vBulletin is not making any progress

[whitetigergrowl]

seconded. I remember even IPS used to publish their product roadmaps for customers to see. not to mention that they announce their products long before they're even close to internal alpha testing. the knowledge that the company is actively developing a product they will need keeps the customers happy. in Jelsoft's case, however, everything is hidden under multiple layers of secrecy. we're forced to speculate and spend our money on third-party products, when I'm sure that many people would wait with such purchases if only they knew for sure that Jelsoft are developing a CMS, blog, gallery or whatnot.

Some of this is stuff I have complained about in regards to VB even a year or so ago.

IPB use to have a roadmap. The problem I believe came about when the roadmap was out there for quite along time, then VB announced 3.5 and many of the features that were on that roadmap ended up in VB 3.5. Coincidence? Possible. Or not. Who knows. But I do remember the outcry after that. Since then I have never seen a roadmap for IPB future releases. Likely because of that incident. They still announce releases but don't announce feature sets until its almost ready. The reasoning is simple. You know the product is coming but it makes it much more difficult for competitors to 'rip' the ideas from you and incorporate them into their software, than 'announce' before you do, that those features are coming for their next release as well. Making it look like they are the innovators when in fact they are not and are only playing catchup. Possibly because of their own lack of ingenuity.

It's always expected a few things like IPB's new profile system will have something similar for VB soon. And that IPB will borrow a feature from VB. But there's a fine line between borrowing and just plain ripping. It also shows shortcomings of whatever that company is. I'm sure anyone that lives in the UK could find what IPS's and VB's sales are if they know where to look.

In the end its a game of catchup. Maybe VB 4 will change things. Its hard to say. But I do agree, VB has been losing ground. At least to some extent. And anyone not considering IPB or even some of the free software serious competition, are only being fools.

[---MAD---]

This has been said before but all good things come to those who wait. I am sure the developers are up to something amazing. 3 months+ of silence (no updates etc) until 3.6.5 must mean something big.

I also know of a few projects going on vBulletin.com itself for staff and for the public, that takes time too.

Plus all the bug fixes take the developers time as well . Just wait a bit more before making your next move. If your not happy enough, go ahead and move to IPB / phpbb and we will see you back here within a month or two .

[AWS]

It's not about the features for me any longer. It's about performance. Search kills big sites. What good is having a huge site if no one can search it. Turning off features or throwing hardware at the problem is not the answer. vbulletin devs should fix the problem. Search is the single most important feature for any site. What good is having a ton of useful information if no one can find it?
It's sad when loyal users have to move to other products when the sites they run no longer function as they should.

[Sergio68]

Cmon man !

They release one patch a day and people complain about having to modify and change stuff, they rest (apparently) for a while and people still complain...

[RHarbison]

I've been using VB for a long time, and I really like it. In fact, I like it so much that I have about 5 licenses. The thing that keeps me coming back is the top notch support. This place is second to none in fixing problems, and they work with everyone from the fellow who doesn't know what permissions are to somebody running a mega-site.

That said, I do believe we could get some added value with some supported mods. To start with, I'd love a truly integrated photo gallery. (Yes, I know about, like, and use, Photopost, but it's not truly integrated...) It would be a great feature to be able to browse all the images that were posted as part of threads.

How about a world class links directory module?

Also, I could do some really neat stuff with a Google maps integration.

I'd happily pay extra for add-on modules that do that stuff well. I'm paying the folks at Photopost now, so it wouldn't make a lot of difference.

Maybe VB should consider selling and supporting some of the best mods? I'd pay for them.

[iardon]

How about a world class links directory module?

I'd pay for that.

[Greps]

I'd pay for that.

many would. just as many would pay for Jelsoft-made and supported CMS, blogs, gallery, etc. but at this present moment Jelsoft don't seem to be bothered with satisfying the users' demand, which can only mean that they have something in their sleeves.

[Quillz]

many would. just as many would pay for Jelsoft-made and supported CMS, blogs, gallery, etc. but at this present moment Jelsoft don't seem to be bothered with satisfying the users' demand, which can only mean that they have something in their sleeves.

I'd sure hope so. New products are always fun.

[Wayne Luke]

I bet you anything that vB sales have been dropping recently. as the op has pointed out, people would always rather choose something which is free over something which is not, and some of those free message board scripts are now approaching vBulletin in functionality, having long surpassed vBulletin in their userbase, and hence the number of hacks and addons available, which again compensates for the lack of certain features.

My experience is the opposite. While I don't have exact sales numbers, more and more people are dropping the free software and switching to something with better support and history. In many cases this is vBulletin.

I would say the top sales related question via phones or our ticket system is "Do you support importing from XXX free platform."

[Greps]

you know, with all this strange secrecy surrounding all current and future Jelsoft developments, it's always worth a shot trying to provoke someone from staff to share some new information with us customers.

[Onimua]

many would. just as many would pay for Jelsoft-made and supported CMS, blogs, gallery, etc. but at this present moment Jelsoft don't seem to be bothered with satisfying the users' demand, which can only mean that they have something in their sleeves.

With certain quotes from the developers themselves, it wouldn't be surprising if they pull something out.

[KimmiKat]

The free software is only great if you want to test the waters by having a mboard or a temporary board for a school project. If it bombs, you won't lose anything. But if your mboard gets popular, it's best to migrate to a paid software like vB. Also some paid mboard software change their policies/pricing structure more then some change underwear, other virtually keep the same or close to the same pricing for many moons.

[Neal-UK]

Well I would love a blog, gallery and something more of a interactive profile system where people can add their own videos, comments, etc and basically have their own website.

Someone I know has just gone from vB to phpFox and now IPB due to this and more people have returned to the site. I'm sure vBulletin will be doing the same soon, I hope. People want to be able to do more on sites.

It would be good if we had an idea of what was being thought of for a new release, like someone said, saves people having to buy a script from another company. I spend money for my forums, I don't want to spend money on other things to improve its features.

[Omri.L]

While I do agree with the main subject, I must say that you are also kinda whiners. Yeah, so there are no extremely and exciting new features (I'm not sure what could possibly be invented), but where were you 3 monthes ago when they released VB3.6 and you were all like "vBulletin rocks" and "you could name it VB4 and we would not see the diffrence"? come on, give the developers a little credit - cause when a new flow is reported they immediatly rush to fix it and publish a new version, and also - i'm sure they are working on something new.

[Anthony89]

I love vBulletin for it's ability to be easily customizable. I almost hate any forum I go on that doesn't use vBulletin when I am or am not an admi. if there's something here that isn't available go to vBulletin.org. That's what its there for. Also you can always request a mod that can be done if it's not there. Free is definitely not better than vBulletin. They can imitate but it's never the same.

People demand so much from the developers but they don't know what they want from the developers. They just want something. It's amazing how a simple upgrade from 3.6.4 to 3.6.5 from a minor security file causes so much joy out of upgrading. If Jelsoft said they wanted to come out with 3.6.6 because it sounds cooler people would upgrade.

They implemented a great plug in system. use it! Or be patient.