As many of you know by now several key Developers that have helped make vB the success it is today have left the team and are pursuing other career opportunities. On behalf of the vB Staff that has worked with Kier, Mike and Scott all these years I would like to express our thanks to all your hard work and best wishes to each of you in the future. You will be missed as both friends and colleagues.

Best of luck!

I have received a lot of inquiries on the subject, so I would like to answer some of the FAQs regarding participation in the alpha and beta testing for vBulletin 4.0.

How can I get on the alpha testing team?

The alpha testing team is already very full, so we cannot accommodate any more testers.

How about getting on the beta testing team?

Space is still available on the beta team. Like the alpha test round, beta testing will be done by a highly focused group of experienced testers, though beta will be a larger group than alpha.

Who is eligible to participate?

Customers who have current, active vBulletin licenses and run active vBulletin sites are eligible. Selection is based on several factors, and priority will be given to long-term customers who run multiple vBulletin sites, as well as established developers of plug-ins and skins.

How do I apply?

If you would like to apply to participate in the beta testing cycle, please send me a private message with the following information:

• full name
• physical (mailing address)
• email address(es)
• telephone number(s)
• a list of vBulletin sites you currently run

Due to the number of inquiries I am receiving, please understand that I will probably not respond directly to all inquiries. If you PM me the information above, assume you are on the list of potential candidates.

Until vBulletin 4 is rolled-out here and the new multi-content search puts blog entries into your ‘New Items’ results, some of you may be unaware of details of vBulletin development being posted in the developer blogs.

For the benefit of those who are looking for more information about vBulletin 4, but have not yet found the developer blogs, here is a summary of what has been recently posted in April, May and June:

vBulletin 4 – Style Variables
Kier Darby, June 16th

A Couple of Widget Screen Shots
Edwin Brown, June 3rd

Near-Final List of Widgets
Edwin Brown, May 7th

vBulletin 4.0 Template Syntax
Scott MacVicar, May 1st

First Look: The vBulletin 4.0 Style
Kier Darby, April 23rd

vBulletin 4.0 CMS Widgets
Edwin Brown, April 15th

The newest blogs can always be found by visiting the vBulletin.com blogs page periodically.

vBulletin 3.8.3

Although it’s a little late according to the published release timetable, having been somewhat delayed by the effort being redirected toward preparing vBulletin 4.0 for its debut, vBulletin 3.8.3 is a maintenance version, rounding up all the bugs and issues fixed by the development team since the release of 3.8.2 at the end of March.

Please accept our apologies for the delay in bringing you this potentially final version of 3.x as the primary version of vBulletin. Resources are now almost exclusively dedicated to vBulletin 4.0 and we thank you for your ongoing patience.

Issues resolved by 3.8.3 include the following:

• Date picker in private message filter ignores start of week preference [27516]
• Last post title on profile page allows permission violation [27548]
• Potential for redundant SQL query when searching for posts [27575]
• List of members in social groups has no specified ordering [27636]
• Potential timezone confusion affecting statistics generation and display [27586]
• Inability to search for users with a specified custom field by entering text [27610]

A complete list of the issues resolved by 3.8.3 is available in the Project Tools.

Upgrading from Previous Versions

3.8.3 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.

Download vBulletin 3.8.3

As usual, vBulletin 3.8.3 is available for all customers with valid, active licenses to download from the vBulletin Members’ Area.

vBulletin Members Area