I'm sorry, I just don't like this...

[soniceffect]

You are right. But still it is a matter of meeting expectations. I'll tell you what I would have expected from this release and you can tell me if my expectations are too high.

I would have expected a beta that shows at least the potential of what is new and also sends waves of "this is awesome new stuff!" throughout the community software market. I would have expected a beta release that is buggy some, but nothing really blatantly or majorly bad. I would have expected a beta that performs as good or better than vB4. I would have expected clear explanations of new concepts added to the software along with why they will clearly benefit me as a customer and even my users. I would not have expected to have to buy the software just to be able to test it and help fix it. I would have expected the leader(s) of the software to stand behind their product and actually sell it to me. I would have expected a big push to get add-on devs on boat and hear about it, if it happened. The same goes for Style designers. I would have simply expected much more customer orientation in general.

Is that really too much to ask for?

Scott

No your expectations are not too high at all. For the most part i actually agree with you. However that is simply our expectations. We all know expectation and reality is often not what we get. And that doesnt just go for IB.

For the most part i actually like vb5 personally. It just has a lot of rough edges at the moment. This said i do see them being removed bit by bit and afaik as long as that continues to happen there will certainly be a point i decide to go for it and upgrade. Whether that be in 6 month or 2 years im honestly not bothered as i will do it when its ready for my site.

[Lizard King]

It seems some would have preferred vB5 be released as a Gold release a year from now, sight unseen, without any concept of the monumental changes to the core of the product, and without any discounts. I could see an argument if IB had immediately declared End Of Life on vB4 upon the release. The only argument is that vB5 is not yet ready for production sites, which isn't actually an argument. Those, like myself, who have purchased vB5 are able to not only get a jump on the software for our own use but also able to help the development team complete the product in a more timely manner than would have been done had the product been left unreleased. The volume of complaints about a product this far removed from vB4 would have well surpassed the volume of complaints now being received about how some do not care to pay for a beta while others paid for the beta and are "disappointed" in how it is not yet a completed product ready for production sites. There are options. No one is under duress to purchase the beta. The best IB can hope for is to please some of the people some of the time, or with any luck, most of the people most of the time, but, quite frankly they should ignore these baseless complaints. There is no sense in arguing for argument's sake.

Just go and check vBulletin's biggest competitor. They installed a new Alpha product to their company forums. They don't ask you to pay for it and Alpha software runs better then vBulletin 4.2 with more advanced features etc..

You maybe don't realise however many user find vBulletin 4 series un usuable. We were expecting an innovative and fast solution from vBulletin team. We followed all information supplied by vBulletin Team regarding vBulletin 5 Connect closely as we once thought it maybe the solution we can move on.

Then bam , Reality hit : IB announced first beta and when we look at it , everything was clear for us : We need to move to another product as there is no future for us on vBulletin 5 Connect and we didn't want to wait 2-3 years for another new release.

They mentioned about new improvements , new features in the early videos and some good ideas. But where are those ideas ? I fail to see any out there.

Is it wise to ask a Software company be more careful with their released products etc. ? If you plan to sell your car , will you show it to interested guys clean or in dirt ?

[omegatron]

Just go and check vBulletin's biggest competitor. They installed a new Alpha product to their company forums. They don't ask you to pay for it and Alpha software runs better then vBulletin 4.2 with more advanced features etc..

You maybe don't realise however many user find vBulletin 4 series un usuable. We were expecting an innovative and fast solution from vBulletin team. We followed all information supplied by vBulletin Team regarding vBulletin 5 Connect closely as we once thought it maybe the solution we can move on.

Then bam , Reality hit : IB announced first beta and when we look at it , everything was clear for us : We need to move to another product as there is no future for us on vBulletin 5 Connect and we didn't want to wait 2-3 years for another new release.

They mentioned about new improvements , new features in the early videos and some good ideas. But where are those ideas ? I fail to see any out there.

Is it wise to ask a Software company be more careful with their released products etc. ? If you plan to sell your car , will you show it to interested guys clean or in dirt ?

