vBulletin 3.8.0

Today, the vBulletin team is proud to declare version 3.8.0 to be our stable, supported release.

vBulletin 3.8.0 is available immediately from the Members' Area to all customers with active vBulletin licenses, and will be offered as the primary choice to those making new purchases. We recommend that all customers with active licenses upgrade to vBulletin 3.8.0.

Google AdSense Integration

vBulletin 3.8 features a control panel to allow you to quickly add Google AdSense advertising units to your forum and monetize your site traffic!

To get started, please visit the members' area and either sign up for a new Google AdSense account or assign your existing account with vBulletin.com. Once you have linked your members area account to your Google AdSense account, all vBulletin downloads will include the advertising control panel. (It will not be included unless you do this.)

From the control panel, you can choose an advertising package that contains the amount and type of ads that you want to feature - and deploy it instantly with just a couple of clicks. The positions and ad unit types chosen for each package are designed to give the maximum possible revenue for your site. Text-based advertising units will automatically inherit the color schemes of any styles you have on your board. Should you wish to experiment with the different ad packages, you can change your mind on deployed package at any time, including the option to remove ads completely.

For more information about this feature, please read the AdSense Integration manual page.

New Features in 3.8

There are many new features and improvements to existing functionality in vBulletin 3.8.0 over vBulletin 3.7.x. Here is a brief list of just a few of the highlights.

• Social group discussions
• Social group categories
• Private message sorting and filtering
• Private message history
• Quick edit for newer types of content (visitor messages and picture comments)
• Social group icons
• Social group transfers
• Private message quick reply
• Private message throttling (limit messages sent over a time period)
• Private message reporting
• Profile privacy (limit blocks to a subset of users)
• Lightbox navigation
• Thread prefix permissions
• Dismissible notices

A full and detailed list is available in Darren's blog.

Support for 3.7

This release supersedes the 3.7 branch as our primary product. Active maintenance of 3.7, including fixes for functionality breaks and security problems, will continue for approximately six months (to 1st July 2009), after which only security fixes will be released. Upon the release of vBulletin 4.1, the 3.7 branch will be end-of-life'd and no further security fixes will be made available and customers will be advised to upgrade to vBulletin 3.8 or newer in order to gain fixes.

PHP and MySQL Requirements

vBulletin 3.8.0 requires at least PHP 4.3.3 and MySQL 4.0.16 (These are the same requirements as vBulletin 3.7), but we strongly recommend that all customers run PHP 5.2.8 with APC and MySQL 5.1.30 or later. Major performance benefits can be had by taking the recommended route rather than simply satisfying the required versions.

What is a 'Gold' Version?

When talking about software, the term 'gold' is not related to the color of the application. Rather, it refers to the practice of burning the final version of a software product to a CD-R so that it can be sent to a large scale CD press for large-scale distribution. It is used to indicate that the code is ready for deployment to customers. The official name of this new version is vBulletin 3.8.0.

Installing or Upgrading vBulletin

Anyone who has installed or upgraded any version of vBulletin 3 before will be familiar with the process, but for those who are new to the system, the vBulletin manual has all the details for installing and upgrading.

Template Changes

A large number of templates have been changed when compared with vBulletin 3.7.x. It will be necessary to revert affected customized templates or otherwise carefully integrate the changes into your custom versions or new features and existing functionality will be adversely affected. A complete list of the templates you have customized whose original version has been changed by the 3.8.0 upgrade is available within your Admin Control Panel after the upgrade is complete.

Bug Reports

As with any software, bugs will appear. If you find a problem that you believe to be a bug, please don't post about it on the forums where the development team may never find your message, but instead use the dedicated bug tracker to make a report that can be tracked through to completion.

Before reporting a bug, please ensure you are able to reproduce the problem on a board using a default, uncustomized style with all plugins disabled.


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