New layout..

[allthatwhichis]

The reason he switched is because we all told him to, remember? There was a poll about upgrading, and we all said "go for it".

Now, I am not complaining at all; I remember this poll.. but I didn't think "not upgrading at all" was an option. I thought it was now or next week, but it is, or was, going to happen. I must have taken the options wrong.

It's all good to me. I liked the way things looked before, but I really don't have too many issues with the new layout and I can live with all the little ones I do. As long as the board is up and there is a place for us to talk shop, shite, and shows, I got nothing really to bitch about.

[Admin]

I know this layout is a problem for a number of you, and for that I apologize but I honestly can't do anything to revert this back to 3.8.4 days... It's simply a technical impossibility. I looked for a way to do it and found out that the index/title system vbulletin used to track every post entry in the system had been altered and the previous values had not been saved short of a temporary lookup table which only works during the installer. It's one way and that way, whether I like it or not, is forward.

I originally posed the upgrade question here because I caught some flak in the past for the board mysteriously/magically shutting down as I parse through an update... and looking back it appears the poll is not accurate as I had no idea what the new system would really feel like. Hindsight being what it is and 20/20 to boot the poll should have read like this

1) Keep everything the way it is and manually tear through updates and revisions to incorporate 4 features into 3

2) Drink the kool-aid and regret it later.

I am tearing through vb4 as time allows to "fix" some of these quirks and user interface issues... If it is any consolation prize, which I doubt, PL isn't the only place being hit by these "should have been seen" bugs/issues.

Regarding the "theme" here. *all* vb3 themes are completely and irrecoverably broken in 4. There is no parser, there are no updates. In short: "not going to happen ever". The "responsibility" was put on theme designers to adapt or die. And really: thats about it. Vbulletin and its parent company really stuck it to everyone this update. Reading ancient posts on the vb boards and in cache files around the place it seems that a similar situation happened in the 2 to 3 change over but it wasn't this bad.

As far as finding themes go... its going to be slow. Until the designers adapt to the "vb4 way of doing things" all themes will be horrifically broken or just flat out appear to be color shifts on the base 4 theme. As I found out with the "underground" theme any base modification to the package to make it "feel" right was a custom hack that involved paying the developer to fix. Simple shit like forum widths were a pay job and I found that unacceptable given I found a way to alter it manually in a couple hours. Just offensive.

Theres also something to be said for every one of my "adjustments" made in the vb3 series and how they(and the work they represent) vaporizing overnight. Ohh well. As soon as the update started to execute on the server there was no way I could go back.

Even little shit like those retarded smilies to the right of this form entry box are a nightmare to "adjust". Check this out: The images aren't directly referenced in the template anymore. A "content/asset:id" is referenced and this CID goes to a lookup table to find what it means and where to pull the image from. I can see why this makes sense to do and I can also see why this is, at best, a round about way of managing assets.

I know this won't be easy to get used to from the user interface perspective. Hell there are two core products I have shut down here(user blogs and forward facing CMS) so I only have the forum "de-flusterclucking" to worry about. The way I see it if the core forum contains this amazing number of pinholes in it, I don't even want to know what "new product code" looks and acts like.

I could see the blogs feature being neat and the cms thing helping out... so I will likely drill into those at a later date... just... not right now.

Look; its a mess akin to growing pains in the actual forum software. I am doing everything that I can to make this work while we(vbulletin 4 license holders) wait on the dev team to fix fundamental issues.

When I spent a couple weeks with a private beta copy of vb4 running on a personal domain here I thought I was pretty thorough, at least when verifying core functionality of 3/4 as "usable/familiar"... Guess not.

I apologize for my actions here and how I could have done them differently but please don't make me feel bad for things that are out simply out of my ability to change... For example: I can not alter the core functionality of the forum software as it stands. That being said I am trying to adapt as many things as possible to make vb4 feel more like "home".

Just give it time and know that I haven't abandoned the idea of fixing things and that with any luck the pressure imposed from the clients and the financial considerations imposed from the suits will *nudge* vb4 in the right direction.

[daedal]

I personally appreciate all the work. I know the difficulties involved with moving to a new platform, and the irreversible changes that take place as well. It's unfortunate, and frankly, we just have to deal with it. Nothing can be done at the moment. It seems to be going okay, barring a few glitches here and there (for example the link that goes to the newest unread post is broken... somehow) but it's nothing that affects the overall functionality of the board and the integrity of its contents.

That being said, I again appreciate all the effort, time, and dedication. Being in the same shoes at work, I know it's not an easy task to carry all this responsibility on your shoulders, and I commend you and respect you for it.

--DDL