Totally agree with your comments. I have been a long time loyal vBulletin customer since the day vb2 came out. In fact I have stayed out of the negative publicity. However Internet Brands has the worst customer service in the industry that is seen by the negative comments and shrinking customer base. You can experiment with new pricing models and anything else you wish but when a huge percentage of your customer base is switching or has switched to competitors software you need to step up and take care of business.

For instance I am not going to be wasting my money on vb5. I was one of the first to convert to vb4 when it first came out and had to deal with the huge 1000 minimum amount of bugs with the GOLD release of that software. The bugs where all evident in there releases of there first two releases for that software version. Months ago I applied to test the software and was even sent an NDA agreement which I promptly returned that same day. Two months later and minimum 5 emails later I had to call customer service to essentially be told oh well we are sorry. Basically the head of the entire beta test ignored continued emails to him asking for an update. It would have taken a few seconds to respond to an email especially when you have been sent multiple emails over several months by one person. That is ignoring things as you can not say you did not know.

Basically all customer service did was talk to the guy and come back with "We are sorry have you checked out our demo". Really? I have over a decade experience writing software and over two decades customer service and upper management skills. I can not even begin on how many ways the customer service with this company is very low quality.

The proper response would have been with the scenario above since Internet Brands is the one who dropped the ball would have been " I am sorry Sir for our oversite and the trouble here is a beta copy to try out ".

Now enough of the rant as I will probably be banned here for my personal experience with this company but trust me I have copies of all correspondence.

I did check out the vb5 demo and I am as well as everyone else here highly disappointed which is why I have not spent the money to buy vb5. I would definitely not buy it without seeing whats under the hood so to speak. The look doesn't bother me as much as the clear poor coding which of course if I had a beta to send feedback on I could have helped with.

vb5 is clearly an early alpha. I mean like I would never call this beta 13. Look at the html and css validation.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vbulletin.com%2Fvb5demo%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

There are lots of stupid simple html mistakes which makes wonder why supposedly experienced developers would make such mistakes.

http://www.vbulletin.com/vb5demo/core/css.php?styleid=1&td=ltr&sheet=css_imgareaselect-animated.css,css_jquery_thumbnail-radio-checkbox.css,css_jquery-ui-1_8_14_custom.css,css_jquery_qtip_min.css,css_jquery_selectBox.css,css_jquery_fileupload-ui.css,css_global.css,css_bootstrap.css,css_responsive.css,css_additional.css&ts=1350036598

The CSS is way worse with 630 mistakes in all.

Should we all not be coding to 100% html and css validation.

I definately would suggest to Internet Brands that it really look at there product and fix any and all obvious issues before calling something GOLD or calling an alpha product a beta or this software release will seriously harm there company. That is my opinion but I think there is enougth of a factual basis here. vb4 did enough on the reputation as threads across the net show. I would also highly suggest that more emphasis be placed on actual true customer service. Keeping your customers happy especially long time customers is essential to your continued business.

[Ace]

Should we all not be coding to 100% html and css validation.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fcnn.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0&user-agent=W3C_Validator%2F1.3

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adobe.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0&user-agent=W3C_Validator%2F1.3

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oracle.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0&user-agent=W3C_Validator%2F1.3

Those sites don't validate either.

[Ramsesx]

We shouldn't compete with the worst cases Ace.

[LockedOnLaw]

Just go and check vBulletin's biggest competitor. They installed a new Alpha product to their company forums. They don't ask you to pay for it and Alpha software runs better then vBulletin 4.2 with more advanced features etc..

You maybe don't realise however many user find vBulletin 4 series un usuable. We were expecting an innovative and fast solution from vBulletin team. We followed all information supplied by vBulletin Team regarding vBulletin 5 Connect closely as we once thought it maybe the solution we can move on.

Then bam , Reality hit : IB announced first beta and when we look at it , everything was clear for us : We need to move to another product as there is no future for us on vBulletin 5 Connect and we didn't want to wait 2-3 years for another new release.

They mentioned about new improvements , new features in the early videos and some good ideas. But where are those ideas ? I fail to see any out there.

