Starting to be impressed by 5.0

[soniceffect]

The most important for users is the attractive style. I hope you will consider it in the new release.

Regards,

I have actually been playin with stying vb5 and find in nice to style. I know a few others have been doing the same. Still problems with too much css etc however thats been dropping with each release

[miner]

I have actually been playin with stying vb5 and find in nice to style. I know a few others have been doing the same. Still problems with too much css etc however thats been dropping with each release

I agree 100% and expecting to be MORE designer friendly in couple of months.

[woffie]

If you are going to compare vb5, then it would be useful to compare to phpfox as well, as PHPFox looks very similar to what vb5 seems to be aiming for. Except that PHPFox actually looks as polished as I would wish vbulletin would be.

Yeah, and $98 per year for updates. That is stupid. Anyone that would leave VB for that should have their head examined. Oh and don't forget the best mod writers around with VB.

[Alfa1]

Yeah, and $98 per year for updates. That is stupid. Anyone that would leave VB for that should have their head examined.

That's a whole of a lot better than no yearly fee and no major functionality updates for 2.5 years, struggling with thousands of bugs for years, staff going silent for many months. I hope that history does not repeat itself with vb5.

I'll opt for a yearly fee any time.

[woffie]

That's a whole of a lot better than no yearly fee and no major functionality updates for 2.5 years, struggling with thousands of bugs for years, staff going silent for many months. I hope that history does not repeat itself with vb5.

I'll opt for a yearly fee any time.

Then why are you hanging around here since you think the facebook clone is better? As for me, I have 4.2 working just fine. I purchased the upgrade to 5.0. I am in no hurry to switch. If it takes 2 years, no problem, I have software that is working just fine until 5.0 is working up to where I think it is a better option than what I currently have. I don't care if it takes 5 years, like I said, I am in no hurry.

[Alfa1]

Then why are you hanging around here since you think the facebook clone is better?

My statement referred to yearly fees. This post explains pretty well why I am already half way out the door:

The past with vb4 already showed that there was reason to be very cautious with my expectations for vb5. My big board has not been upgraded for 5 years. I never upgraded my big board from vb3.8 to vb4, because only 3 years after release of 'vb4 gold' and after thousands of bugs were fixed I consider 4.2 as gold. vb4.2 would be a viable foundation to build upon if there would be several years of active development by IB coming. A major upgrade costs me 6 months of rewriting addons. Unfortunately, now that it has a reasonable state with only 850 bugs, its basically pronounced dead by the focus on vb5. Therefore after 3 years of waiting for vb4 to be fixed, vb4 is still not a viable upgrade for my needs. So the focus is on vb5.


The information given before the release of the beta certainly gave reason to be hopeful and even excited.

I think there are a lot of good ideas in vb5, including:

1. Everything API, so that it becomes easy to replace or modify much of the front end.
2. Site builder
3. Modules/apps
4. Shift from forum oriented to content type oriented. (as this allows custom content types and improvement of blog, groups, etc)
5. Replacing the vastly outdated vb4 styling
6. Updating to modern technology, including jquery, php5.4, CSS3, html5, etc.

These 6 points above are gold in my opinion and if executed well are very good reasons to upgrade to vb5.


Then the 'beta' came out and showcased the really poor state that the product is in. While the above 6 points are very attractive aspects of vb5, it seems to me that vb5 has no future for the reasons below. I am hereby asking staff, management and customers to alleviate my concerns below, cause like Mert, Shawn, Scott, Gladius, and many other big board owners, I am halfway out the door.

1. Many senior developers including Rafio, Shawn(digitalpoint), Floren state that vb5 has horrible code quality and is the code/design of the software is a complete disaster and that it would be best for IB to scrap it and start over. (and similar conclusions)
   You can fix bugs. You can hardly fix bad software design. I thought that the main reason for rewriting vb4 was the fact that various issues can not be resolved without resolving bad software design. vb5 seems like a shaky foundation to build upon, which predicts problems for the future.
2. Judging by the poor state the 'beta' is in, it seems to me that it will take years, before vb5 will be bug free and have all needed functions.
3. It remains to be seen if IB will keep developing vb5 after the initial wave of sales.
   vb4 took 3 years to get to a somewhat reasonable level of bugs (850 at present) which included about 2 years of IB barely raising a finger while customers struggled. IB even went completely silent and unresponsive towards customers for quite some time here. The seem to have no problem with advertising malfunctioning products like the mobile suite. Management seems to be of the opinion that releasing bug ridden products is OK.
   It seems that vb5 will be released with a massive load of issues and an absence of features. After the initial wave of sales, there is no financial incentive for IB to do anything again. Therefore it makes no sense to purchase vb5 before its bug free and feature complete.
4. Despite various requests from customers vBS has not taken away concerns about possible user data mining or data use by Internet Brands and its affiliates/websites. Internet Brands operates thousands of websites and competes with vbulletin customers. vbulletin makes up a tiny fraction of IB's interests. A simple statement here and in a privacy policy that applies to vb5 would take away these concerns. The fact that vBS / IB does not make it crystal clear that vbulletin customers their website data is safe/protected against use by the Internet Brands network or affiliates, is very worrisome.
5. Advertisements by IB announce 125 new features for vb5. Yet, IB refuses to say what these 125 new features are. To me this comes across as very shady and adds to the uncertainty.
6. vb5 will change all urls which will make all inbound link juice go dead. A second concern is if Google will successfully reindex all pages and internal links. This remains to be seen.

