Former vBulletin lead developer Kier Darby to develop new forum software?

[napy8gen]

Now vbulletin4 has something to keep up beside IPB. vbulletin shoudnt be worry because you have a mass features/settings. But you lack of technology and cool stuff. Cool pop up drop down, jquery.
you need to simplify certain areas like the admin settings. Use icons are great to simplify things. Stylevars also need to be revamp. Please see how XF group the drop down and pop ups.
some features like album, blog and socialgroups need to be re-think again, make them fancy. gallery with fancy viewer like latest flickr.com etc.From what I see you just abandoned these places.

[ThorstenA]

Now vbulletin4 has something to keep up beside IPB. vbulletin shoudnt be worry because you have a mass features/settings. But you lack of technology and cool stuff. Cool pop up drop down, jquery.
you need to simplify certain areas like the admin settings. Use icons are great to simplify things. Stylevars also need to be revamp. Please see how XF group the drop down and pop ups.
some features like album, blog and socialgroups need to be re-think again, make them fancy. gallery with fancy viewer like latest flickr.com etc.From what I see you just abandoned these places.

To be honest, I dislike xenforos

• redundancy all over its navbar, beginning with two log out links
• Your Account (1), Username (2), (3) Logout should all be together
• Members Tab as useless as here (who cares about an alphabetic list of 100.000 members?)
• subforums that are hidden. You have to hover over them.
• they included quick links again. Seriously.

While I have a hard time redesign vbulletin to my needs, other forum software would be also a challenge for me I also like icons replaced with simple text links. Text links are understood from everyone. Imagine the "pen icon" in the cms here where you have to hover over it to even notice it. Yes, this pen is the edit link. Now, a simple "edit" text link would be more comfortable for most users, right?

[sadikb]

To be honest, I dislike xenforos

• redundancy all over its navbar, beginning with two log out links
• Your Account (1), Username (2), (3) Logout should all be together
• Members Tab as useless as here (who cares about an alphabetic list of 100.000 members?)
• subforums that are hidden. You have to hover over them.
• they included quick links again. Seriously.

While I have a hard time redesign vbulletin to my needs, other forum software would be also a challenge for me I also like icons replaced with simple text links. Text links are understood from everyone. Imagine the "pen icon" in the cms here where you have to hover over it to even notice it. Yes, this pen is the edit link. Now, a simple "edit" text link would be more comfortable for most users, right?

Everything you mentioned is subjective. Moreover even if I was to agree, they are only style issues. I am sure all style makers will jump into the Xenforo opportunity as looking at whatever code we have seen it's delightfully easy. So if you don't like where something is placed, get a new style.

In fact, the point you have made about what you don't like speaks very favorably for an alpha software where experienced users are finding only style issues. No annoying bugs like many of the VB4 ones we have been dealing with for the past so many months. But ya, the full extent of how good or bad XF is, we will be able to judge once it goes on sale.

[AWS]

Too many popups for just about everything you do. The one that annoys me the most is the mark forums read popup. If I clicked the link to mark the forums read I want to mark them. I don't want to have to click a link in a popup to do it.

The profile popup is second that annoys me. When I click on a username I want to go to the profile page. I don't want to have to click a second link to get there.

Whatever happened to clicking one link to get where you want to go? If you want to use a popup for the profile link why not do it the way IPB does it? A little image to click if you just want some stats and info.

[ThorstenA]

Certainly, you click on a username and the javascript displays the popup where the mouse is. Not putting it in the center of the screen.

I do see lots of nice things there happen, but on the other hand if I would be a picky customer, I would also have to say lots about things that I think could be improved greatly.

Just wanted to point out that each one may have its favorite. xf certainly has great advantages - it's light, the style in general (!) looks far less cluttered than here. But then - the more they add to xf, the more clutter I see Obviously vbulletin 1 may have been less cluttered than vbulletin 3 or 4. Look the amazing job Microsoft did with office 2007 - it looks less cluttered than all releases before. But then - the ribbon concept was also very hard to live with it for lots of users. vbulletin and xf use the ribbon system too, under the tab there are subtabs displayed. Hope this will be more used in future.

I wish xf luck and the more competition, the better. It's about who has a new idea. Competition usually takes these ideas into their releases soon: inline edits? Came from IPB as much as I know. Alerts? Came from IPB and are now in xf. And vice versa. I do think vbulletin is able to compete with them - and the target audience is a different one, I think

[jeffinj]

I love vb but I am 95% sure I will be moving to xF. I've already made this announcement on my forums.

[Chousho]

I'll be honest and up front: I definitely like what I see over at XF and do not like what I've seen with VB4.

Although I'm only a 1 license holder (that is now expired), I'll still voice my opinion on this.

VBulletin to me was the top forum software in my eyes [when I bought it] for its known security, stability and fast patches when a bug was found. Mind you, this wasn't 100%, but it definitely felt near enough. Sure there were hit or misses (CMS, Project Tools) along the way, but VB had a direction, and many customers felt good about that direction. Sure 3.8 was ehh in being received, and communication was sometimes sparse or non-existent, but the people behind the scenes seemed to still have that direction.

However, the community feel was lost during the acquisition by IB. It feels less like people wanting to put out a quality forum product, and more as a business selling a product for our money only. Mind you, of course Jelsoft was a business to make money--that's a given--however, I am talking about feel one would get. These people had worked hard on this forum product to get it where it was, and you could tell they cared.

