I’m a Discourse man 100%. VBulletin was so dated in its interface and navigation as to be laughable.
I’m half convinced that the old-ass software and interface gave off a ripe stench of “old-fogey” to a lot of potential new users. I mean, what would YOU think if you ran across a message board that had a user interface straight out of 1998? That they’re hip, up on stuff, having interesting and vital discussions, and a good place to visit? Probably not. I’d probably think that the lack of updates reflects the thought patterns of the board denizens, and figure it’s a bunch of old farts who can’t adapt to changing times.
Discourse is dramatically better. Paging sucks. Full stop. Now you can just jump to a specific date by grabbing the slider on the right and dragging it up or down. And it shows where you last read. That beats the absolute crap out of having to page back and forth between pages without much indication of where your last reading point was, or what pages correspond to which dates. Paging is something they did when they couldn’t do something better… back in 1998.
Face it, this is the way the future will be. You can get with the program, or shake your cane at the youngsters while you read your printed newspapers and call people on your landlines.
I’m shocked by the poll at this moment. From all the upset I’ve seen, I thought the people liking Discourse would be much smaller. At this moment, it’s Discourse at 51% and vBulletin at 38%. More people are liking Discourse than I could tell from reading ATMB and Site Feedback. I’m glad to see this.
Asking “What is Discourse like?” is similar to asking five blind men what an elephant is like. There are so many variables: Computer vs. phone, touchscreen vs. mouse, browser vs. app, and of course what theme you are using. Way too many variables for a simple assessment.
Eh, vBulletin also jumped to where I last read. I mean, it didn’t always work in the Straight Dope, because that installation of vBulletin was broken. But it is a functionality that vBulletin has. I use it all the time.
Good point; if you judge vBulletin by it’s performance at SDMB, you are judging it too harshly. I belong to other boards where it works great. Even boards much bigger and busier than SDMB.
Keep in mind that the people talking the poll are the ones around to take the poll. It’s not necessarily a poll of what all the the old vbulletin members think.
Right. We may get a lot of new users with this interface. VBulletin on mobile was bad enough that a new user likely never even got past the forum listing. With mobile being such a huge part of the browser market, having a poor interface there likely meant the loss of many members.
A forum listing, thread listing, or thread page on the old vBulletin SDMB usually scored in the 30s or 40s (out of 100) in Google PageSpeed Insights mobile browser performance tests. The Discourse-based SDMB has PageSpeed scores in the 90s.
vBulletin 3.x and 4.x aren’t supported anymore. vBulletin 5 has a well-earned reputation for terrible code and slow performance. A lot of the “vBulletin” sites someone might come across are really running XenForo, Invision Power Boards, or an open source vBulletin 3 look-and-feel clone like MyBB. Likewise, a lot of “Discourse” sites are running NodeBB with a conversation-centric landing page, or Vanilla.
If it’s a choice between Discourse and a vBulletin that worked like it was supposed to, without 502s and 504s, then definitely vBulletin. Same answer for a vBulletin-like board with fully-functioning software.
If it’s a choice between Discourse as it is right now, and vBulletin as it was when we migrated, then it’s a tough choice, but I’d put up with the 502s and 504s to be able to see so much more text on my screen when I got to a thread. vBulletin.
If it’s a choice between vBulletin as it would have likely been by next year, and a hopefully-tweaked Discourse that has a lot less white and gray space on the screen, then Discourse.
When people say they want vBulletin, I don’t think that they mean they literally want a board run by vBulletin software. Rather, they’re saying they prefer a board that has that style of forums. Quite a few boards I visit have that same general vBulletin format and style even though they are running on a wide variety of forum software. I think that sort of look-and-feel was predominate as the internet rose in popularity and lots of different forum software adopted it.
I like the fact that the new board works better than the old board, but I prefer the old style of forum to Discourse style. I’m hanging around in despite of Discourse, not because of it. It’s not too hard to get a handle on the basics, but conceptually it’s not to my liking. The old forum felt like individual rooms where specific discussions were being held, while Discourse feels like a party where lots of chatting and conversations are happening at the same time. For me, it’s harder to get involved in the serious debates for some reason in this new format. It’s easier to just be more in the “party conversation” mode where it’s more about browsing and interacting on a surface level.
Sorry, that doesn’t help. I just want to know whether jnglmassiv is correct that “Discourse on mobile uses a shitload of data”: How much data does Discourse on mobile use, and how does that compare to our old site? If “data use by user” is the same as “performance,” your link doesn’t say that clearly.