Today we're announcing the availability of vBulletin 4.0.1 Maintenance Release of vBulletin Publishing Suite and vBulletin Forum. If you have an active vBulletin license, you can download your copy of 4.0.1 from the vBulletin Members Area at: http://members.vbulletin.com .

4.0.1 fixes more than 200 bugs since the release of 4.0 Gold.

Highlights of what’s fixed in 4.0.1:
• [Tab Ordering] Added Tab Index Ordering
• [Search] Added Search Results by Relevancy
• [IE6] Fixed: background images disappear in IE6
• [IE6] Fixed: Additional IE6 bug fixes.
• [IE6] Fixed IE6 issues in CMS home.
• [IE6] Post dates missing in IE6
• [IE6] Forum leaders page
• [IE6] Fixed CP CMS Section edit popup displays under other page elements in IE6.
• [IE8] Fixed post reputation in IE8
• [StyleVar] Fixed StyleVars
• [StyleVar] Added Stylevars for UserCP/Settings
• [Video] Fixed IE8 Bugs
• [Sidebar Blocks] Fixed Sidebar handling of long title names
• [Blogs] Lightbox doesn't work in Blogs including inline images
• [CMS] Fixed CMS Static HTML Widget
• [CMS] Fixed CMS PHP Direct Widget
• [CMS] Fixed CMS Category Bug
• [CMS] Widget Manager - When creating a new widget, widget type pull down should display in alphabetical order
• [CMS] Section Reset Ordering Bug
• [CMS] Please put CMS in /index.php and FORUMS in /forums/index.php
• [CMS] CMS Query Bug - Phase 1
• [Groups] Removed hardcoded phrases in Groups
• [Announcements] Fixed Announcement display problem
• [Smilies] Fixed Smilie Path - Forced to use relative path
• [CSS] user defined Additional CSS to pages
• [CSS] Store CSS as files does not work
• [Sitemap] Sitemap not being Recognized by Google (only Forums)
• [RTL] Problem in What's New Page when change Language R2L
• [RTL] editor icons problem
• [RTL] The new forum home sidebar does not move to the left when viewing the site in a RTL language.
• [RTL] Groups issues
• [RTL] Fixed RTL and IE7
• [Style Manager] Unchecking style in Style Manager causes style issues
• ...and about 200 more bugs

We are currently working on 4.0.2 and this should be released in 2 to 3 weeks. Here is a list of fixes that have already been completed for 4.0.2:

• [Ads] Quote and Advert in First post content
• [Search] "Find All Threads" by person
• [IE6] All remaining IE 6 Compatibility issues
• [CSS] CSS Caching Bugs
• [BB Codes] BB Codes tags should count against minimum text requirement
• [Lightbox] Date and name overlap in the Lightbox if the picture is relatively small
• [Tags] Edit Tags Degradation -> You cannot add any tags. Please remove some first.
• [Fixed Width] Doc Width - bug #35038
• [Signatures] <p> cannot be used to enclose signatures
• [Languages] Stripped characters - ä,ö,å
• [Settings] User link broken in Settings -> New Visitor Messages
• [Polls] Fixed issue with poll question too long error
• [Groups]: The "View All Groups" page needs significant improvements
• [Hook] Hook Member-Action Dropdown items unset problem
• [Updated UI] User Settings Pages
• [Updated UI] Registration Screens
• [Updated UI] Advanced Search Pages
• [Updated UI] Moderation Pop-up Menu
• [CMS Query Count] Reducing CMS Query Count - Phase 2
• [Language Support] Additional Charset Support
• [CMS Import] CMS Impex [Beta]
• (new) [CMS] Articles can be sorted "Alphabetically", "
• (new) [CMS] Added Pagination to Section Pages. Pagination replaces the "View All" link.
• And about 100 more bugs.

As always, thanks to everyone who has filed bugs in our bug tracker. Please continue to file new bugs here: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/project.php?projectid=6

Editing vBulletin 4.0 default graphics to match your customized style with the 4.0 GDK is very simple. Here are a couple example cases of graphic customizations you can make on Adobe Photoshop (I'm using version CS4 here).

Single-layer monochromatic icons
This includes the single-color and single-layer icons found in /buttons, /site_icons, etc. A simple Color Overlay changes the colors of these icons. In Photoshop, double-click the layer that contains the icon to open the Layer Style window (or right click the layer >> Blending Options), then click Color Overlay and set it to the desired color.



Multi-layer graphics
Other graphics have multiple layers which you can edit separately in the Layer Style window. For the forum blocks tab (/misc/tab-collapsed.psd), I edited the Gradient Overlay and Stroke of the bottom layer and the Color Overlay of the top layer.



Status Icons
The Forum and Thread status icon master PSDs (/statusicon/thread-status-master.psd and /statusicon/forum-status-master.psd) are inclusive of all the layers which denote various statuses. For instance, thread-status-master.psd is composed of Deleted, Replied, Closed, and Moved layers, Read and Unread layers, and the Base layers. Here, I edited the Fill of the Base layer and the Color Overlay of the Unread layer to fit my style.



Similar changes to the base of forum status icon.



Of course, you can swap out the images directory files completely without using the GDK as frame of reference. However, keep in mind that changing the dimensions of the images can cause layout issues, so template edits will probably be a necessary accompaniment to image dimensional changes.

For inspiration, this thread has a great collection of custom skins. Happy modding! :D