The gap between my needs and perceived direction of your development

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  • janslu
    Member
    • May 2006
    • 33

    The gap between my needs and perceived direction of your development

    I'm running a large forum (8+ million posts) based on vbulletin. I've started few years ago and vb let me build my community and grow it. I've started with version 3.x (don't recall exactly which one, sorry). Then came vb4 with it's promise of being modern and a host of problems it caused - mainly performance related. It's really hard to configure out of the box for large traffic and the sheer number of requests caused a lot of problems after the upgrade. It took us some time and we got it under control with tremendous help from digitalpoint (a constantly updated list of patches to the script and the only working search solution - the sphinx search). VB4 is getting old fairly quick. The web went far ahead - html5, grid and then responsive design etc. The features I thought were promised (like better blogs, better search, complete functionality in mobile skin/app etc) never really materialized. Blogs are a laugh. Social groups are not even available on mobiles even though they are being used by my users. I was looking for vb5 with hope that it is being planned for sites like mine - who started with vb and got successful. Seems I may be wrong...

    I know you guys are optimizing the script for performance now, but I'm afraid it might still be worse than vb4. It seems that there's a long delay caused by a javascript redraw after the site is loaded. What if we add the ads that require additional load time to a much more complcated webpage (we have many more forums on our homepage)? Will the redraw time increase? I'm willing to bet that it does. Also - Sphinx search will not be available even though ip.board - your competitor includes it out of the box, and you just have to know that this is the only working solution for large boards. I really need to know how are you going to solve the problem of searches on boards with more than 6 million posts... And we all know you have tried the sphinx search - there's this half-baked extension which was made available and never really updated.

    To sum it all up - I'm torn. After my first visit to vb5 test site I have totally panicked. This is not what I was waiting for. I hoped for vb4 but with better (easier and more html5 standards compliant) skinning, faster performance and maybe new features. A script that would give my users and me what we really need NOW. You seem to require a gamble on my part that I'm not sure I'm ready to take. Currently I'm checking all competitors and I don't think I will upgrade.
  • Zachery
    Former vBulletin Support
    • Jul 2002
    • 59097

    #2
    We've acknowledged in the past that the CMS performance wasn't where we wanted, and we made strives to get it to where it should be. We're not there yet.
    With vBulletin 5 in beta we're working on performance right now, and we are aware of customer perception of vBulletin 5.

    Comment

    • KrU$ty
      New Member
      • May 2008
      • 15
      • 3.7.x

      #3
      Originally posted by Zachery
      We've acknowledged in the past that the CMS performance wasn't where we wanted, and we made strives to get it to where it should be. We're not there yet.
      With vBulletin 5 in beta we're working on performance right now, and we are aware of customer perception of vBulletin 5.
      In other words, despite our terrible track record trust us yet again to deliver. Right? No thanks.

      Comment

      • manebe
        Member
        • Jan 2011
        • 49

        #4
        Originally posted by KrU$ty
        In other words, despite our terrible track record trust us yet again to deliver. Right? No thanks.
        Agree, no thanks.
        Also agree 100% with janslu, wise words.

        As a community admin I have a responsability towards board users, not a joke.

        You, vBulletin guys, cannot switch to a radical new software without considering us, actual customers: big mistake!

        Me, I will always try to keep myself open-minded, I will.
        In 1/2 years I will be back to look at vB5, maybe vB5 will be a good tool for a new project.

        For my existing vB4 project, I need a modular software,
        please, do not confuse a web-site-builder vS. a decent forum+blogs+galleries+cms software.

        That is why my existing project (fomer-vB4) is now powered by another brand.
        Last edited by manebe; Sat 22 Sep '12, 5:17am.

        Comment

        • feldon23
          Senior Member
          • Nov 2001
          • 11291
          • 3.7.x

          #5
          Originally posted by Zachery
          We've acknowledged in the past that the CMS performance wasn't where we wanted, and we made strives to get it to where it should be. We're not there yet.
          With vBulletin 5 in beta we're working on performance right now, and we are aware of customer perception of vBulletin 5.
          It was clear on day one that the CMS was not a stable codebase upon which to build vB5 but a bed of quicksand. Please tell me vBulletin 5 is not built upon the CMS code.

