Joe Rosenblum

Dear vBulletin Developers...

59 Comments

by Joe Rosenblum on Fri 23rd Oct '09 at 7:35pm (7480 Views)

Thanks for your continued support of vBulletin. It's been several years since the last major point release of vBulletin, and through all that time, your energy and enthusiasm have been inspiring to us. With the upcoming release of vBulletin 4.0 Forums and Publishing Suite, we want to re-engage and strengthen the ties between the core vB development team and all of you.

We just publicly unveiled vB 4.0 and there are some great new features, including:

-An awesome, and highly flexible CMS product (unveiling soon!)
-A Great new default theme
-SEO Urls
-Multi-content search capability

Along with some of these consumer facing changes, we've made some major changes to the internals, including:

-Validating XHTML markup
-A new templating system
-A new stylevar system

All in all, we're talking tens of thousands of lines of new and improved code. While this means your old styles will need rework and some of your plugins will break -- we're confident that all the new features and functionality we've added make up for it. Additionally, we have no designs on changing the styles or template system again in 5.0 (yes, we're already planning for 5.0), so you can be confident that your updates will have real longevity.

In addition to initializing this discussion of the developer impact of vB4, I want to take this opportunity to announce three major initiatives for the developer community.

vB 4 Plugin Prize
Starting soon, we'll kick off a contest with a cash prize for the best vB 4 hack or plugin.

Formal Developer Program
In the coming months, we'll unveil a formal vBulletin developer program which will include pre-release access to vB source code.

Monthly Developer Chats
We'll be hosting monthly, moderated live chats with the core developers of vB. The first chat will be 4pm PST on Tuesday, November 10th and will feature Kevin Sours, Lead VB Developer.

More details will be forthcoming for all of these, and we have more exciting plans that we're not yet ready to announce but will be discussing here soon.

Thanks for all your contributions, we wouldn't be here without you,

-Joe

Joe Rosenblum
CTO, Internet Brands, Inc.
www.internetbrands.com
www.vbulletin.com

Update: Submit and vote on questions for our first developer chat here: http://bit.ly/Y1NW0

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Updated Tue 10th Nov '09 at 1:56pm by Joe Rosenblum (added link to Kier's post on stylevars)

Tags: developer chats, developer program, developers, plugin prize

Categories: ‎ vBulletin

Main Coming Soon: Forum and Suite Beta »

Comments

deuterium - Fri 23rd Oct '09 7:52pm

Thanks Joe, very useful. Many of those not in alpha or beta aren't priviledged with code access to generate plugins.
Ryan Ashbrook - Fri 23rd Oct '09 7:54pm

Looking forward to the developer programs and developer chats. I can guarantee I'll be there every month.
nwingate - Fri 23rd Oct '09 7:55pm

Thanks for posting here Joe... good to see your involvement.
The plugin prize sounds great. I'm not a developer but I firmly believe the long term success of vBulletin is dependent on it's ability to be open and encourage developers to build on top of the platform.
I'm excited to see vBulletin 4 go Gold.

Thanks.
Razasharp - Fri 23rd Oct '09 7:55pm

Great news Joe - bout time coders on vB.org got some incentive and help

Ps, like how the blogs look in the new look!
Joe Rosenblum - Fri 23rd Oct '09 7:59pm

Originally Posted by ct2k7

Thanks Joe, very useful. Many of those not in alpha or beta aren't priviledged with code access to generate plugins.

We hope to quickly remedy this so you can get out and update or create new plugins!
nwingate - Fri 23rd Oct '09 8:06pm

I think a Joomla style extensions directory would be nice as well.
Dean C - Fri 23rd Oct '09 8:09pm

One would hope this won't be a paid developer program. The large community of developers has contributed greatly to vBulletin's success, and it would be one final kick in the teeth to us if you would to charge us to participate in this program
Trevster - Fri 23rd Oct '09 8:12pm

Thanks Joe, although I think midnight GMT might be a tad late for a number of people who'd be interested in speaking to/seeing what Kevin has to say...
nwingate - Fri 23rd Oct '09 8:32pm

I'd also like to see support for paid plugins and mods. That will provide more exposure to their products and encourage more development.
Joe Rosenblum - Fri 23rd Oct '09 8:35pm

Originally Posted by Trevster

Thanks Joe, although I think midnight GMT might be a tad late for a number of people who'd be interested in speaking to/seeing what Kevin has to say...

Hmn. Good point. Maybe I'll create a poll for potential times...
Joe Rosenblum - Fri 23rd Oct '09 8:35pm

Originally Posted by nwingate

I'd also like to see support for paid plugins and mods. That will provide more exposure to their products and encourage more development.

Interesting idea, are you thinking something like the iPhone App Store?
Dody - Fri 23rd Oct '09 8:43pm

Good news, Joe. I am glad you are trying to strengthen the ties between the new team members and the exisiting developers. I am looking forward to win few prizes
Floris - Fri 23rd Oct '09 8:54pm

If we create a product with plugins, and it wins, and there's a cash prize. It's a prize right? We retain being author, copyright holder and in control of the product? Right?
Redseal - Fri 23rd Oct '09 9:26pm

Originally Posted by Joe Rosenblum

Interesting idea, are you thinking something like the iPhone App Store?

vBulletin app store would be sweet. It would give dev's move incentive to keep their mods upto date. I'm excited about these new developer incentives.
Shelby - Fri 23rd Oct '09 9:46pm

Hmm,

I noticed there are no SEO urls for the blogs. You may want to update the advertising to reflect that this feature does not exist for the blogs.
Revanza - Fri 23rd Oct '09 9:58pm

Holy bawls, the Developer Program sounds awesome =D
Can't wait to sign up =D
Booth - Fri 23rd Oct '09 10:30pm

Wow, sounds really good.

Really digging this revised blogging system too.
Almotmaiz.Net - Fri 23rd Oct '09 10:31pm

the Developer Program sounds awesom =]
Nick - Fri 23rd Oct '09 11:16pm

Originally Posted by Joe Rosenblum

Hmn. Good point. Maybe I'll create a poll for potential times...

At least post the transcripts, which I'm sure is already part of the plan.
David Grove - Sat 24th Oct '09 1:17am

Originally Posted by Joe Rosenblum

Hmn. Good point. Maybe I'll create a poll for potential times...

8 AM Pacific time would work fairly well for the Americas and Europe.