Is it wise to ask a Software company be more careful with their released products etc. ? If you plan to sell your car , will you show it to interested guys clean or in dirt ?

It seems you've jumped several ships, from vBulletin to XenForo and now to IPBoards ... It makes one wonder if any product will ever live up to your expectations.

[Lizard King]

It seems you've jumped several ships, from vBulletin to XenForo and now to IPBoards ... It makes one wonder if any product will ever live up to your expectations.

I never considered Xenforo for our big boards. vBulletin 3 series lived up to our expectations and now IPB does it.

[LockedOnLaw]

You are right. But still it is a matter of meeting expectations. I'll tell you what I would have expected from this release and you can tell me if my expectations are too high.

I would have expected a beta that shows at least the potential of what is new and also sends waves of "this is awesome new stuff!" throughout the community software market. I would have expected a beta release that is buggy some, but nothing really blatantly or majorly bad. I would have expected a beta that performs as good or better than vB4. I would have expected clear explanations of new concepts added to the software along with why they will clearly benefit me as a customer and even my users. I would not have expected to have to buy the software just to be able to test it and help fix it. I would have expected the leader(s) of the software to stand behind their product and actually sell it to me. I would have expected a big push to get add-on devs on boat and hear about it, if it happened. The same goes for Style designers. I would have simply expected much more customer orientation in general.

Is that really too much to ask for?

Scott

To be frank, I had hoped for far more functionality than was in the beta 11 (now beta 13) version of vB5. For two years or longer I have been planning specifics that revolve around certain functionality that vB4 does not have and that vB5 does not yet have. vB5 may not have those functions for a considerable period of time. It may never have them as part of the core product. That doesn't mean I feel like I'm falling behind any would-be competitors in the internet world. My membership doesn't need me to be running on the newest product. In fact, there are numerous forums doing extraordinarily well running vB 3.8.7. What is it that would have caused jaws to drop? There is only so much that one can do with this platform. Copy Facebook? Twitter? Cisco Telepresence? Yea, those things would be nice but they already exist. Granted, it would have been just as easy to hold the product as unreleased until the coding was up to standard and perhaps until some of the more popular functions were, well, functional. It also would have been considerably slower for a small development team to find and fix bugs than it is for the customer base to find, and in some cases, fix them. Insofar as the concept is concerned, drag and drop modules that allow complete customization seems self-explanatory. It also seems that it would be easier for add-on developers to make products for which customers would be willing to pay, as opposed to the (often limited) free versions. I don't know that we disagree on what we would like to see but it would be fair to say we disagree on what is a reasonable timeframe in which to see it.

[djbaxter]

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...alidator%2F1.3

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adobe.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0&user-agent=W3C_Validator%2F1.3

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oracle.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0&user-agent=W3C_Validator%2F1.3

Those sites don't validate either.

Also:

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.invisionpower.com%2Fapps%2Fboard%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fxenforo.com%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

[Zachery]

Totally agree with your comments. I have been a long time loyal vBulletin customer since the day vb2 came out. In fact I have stayed out of the negative publicity. However Internet Brands has the worst customer service in the industry that is seen by the negative comments and shrinking customer base. You can experiment with new pricing models and anything else you wish but when a huge percentage of your customer base is switching or has switched to competitors software you need to step up and take care of business.

For instance I am not going to be wasting my money on vb5. I was one of the first to convert to vb4 when it first came out and had to deal with the huge 1000 minimum amount of bugs with the GOLD release of that software. The bugs where all evident in there releases of there first two releases for that software version. Months ago I applied to test the software and was even sent an NDA agreement which I promptly returned that same day. Two months later and minimum 5 emails later I had to call customer service to essentially be told oh well we are sorry. Basically the head of the entire beta test ignored continued emails to him asking for an update. It would have taken a few seconds to respond to an email especially when you have been sent multiple emails over several months by one person. That is ignoring things as you can not say you did not know.

Basically all customer service did was talk to the guy and come back with "We are sorry have you checked out our demo". Really? I have over a decade experience writing software and over two decades customer service and upper management skills. I can not even begin on how many ways the customer service with this company is very low quality.