I may (most likely am, in fact) be biased, however I do not get this same feeling from the people of IB. They may have an interest in the product, as its a source of income, but it feels like it only comes down to dollars, not quality or customer satisfaction. I had been considering renewing for VB4, however with the switch of the licensing, and the overall feel of the buyout, I became hesitant. Great things promised never came delivered, and that's the problem.

It feels like VB now lacks direction. We were told VB 4 would be a complete rewrite with MVC; instead it was a "somewhat of a rewrite", and "here's a 4.0 name, so buy it!" attitude. If VB4 had instead taken more time to deliver the goods that had gotten our hopes up to begin with, I would have more faith in the future of this product. With talk of 4.1 (and even 4.2 for full UTF-8 support) already, I do not see the stability here that I once did.

Kier and Mike seem to have a direction they want to go. Even if that direction may not line up 100% with my own, it at least is a direction that is being moved toward. I know the quality they can accomplish from my time with VBulletin, and I trust their judgement in creating a product. The most important thing to me, as well, is that you can tell they care about their product. Their enthusiasm is a clear indicator of this, and makes me look forward to what the future brings with XF. The features may not be all in place, but it's better to have a slow and steady forum that you know is actively being worked on, than one plagued by rewrite issues and uncertainty.

I wish both parties the best.

[pspmodandcfw]

Too many popups for just about everything you do. The one that annoys me the most is the mark forums read popup. If I clicked the link to mark the forums read I want to mark them. I don't want to have to click a link in a popup to do it.

The profile popup is second that annoys me. When I click on a username I want to go to the profile page. I don't want to have to click a second link to get there.

Whatever happened to clicking one link to get where you want to go? If you want to use a popup for the profile link why not do it the way IPB does it? A little image to click if you just want some stats and info.

You could always drag the link to the navbar.

[pspmodandcfw]

Too many popups for just about everything you do. The one that annoys me the most is the mark forums read popup. If I clicked the link to mark the forums read I want to mark them. I don't want to have to click a link in a popup to do it.

The profile popup is second that annoys me. When I click on a username I want to go to the profile page. I don't want to have to click a second link to get there.

Whatever happened to clicking one link to get where you want to go? If you want to use a popup for the profile link why not do it the way IPB does it? A little image to click if you just want some stats and info.

It was like that then everyone said they was accidently clicking it so they added this feature.

[sadikb]

As far as people who have problems with all the javascript overlays, turning them off is as simple as editing the id i believe. The beauty of JQuery is that, your code always remains very clean. I am sure in the future they will have this as an option as to where you want overlays yes or no, because it would be very simple implementing that. And someone may come up with a mod which could do such a thing. The point is, Javascript thing is not really a system issue but a style issue, so one may also opt for a different style.

[feldon23]

Communication was nearly non-existent with the exception of the use of the announcement forum. You can search up Kiers posts here if you like to do so. That will tell you the communication before IB. If you had luck there were sometimes mystic shortened sentences ending with three dots which could mean anything, and Kier is doing the same now on xf forums. However not so often. It's his style. If you like that, fine.

This revisionist history is pissing me off.

His posts ending with 3 dots were AFTER IB took over and started controlling communication and development. If you did not pick up his exasperation and frustration at the direction of the company, the parameters on what he could communicate and develop, etc., well then I'm sorry you are so obtuse on these matters.

Communication before IB was not *great*, but there was an obvious and nonsubtle increase of self-censorship in the posts of Kier and other Jelsoft employees once IB started managing things.

[feldon23]

This is too little to late and I feel it's just sore grapes on Kier and Mikes part. I wish them well, but, in all honesty I doubt that they will be as successful as IPB or IB. That ship sailed long ago. The time was right for UBB to be toppled. vBulletin 4 as bad as it is still the market leader. The only real competitor to that throne is IPB.

vBulletin 4 is what it is because motivated people who have always delivered a rock-solid product (even if it didn't always have all the feature bloat people begged for) were prevented from doing what needed to be done -- refactoring the product and producing a from-the-ground up vBulletin 4.

The fact that XenForo at 10 months development already adds more features and has shown a powerful, optimized, flexible architecture not present in vBulletin 4 despite 18 months development, should be apparent.

As a platform, vBulletin 4 does not foster communication or integration with other products (Wordpress, Joomla, etc.) or allow any other user login systems. vBulletin 4 is a bear to style. vBulletin 4 is very much a sealed box, so the vBulletin team must deliver EVERYTHING.

As a platform, XenForo is being built open, with a replaceable user login system, a crisp, flexible style that fully leverages CSS, and a node-based content system that will allow content types such as blogs, pages, etc. to be added extremely quickly. As a result, XenForo will become successful not in spite of the third party developer community, but because of it.

I'm sorry that all you see is vB4/IB complainers now brown-nosing Kier. That's your perspective, and you're welcome to it, but don't be surprised when we say "I told you so."

[Lionel]

People will never be happy. It's just a matter to see xenforo available to start seeing all kind of rants about it.

[ManagerJosh]

People will never be happy. It's just a matter to see xenforo available to start seeing all kind of rants about it.

Do those rants have merit, however?

[Lionel]

Do those rants have merit, however?

I was among those to be very upset with 4.0. I am a developer and I can tell you that as far as I am concerned, 4.0.4 put vB back on the map. In fact I am really impressed with the amount of flexibility that I now have. All my scripts tremendously beneficiated from vB4.0.4

Granted some bugs remained. But what do you expect from over hundreds of thousands lines of code?