Are you going to upgrade to vBulletin 4.0?
October 15, 2009 by Brandon Sheley · 3 Comments
I’m the sort of person that always likes to have the latest and greatest of anything, so I’ll be upgrading as soon as vBSEO is working with vBulletin 4.0. I’ve been talking about getting a new style for the forum and one obviously for the blog here, seeing how we have the default wordpress style now.
I posted yesterday and sent out an email (30 minutes before vBulletin.com did BTW) about the recent changes at vBulletin.com. If you go check out the site right now you’ll see a drastic change from the way it looked a week ago. Hopefully this is a sign of the fresh new look vBulletin 4.0 is going to bring. Here are a few screenshots of 4.0, this one is how the new CMS could look if with a little bit of work. 
I’ve been invited by one of our members to help debug his alpha version of vBulletin 4.0. As they signed an NDA, I can’t say anything about what I see or how it works. I can say what I said before I saw 4.0, that I’m looking forward to updating vBSetup and checking out the new features. We have the vBulletin blog and if I want to keep that updated, I’ll have to buy the suite. I’m still not sure if I’ll go that route, I would get the new vBulletin CMS if I did, not that I’m entirely sure I want to drop our current CMS (wordpress) and use the new vBulletin one. Are you going to upgrade your forum to 4.0, or stay at 3.8 or whatever version you currently have? One side effect from all the vBulletin drama is our forums have gotten a lot of activity the last 48 hours. I don’t think I’ve seen it with less than 100 users/guest on at one time! This could also be from the 2 major vbulletin mergers that I did last week, but I’d like to think it’s just from people looking for another place to chat about the vBulletin news. Read more
vBulletin 4.0 Dev Update
June 13, 2009 by Brandon Sheley · Leave a Comment
This was posted by Ray Morgan at vBulletin.com
I am happy to report that we’re down to a short list of items remaining before we can officially begin alpha testing vBulletin 4.0, which I expect to start within a few weeks. Alpha testing will occur in phases, with the Forum released first, then followed shortly thereafter by the full Suite.
The alpha release is the earliest point at which vBulletin is installable, and its purpose is to identify issues on a wide variety of environments as early as possible. To that end, alpha testers are those with a long history using vBulletin and who have experience integrating plugins, styles, right-to-left text rendering, and other factors that are likely to reveal bugs.
Additionally, throughout both the alpha and beta releases, we are using a dedicated internal QA team, as well as external QA resources, to help us find and fix bugs as early in the process as possible.
As we get closer to gold release, we’ll announce the official details of licensing, pricing and discounts.
Stay tuned!
This was posted in the forums under our “vBulletin Leaked” thread.
Who wants the vBulletin 4.0 download today?
May 31, 2009 by Brandon Sheley · 21 Comments
I don’t know about you, but I’m really looking forward to vBulletin 4.0 and the style changes. Here are some specs from vBulletin.com about the improvements over prior vBulletin versions.
- Cross-content search system providing a single interface to search across forum posts, blog entries and comments and other supported products
- Improved search performance
- A fresh design and layout making use of semantic markup and CSS styling
- An enhanced style and template system to enhance your ability to change the layout
- Controls to assist with the placement of advertising elements
- SEO features, including friendly URLs
- A centralized attachment system, allowing the sharing of attachments across products
I don’t really care about the SEO futures because I already have the ultimate vBulletin SEO plugin, vBSEO.
Here are some images of the new design, which I overall like and look forward to updating our style to match the new design.
The new navabar looks good,and checking out the code, it looks easy to configure
This is the new forumhome view, looks sharp as well Read more
Download vBSEO 3.3.0 Today!
April 3, 2009 by Brandon Sheley · Leave a Comment
Yes – Full compatibility with vBulletin 3.8.x. That is just the start…
vBSEO 3.3 is now GOLD and has been activated in your Downloads. Inside the box, there are some powerful new features you will definitely love including “Virtual HTML Display“.
Virtual HTML Display is designed to max out your SEO for vBulletin “Notices”. The notices feature is very important since it allows you to broadcast an important message at the top of every page of your forum (similar to the very popular modification: Welcome Headers by Ted S). Before vBSEO 3.3, when your notices were activated globally, they would have a potential *negative* impact on your SEO… taking up your top text space, skewing your C2C (Content to Code) ratio, and interfering with your search text snippets, etc.
- Our new VHDisplay feature solves the issue fully. Hit the switch in your vBSEO Control Panel to activate it instantly, and your notices will instantly go virtual, using a special Javascript technique so that it is available for your visitors without hurting your SEO.
- VHDisplay has the same effect as converting your welcome messages and notices to images. However, converting to an image can be time consuming and does not always play nice with fluid forum styles. Virtual HTML Display means you never have to worry about this issue again. The vBSEO Team has created VHD to continue to max out your SEO.
- Now your communication ability with vB Notices is maintained without any sacrifice to your SEO!
Please check out the complete list of new features, updates, and fixes below. We have added some interesting new twists to some of our core features, and we even added a new feature to further maximize your link consensus. In fact, we expect vBSEO 3.3 to help further accelerate long tail search hits for your forum!
