can pick out options and colors that won't stir people up so much? Is this version 4 we're talking about here too?

This version is 3.5.4, which seems to be different than version 4 according to what I could find doing some quick research.