• Getting to Gold

    by
    Joe Rosenblum
    Published on Mon 21st Dec '09 3:29pm
    49 Comments Comments
    Today we are releasing vBulletin 4.0 "Gold." Personally, I wanted to call it vBulletin 4.0 "Shiny Things" after the title of an extended thread in our test lab, but convention says that when you release a piece of software you call it "Gold."

    A lot of people have asked: "What makes this a Gold release?" There's been an extensive process we've gone through to get to the balance of features and stability that makes this release "Gold". To begin, we have been working with a fantastic group of Alpha testers since mid-August, when we released the first cut of vB 4.0.

    This team of power users has helped shape the product and has identified and fixed literally scores of bugs. Once we got to the point where we felt that some very daring people might want to try testing the product in public, we released the public Beta. Since then, the community has been incredible at helping us find and fix bugs as well as giving great feedback on design, usability and product considerations.

    Throughout this entire test process, we developed a set of acceptance criteria for what would constitute the "Gold" release of 4.0. The team put together a set of over 1600 tests for the Gold release, and together with the community, we hammered the product as hard as possible, fixing as many bugs as possible, until the product passed all of our formal acceptance criteria. Unlike the 3.8 release, which was built on a platform that had several years of testing under its belt, 4.0 is the first of its kind.

    4.0 is a whole new generation of the product with dozens of major new features and several new core architecture changes that will pave the way for more exciting innovation in the near future. And, we have just begun.

    We know there are many features that we haven't included that some of you would like to see; we know there are still some outstanding issues with the product. Unlike the days of shipping software on floppy disks in a box, we have the luxury of being able to roll frequent updates and distribute them over the internet. We have announced two upcoming releases in the 4.0 series that will be available in early and late January respectively that we think will address many of your outstanding concerns.

    We believe vB4 "Gold" is the most innovative and feature rich vBulletin release and an important milestone in the product's evolution; as always, the best is yet to come.
    Comments 49 Comments
    1. cheefoo's Avatar
      Well, we are eager to try on this gold release.
      Reply
    1. fortify's Avatar
      Can't wait for the release
      Reply
    1. WriteToEnlight's Avatar
      Wonders If It'll Be Released Soon Since This Article Just Got Published..
      Reply
    1. cheefoo's Avatar
      It's 4.20am here in Singapore..
      Reply
    1. deuterium's Avatar
      Thanks Joe
      Reply
    1. Brute's Avatar
      Looking forward to the release
      Reply
    1. x626xblack's Avatar
      To the Developers:

      "Illegitimi non carborundum"!

      You are greatly appreciated! Thanks for all of your past hard work and hard work to come.
      Reply
    1. crisis04's Avatar
      Nice. Can't wait!!
      Reply
    1. Floris's Avatar
      As a customer I am awaiting the maintenance release for 3.8 series, fixing known bugs and offer better php 5.3 support. As it's product isn't announced EOL yet. However, due to limited availability from 3.x developers and the focus on 4's "gold" release we haven't heard about 3.8.5 in almost 4 months now. Hearing that 4.0's maintenance releases are on schedule for January does this mean we shouldn't expect a 3.8.5 any time soon? (Friendly bump to get that promised roadmap for overview too btw).That said, good job on working hard and getting the product out the door before the end of the year. I hope not rewriting it to avoid having the public wait 18 months after 3.6's final release is paying off and I wish the old as well as the new team of developers the best of luck with version 4. And even more so the customers who decide to upgrade their community. This new version with its new license type provides both challenging as exciting times for the team, the company and the developers. Especially in an age where modern web design and changing technology is growing very rapidly. Congrats on version 4, and happy holiday to everybody and healthy 2010. And a special thanks to the 6 team members that helped since 2007 with version 4 but left this year.
      Reply
    1. bigwater's Avatar
      Well, *generally* a gold release is where all the marketing has been completed and the software has been released for general availability. In that case, I guess this release will fullfill the the requirements of a gold release. However, *typically* a gold release would be a very stable and relatively bug-free package suitable for wide spread distribution and use by end users, so I'm not 100% sure this meets the standards of a gold release on those counts.

      3:37 PM GMT-5, 1:37 IB Home Time and still we've got 17 CSS errors and 21 warnings at vbulletin.com, and 199 errors and 939 warnings on /forum. And I still can't put a user back on ignore that was on ignore before we went to 4 beta
      Reply
    1. fortify's Avatar
      Quote Originally Posted by bigwater View Post
      Well, *generally* a gold release is where all the marketing has been completed and the software has been released for general availability. In that case, I guess this release will fullfill the the requirements of a gold release. However, *typically* a gold release would be a very stable and relatively bug-free package suitable for wide spread distribution and use by end users, so I'm not 100% sure this meets the standards of a gold release on those counts.

      3:37 PM GMT-5, 1:37 IB Home Time and still we've got 17 CSS errors and 21 warnings at vbulletin.com, and 199 errors and 939 warnings on /forum. And I still can't put a user back on ignore that was on ignore before we went to 4 beta
      Those are still using RC 3
      Reply
    1. badheeu's Avatar
      Im too waiting for it, after we get we will get our skins updated from skin sellers
      Reply
    1. bandare's Avatar
      Nice read. Good luck with the release of the gold version and I look forward to the next round of additions [and some fixes] in the New Year.
      Reply
    1. bigwater's Avatar
      Quote Originally Posted by fortify View Post
      Those are still using RC 3
      You're certainly right. My apologies. I had just sort of assumed that they would be running RC4 on their site as soon as it was released to us, but for some reason they never did. Now that gold is officially running on vbulletin.com, the W3C validation errors have gone UP on /forum from 199 on RC3 to 202 on gold. At least the warnings are down from 939 to 936.

      Gonna be a while before I upgrade anything.
      Reply
    1. Dr.osamA's Avatar
      Waiting impatiently . Where the gold after a long wait ?? We will accept it now , the reforms and later
      Reply
    1. Cort's Avatar
      Congratulations on producing such an exciting product!
      Reply
    1. Lynne's Avatar
      Congratulations on getting vB4 released. I'm sure a lot of you are ready for some time off now. So, Happy Holidays to the team and thanks for the Gold!
      Reply
    1. bigwater's Avatar
      Time off? You're kidding right Lynne? The work has only just begun. We've got a moderately buggy product released four days before Christmas with probably thousands of installs being attempted as I type this. Support should be live now... it's gold so it's supposed to be supported. All of the support and development team should be gearing up to play with their kids, building snowmen, placing the star on the top of their tree, but instead they're going to be wiping the sweat off of their glasses and worrying about what the next ten days are going to bring.

      Merry Christmas VB team. I'm glad I'm not in your shoes tonight.
      Reply
    1. Nestor's Avatar
      LOL! I'm gonna play with this but I still don't think it's ready for prime time. I still need Facebook connect and a more full feature gallery which would make this package more complete. But kudos for breaking records here and getting this out by the end of the year. I figured it wouldn't be possible until at least March of 2010.
      Reply
    1. Antivirus's Avatar
      Thanks for all your hard work Jelsoft - can't wait to upgrade my test board and start getting familiar with new features, functionality, and code.
      Reply
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