- If you have any questions or require assistance during your installation, the vBSEO Total Support Team is standing by to assist you. Please open a ticket if you need help. Read more
vBulletin 3.8.2 Released today, Download it Now!
March 31, 2009 by Brandon Sheley · 4 Comments
vBulletin 3.8.2
vBulletin 3.8.2 is a maintenance release for the vBulletin 3.8 series, which addresses various issues found since 3.8.1 was releases. Maintenance releases follow our scheduled release policy.
Some of the issues fixed include:
- Social group dicussion email notifications don’t always work (27226)
- Access masks not reset properly with paid subscriptions (27385)
- Friend requests received by users that are in “Tachy Goes to Coventry” (27213)
- Profile field category privacy ignored in “About Me” tab (27453)
- BB code case maintained when not parsed (27433)
- External.php feeds don’t handle thread]/post BB code properly (27276)
- Avatars show up in social groups/visitor messages when users don’t have permission (27369)
A full list can be found in the bug tracker.
Social Group Subscriptions Improved
In 3.8.1, social group subscriptions were disabled because of confusion over the functionality they provided. In 3.8.2, they have been improved and re-enabled. When subscribing to a group, you can now choose to receive a daily or weekly digest of the discussions that happen within that group. You can still choose to not receive any email notifications when subscribing to a group.
Group subscriptions which were created before 3.8.2 will not automatically send email notifications. These users can modify their existing subscriptions or resubscribe to enable email notification.
Upgrading from Previous Versions
3.8.2 is a maintenance release. We recommend that all customers running prior versions of vBulletin 3.8 upgrade to benefit from bug fixes and stability improvements.
Full instructions for upgrading vBulletin are available here.
PHP and MySQL Requirements
Please note that vBulletin 3.8.x requires at least PHP 4.3.3 and MySQL 4.0.16 or later.
However, we recommend that vBulletin 3.8.x is run on PHP 5.2.9 with APC (or a similar opcode cache) and MySQL 5.1.32 for best performance and stability.
End of Life for PHP 4
PHP 4 has now reached its end of life. We strongly recommend that customers update their servers to PHP 5.2.9 if they are still running PHP 4. vBulletin 3.8.x supports PHP 5 without any problems, though you may need to disable strict mode for MySQL, see here on how to enable ‘force_sql_mode’.
Note: We will continue to support PHP 4 in the vBulletin 3 series.
Download vBulletin 3.8.2
Read more
vBulletin Setup Contest for vBulletin Styles & Hacks
March 1, 2009 by Brandon Sheley · Leave a Comment
It’s contest time again here at vBulletin Setup! 
We are going to do a 3 month posting contest again with 2 prizes, one for first and one for second.
I’ll have to look up what I had last time, but I’ll be using the easycontest mod from vBulletin Modder to count the post and threads.
Basically you get points for threads and points for post or replies.
We will count all forums but these…
Blogging Forum
vBulletin Setup Clients
vBSetup Marketplace
Photoshop Tutorials and Graphic Resources
all General Forums
And you must be setup as a vBulletin owner by the end of the content.
Today is 2/15, I’ll start counting the post at midnight tonight and the contest will be over May 16th
The winner will get to pick from one of these two prizes, what’s left will be given to 2nd place.
Both prizes are great and the combo should be enticing and the motivation for you to win..
Information on V.I.P. Membership
A $45 per year value, you get the following:
- 25% discount on all purchases
- Any 3 skins of your choosing, free
- Download access to our thread status icons and smilies and other bonus downloads, free
- Site sponsor badge, green username, and listing on our Forum Leaders page at vBS
Or the choice of one of the mods from
Advanced Forums
ProvB Index
Answer Forums
Extra Threadfields
These are some great mods, please click the links to read up on them.. Each one can be very useful to the right forum owner. Read more
vBulletin 4 Series Development Update
February 18, 2009 by Brandon Sheley · 1 Comment
In August, we announced a major overhaul of the code base. Rather than targeting all of these changes in a single, long-term release, we intend to accomplish all the planned improvements over a number of versions. In order to achieve this goal, the largest vBulletin development team ever assembled is now working within an Agile development process, allowing us to deliver new features into your hands faster.
Each incremental release in the vBulletin 4 series will include improvements in features, usability and architecture. Development efforts are prioritized towards those areas that can provide real, tangible benefits to our customers, at all times with an eye toward maintaining and enhancing the performance and reliability expected of a vBulletin product.
The goal of the vBulletin 4 series is to develop a modern, scalable application platform that will allow your communities to thrive.
Key features and improvements that will be included in the first vBulletin 4 release are:
- Cross-content search system providing a single interface to search across forum posts, blog entries and comments and other supported products
- Improved search performance
- A fresh design and layout making use of semantic markup and CSS styling
- An enhanced style and template system to enhance your ability to change the layout
- Controls to assist with the placement of advertising elements
- SEO features, including friendly URLs
- A centralized attachment system, allowing the sharing of attachments across products
Alongside significant strides forward within the vBulletin forum product, we are also producing a new content management system to facilitate the creation, editing and publishing of non-forum pages. Further details about CMS features, and how it will integrate with vBulletin will be posted in due course. Read more