The proper response would have been with the scenario above since Internet Brands is the one who dropped the ball would have been " I am sorry Sir for our oversite and the trouble here is a beta copy to try out ".

Now enough of the rant as I will probably be banned here for my personal experience with this company but trust me I have copies of all correspondence.

I did check out the vb5 demo and I am as well as everyone else here highly disappointed which is why I have not spent the money to buy vb5. I would definitely not buy it without seeing whats under the hood so to speak. The look doesn't bother me as much as the clear poor coding which of course if I had a beta to send feedback on I could have helped with.

vb5 is clearly an early alpha. I mean like I would never call this beta 13. Look at the html and css validation.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vbulletin.com%2Fvb5demo%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

There are lots of stupid simple html mistakes which makes wonder why supposedly experienced developers would make such mistakes.

http://www.vbulletin.com/vb5demo/core/css.php?styleid=1&td=ltr&sheet=css_imgareaselect-animated.css,css_jquery_thumbnail-radio-checkbox.css,css_jquery-ui-1_8_14_custom.css,css_jquery_qtip_min.css,css_jquery_selectBox.css,css_jquery_fileupload-ui.css,css_global.css,css_bootstrap.css,css_responsive.css,css_additional.css&ts=1350036598

The CSS is way worse with 630 mistakes in all.

Should we all not be coding to 100% html and css validation.

I definately would suggest to Internet Brands that it really look at there product and fix any and all obvious issues before calling something GOLD or calling an alpha product a beta or this software release will seriously harm there company. That is my opinion but I think there is enougth of a factual basis here. vb4 did enough on the reputation as threads across the net show. I would also highly suggest that more emphasis be placed on actual true customer service. Keeping your customers happy especially long time customers is essential to your continued business.

No one else validates their html, in some cases it is not possible to be 100% valid if you want a document to do all the things you need it to do in a real world.

Neither XF or IPB pass validation either according to a checker. The real test is if the software looks consistent and behaves the same across browsers.

Our CSS does need some work though.

Its more important to write semantic html that works across the big 3 browsers, than to make sure it meets an ever changing html5 spec.

[Wayne Luke]

Looking at the HTML Validation...

Some are due to Facebook Integration (which should actually be off on the Demo currently).
Some are due to JSON code embedded in links.
Most are due to custom attributes on modules. The last can be fixed so I added this JIRA - VBV-5327
The last major contributor is the alt tag on user avatars. That is this JIRA - VBV-5328

[Paul M]

It seems you've jumped several ships, from vBulletin to XenForo and now to IPBoards ... It makes one wonder if any product will ever live up to your expectations.

As a forum owner or admin he is entitled to switch between products as often as he wants.

[LockedOnLaw]

As a forum owner or admin he is entitled to switch between products as often as he wants.

If that were the argument you would have a valid point.

[Lizard King]

If that were the argument you would have a valid point.

Thing is , you don't know me or our sites but still just to proof that you are right , you feel a right to claim anything for anyone. If you want to discuss , start discussing because all you did in this thread is complain about people who don't like vBulletin 5. Another minor information , we never switched platform before.

[LockedOnLaw]

Thing is , you don't know me or our sites but still just to proof that you are right , you feel a right to claim anything for anyone. If you want to discuss , start discussing because all you did in this thread is complain about people who don't like vBulletin 5. Another minor information , we never switched platform before.

Correct. We don't know one another. We only know what we read here. I read this:

there is no future for us on vBulletin 5 Connect and we didn't want to wait 2-3 years for another new release.

Unless I've taken that entirely out of context you're saying vBulletin 5 does not now and will not ever meet your needs, and yet you continue to explain that it does not now and will not ever meet your needs.

Why? Is there something that could be done to meet your needs? Maybe whatever you are looking for could benefit others. Maybe it could benefit me.

Or have you truly moved on to another product? If so, why would you continue to debate a product that, in your own words:

Then bam , Reality hit : IB announced first beta and when we look at it , everything was clear for us : We need to move to another product as there is no future for us on vBulletin 5 Connect and we didn't want to wait 2-3 years for another new release.