          Comment

          • Zachery
            Former vBulletin Support
            • Jul 2002
            • 59097

            #6
            It is not.

            Comment

            • walter
              Senior Member
              • May 2001
              • 387
              • 3.8.x

              #7
              Is it coded by the same developers that built the CMS?
              More than 10 years experience in building communities!
              Consulting for migration, import, newsletter delivery, stats, adserver, choosing the right software.

              Comment

              • Deimos
                Senior Member
                • Oct 2002
                • 1517
                • 3.8.x

                #8
                Originally posted by walter
                Is it coded by the same developers that built the CMS?
                I believe they already confirmed that in the past, that the ones who developed/signed off on the CMS, were now working on VB5. :P

                Comment

                • Zachery
                  Former vBulletin Support
                  • Jul 2002
                  • 59097

                  #9
                  Originally posted by Deimos
                  I believe they already confirmed that in the past, that the ones who developed/signed off on the CMS, were now working on VB5. :P
                  Before you run around making things up, can you cite a source?

                  Parts of the team who developed/design vBulletin 4, are no longer with us, parts of the team who did develop vBulletin 4 are with us, and some of them are working on vBulletin 5.

                  Comment

                  • feldon23
                    Senior Member
                    • Nov 2001
                    • 11291
                    • 3.7.x

                    #10
                    Originally posted by feldon23
                    It was clear on day one that the CMS was not a stable codebase upon which to build vB5 but a bed of quicksand. Please tell me vBulletin 5 is not built upon the CMS code.
                    Originally posted by Zachery
                    It is not.
                    Thank you.

                    Comment

                    • Deimos
                      Senior Member
                      • Oct 2002
                      • 1517
                      • 3.8.x

                      #11
                      Originally posted by Zachery
                      Before you run around making things up, can you cite a source?

                      Parts of the team who developed/design vBulletin 4, are no longer with us, parts of the team who did develop vBulletin 4 are with us, and some of them are working on vBulletin 5.
                      I don't remember WHO said it, I just remember one of the staff saying members who had worked on VB4's CMS, are now working on VB5

                      You yourself just said SOME of them are working on VB5, so why would I need to go find the post I'm referring to? Which, given the ****ty nature of VBs search "feature", would take an age anyways.

                      Are SOME of the people who worked on VB4's cms, now working on VB5? yes or no?

                      Not from Staff, but Digitalpoint made this remark sometime back - https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/show...=1#post2321239
                      Last edited by Deimos; Mon 24 Sep '12, 8:16am.

                      Comment

                      • rexxxy
                        Senior Member
                        • Feb 2010
                        • 564
                        • 4.2.X

                        #12
                        They don't want to say which developer is working on vb5 cms. Maybe Edwin is working on it again?

                        Talking about search what happen to Zoltan search for VB4 that he was testing out on IB Site/Sites?

                        Comment

                        • Zachery
                          Former vBulletin Support
                          • Jul 2002
                          • 59097

                          #13
                          I actually honestly don't know who did the CMS development during the alpha/beta project.

                          Anyway, as for Zoltan, he is doing vB5 dev work.

                          Comment

                          • janslu
                            Member
                            • May 2006
                            • 33

                            #14
                            @Zachery - my sincere thank you for reading and responding even though my topic has wandered into devs personals. It wasn't my intention. I just want to reiterate - please remember about existing, successful communities without big expense budgets. We need to upgrade primarily for new frontends - html5, less nesting, css sprites instead of multiple static requests etc. But we also need to have our sites working better or more or less equal than vb4 on the same hardware. Our users like what we currently have - they just want to have a nicer and faster website. Therefore the prime metrics I will use when deciding whether to upgrade are:
                            - server load (including search!),
                            - page load time (this delayed redraw is a little scary),
                            - enhancements for current features - like blogs (they are horrible in vb4) and social groups (they need some polish and need to be available on mobiles)
                            - upgrades for popular mods - like vbseo, but these should be coming if you will make a popular product,
                            - lastly - new features

                            I really hope you guys will deliver. But if not - than I'm in for some really tough decisions...

                            Comment

                            • Lizard King
                              Banned
                              • Mar 2004
                              • 1891
                              • 3.6.x

                              #15
                              Scott just read the code review on Adminextra , you'll be more surprised.

                              Comment

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