For the reasons above it seems to me that vb5 has no future.
I would be happy if my concerns are alleviated.

The post was never answered.

Does that explain it to you?

In any case, I have indeed asked PHPFOX to enhance their forum software in order to cater to the current market demand. Its certainly not just a facebook clone, as it is also a twitter, wordpress and youtube clone, including a marketplace and has better social groups than vbulletin. But while their suite is better than vbulletin, their forum is weak. Therefore its not suited for my big board.

[woffie]

If you are going to compare vb5, then it would be useful to compare to phpfox as well, as PHPFox looks very similar to what vb5 seems to be aiming for. Except that PHPFox actually looks as polished as I would wish vbulletin would be.

I checked that out, I don't understand why anyone would bother to take the time to register on a facebook clone when facebook already exists. That is all that software is, a clone of facebook. Good luck with that.

[Merenguista]

If you are going to compare vb5, then it would be useful to compare to phpfox as well, as PHPFox looks very similar to what vb5 seems to be aiming for. Except that PHPFox actually looks as polished as I would wish vbulletin would be.

This softwar (phpfox) is very sophisticated and the community forum is a real social network forum as we wish .. I hope that vBulletin can also be a real social network like phpfox or better than him ..

- - - Updated - - -

I checked that out, I don't understand why anyone would bother to take the time to register on a facebook clone when facebook already exists. That is all that software is, a clone of facebook. Good luck with that.

people today leave the forums to go on facebook and twitter .. So we must offer them "facebook-forums" to keep them ..

[Deimos]

I personally think the future is a mixture of Social networking and forums

While PhPFox excels at the social networking part, their forums part is rather basic

I think that's what IB has tried to aim for (Social networking + VB forums), but seems to have failed already, before release, I mean look at all the missing features from previous editions of VB and yet, it's classed as "Beta"?

[Merenguista]

I personally think the future is a mixture of Social networking and forums
While PhPFox excels at the social networking part, their forums part is rather basic

+1

I think that's what IB has tried to aim for (Social networking + VB forums), but seems to have failed already

we can not say that the project failed because first of all, the gold version is not yet realeased, and secondly because IB can always add all the missing features in the next versions ..

[woffie]

people today leave the forums to go on facebook and twitter .. So we must offer them "facebook-forums" to keep them ..

Why would people want to be on another facebook? Facebook already exists, it is like trying to re-invent the wheel. IMHO, facebook has already won. It is just a matter of time before forums go the way of the BBS. My site was out years before facebook. Facebook has severely decreased the activity on my site. I am not alone in this. I have seen some much bigger forums than mine close due to inactivity.

[Merenguista]

Why would people want to be on another facebook? Facebook already exists, it is like trying to re-invent the wheel. IMHO, facebook has already won. It is just a matter of time before forums go the way of the BBS. My site was out years before facebook. Facebook has severely decreased the activity on my site. I am not alone in this. I have seen some much bigger forums than mine close due to inactivity.

That's it .. you admit that your forum is attained by facebook and many other bigger forums are closed due to inactivity. So how can we avoid this ?

I think it is absolutely imperative that vBulletin can provide the same functionality (features) as facebook and twitter, while keeping the forum appearance.

[woffie]

That's it .. you admit that your forum is attained by facebook and many other bigger forums are closed due to inactivity. So how can we avoid this ?

I think it is absolutely imperative that vBulletin can provide the same functionality (features) as facebook and twitter, while keeping the forum appearance.

How can we avoid it? We can't. I am sure you are probably to young to know what a BBS is. Back in the early 90's before AOL came along and everyone was able to get on the internet we had what was called BBS's. Bulletin Board Systems. You would login through the phone line. You had to have a modem. Anyway you would login to the host computer and you could chat, download files, etc... When AOL came along, BBS's started to die out. Why do that when you can surf the internet? That is what is going to happen to forums. People can go onto Facebook and connect with old friends and family, play games, discuss things, etc... So again, why would they want to join another facebook type site when they have facebook? What are we going to offer them that they cant get on the real facebook? NOTHING! So what is the point? What we will have to offer is less features and less people to connect with, so again, why would anyone want to join our facebook clones?

[Grotesque]

More importantly about forum boards, is being anonymous. Some people do not prefer to mix up their personal life with their internet life. Thus, a forum board is great for that!

[Alfa1]

If you think that PHPFox is a facebook clone, then you are not looking at it close enough. Yes, it certainly has many facebook functions. This is correct. But it also has many other functions. You could just as well call PHPFox a YouTube clone, or a Ebay clone, a Wordpress clone, a XenForo clone.
The main issue with facebook, youtube and other popular online media is that users have become accustomed to rich user friendly UXD. Forums are back in the stone age when it comes to UXD. This is where vbulletin fails. Especially with vb5.