Forum How different will 4.1 be from 4.04? Need Answers.
 

Hi guys... it has been a while since I've posted. I'm still using 3.8.x on most of my sites since moving them over was too tedious until the code base stabilized. But now I have a serious and significant decision to make. I am going to be integrating several software packages and one of them is vBulletin. This will also including a custom theme/skin.

I really don't want to have to reintegrate the entire site again. I'd rather do it just once. What concerns me is that I keep hearing that 4.0.x still has so many things that need to be worked out, that 4.1 will be a very good version but it will also practically rewrite much of the existing codebase out of necessity. Case in point are styles. Virtually every professional vBulletin designer has ceased all vBulletin design and is not/will not update their themes/templates/skins until a change is made to the existing style system. This isn't opinion, it's fact and I won't name the 4 major players I've been buying themes from for years who have decided that it's too much trouble. So will 4.1 need a graphic designer to redo our custom theme? If it needs to happen then it needs to happen but I need to know!

What about the rest of vBulletin 4? The plugins system? How different will this be? How different is the login system anticipated to be - I'd hate to have problems with integration issues. Right now integration of vBulletin 3 with any script is beastly. How difficult is vb 4? Is it the same challenge? Better? Worse?

The truth is that I also need a significant understanding of the general benefits of upgrading and how vBulletin 4 is an improvement over vBulletin 3. I don't need blogs at all nor do I need the CMS - I've invested in something else that is advanced and very indexed. How about the user profile system? Is it more flexible to add different fields? How easy is that to style? I'd like my users to have something more than the awkward and minimally useful vB 3 profiles. Are there any other extras? A better download/file system?

Regarding SEO, I've heard the new SEO is so-so. I haven't bought vbseo and am reluctant to do so and certainly won't use it on vb 3 unless I plan to keep those sites on that software indefinitely.

Any and all comments would be greatly appreciated, especially those who have upgraded forums with greater than 75K profiles and over 100K posts.