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I would like to know if Vault Wiki works better on either platform and why your forum uses vBulletin rather than Xenforo which everyone praises and asks me to use.
Having acquired several mods (Dragonbyte and Vsa) I can't really afford to switch to something else and I'm still very attached to vBulletin 4 (I have vB 5 but I'm sticking with vB4 for customization).
Does VaultWiki run better on Either Platform
The same base code runs VaultWiki on both platforms; however, there are some differences to keep in mind.
- Originally VaultWiki was designed on a vBulletin platform, and support was added for XenForo later; but since the 4.1.x series, VaultWiki has been redesigned starting on a XenForo 2 platform, with support added for vBulletin later. This means that the newer, supported, VaultWiki versions will "run better" on XenForo 2, because the engineers and designers had it foremost in mind.
- vBulletin 4's parser is slightly more efficient. So BB-Code content renders faster than on XenForo. However, XenForo sacrificies that efficiency for a more secure and reliable BB-Code renderer. On this point, it's hard to say who the winner is, but we lean towards the more secure and reliable solution.
- vBulletin 4 contains security vulnerabilities. It has not received patches from its developers since 2017. If you are not keeping up with security, or if some of the mitigations that are needed to keep your copy secure are not acceptable to you, then you should not use vBulletin. In our opinion, this makes XenForo the better platform.
- XenForo is more modern, and has some differences in features from vBulletin. In our opinion, some of those features (like custom fields, and trophies) make XenForo the better platform.
Considering the above:
- Current VaultWiki was designed on XenForo, so they play more nicely together.
- VaultWiki renders faster on vBulletin than on XenForo.
- With XenForo, VaultWiki renders on a more secure environment.
- With XenForo, VaultWiki makes use of more modern and unique features that many consider desirable.
Why We Are Using vBulletin
This is not an endorsement of vBulletin. We originally made VaultWiki for vBulletin back in 2008. There was no such thing as XenForo until late 2010, and XenForo suffered from legal troubles for the first 1-2 years. We did not even start supporting XenForo until 2014. By then our site was established and heavily modded, and we had a customer base to maintain, but at the time vBulletin was still very much the king.
For some time (read: several years), our plan has been for this site to be converted to XenForo. But between also converting all of our mods, ensuring that our customers still get the attention they deserve, maintaining the existing versions of VaultWiki, and making progress on future versions of VaultWiki, progress on converting the site has been very slow.
I am aware of another site that took over 3 years to transition from vBulletin to XenForo. So I know that our story is not unique. It takes a lot of work and time when you have an established site.
But this site will eventually be running XenForo.
I never really liked Xenforo from an aesthetic point of view and I always liked vBulletin, I even bought vB5 but as my plugins need to be upgraded and it's expensive, I preferred to stay on vB4, besides I noticed a lot of sites that don't upgrade to vB5.
The only reason that worries me and pushes me to consider Xenforo even if I don't like to pay yearly, is for the security issues you mentioned.
Without those, I would stick with vBulletin which I have always loved.
I would love to be able to stay on vBulletin, or even upgrade to vB 5, but I don't really want to have to pay for all the upgrades to vB5 or Xenforo.
Anyway, thanks for your answer. I will try to question the webmasters who are still on vB3 or vB4 to try to understand why they don't upgrade and how they secure their forum so that I can continue to use vB4 serenely.
I have used vbulletin from 2005 to 2017 for my big board and other sites.
vbulletin 5 I do not consider good software. Its better to stick with vb4 than going to vb5.
vbulletin 4 is outdated and EOL. It uses JavaScript that's 15 years old and abandoned. An EOL Editor from 2010. is not compatible with PHP 8. It does not comply with the standards that Google, mobiles and modern browsers need. It is not secure.
Unless you are able to manage the required changes in vbulletin yourself, sooner or later you will run into significant problems with it.
XenForo works well, is solid, gets regular updates and has some good addons. In regards to styling you can do some nice things with it. If you require software that is compatible with VW then I highly recommend that you start investigating and preparing a migration to XenForo 2.