Big Board Thinking about switching from IP.Board

[kyrgyz]

lack of staff to answer any questions or concerns, no clue of what the future of vBulletin is going to be, no one can tell me whats going to be in 4.1, and yet this is suppose to be cutting edge stuff here?

You are right about often vB staff not answering questions here.

Some insight from Don Kuramura and Kevin Sour's interview:

In 2010, I think we’ll hear louder requests for a Facebook Connect/Open ID feature, as well as custom content-types and photo galleries. We’re working on all of these features now, and plan to introduce each at some point during the 4.x series in 2010.
....

Can you tell us about any upcoming features? Anything you think will particularly interest your users?
Two major things we’re working on is enhanced mobile capability and an activity stream. We plan to make mobile access a major part of vBulletin, and will be making enhancements that will improve the admin and user experiences for those accessing vBulletin sites from mobile devices. The activity stream feature will be similar to Facebook’s news feed – users will be able to see what other users are doing and saying on a vBulletin site. This will not only enhance content discovery, but it will also enhance member discovery, making vBulletin sites even more social than they already are.

http://www.foruminsider.com/community/blog/1/entry-8-interview-with-vbulletins-kevin-sours-and-don-kuramura/

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While the mod community at IPB maybe lacking, I generally find the modifications actually useful, rather than the droves of uselessness at vBulletin.org.

ROLF

You guys may not be able to spot a ship taking on water, but I've been on the ocean long enough to see a sinking ship when it's going down, and trust me I dont see holes being patched from where I sit currently.

From the way you sound, it doesn't look like you were interested in this product in the first place. You have never used this product, but have an expert opinion. It's evident now (to me at least) that you are just trolling here.

[Alfa1]

Some insight from Don Kuramura and Kevin Sour's interview:

Come on. IB doesn't even want to confirm the authenticity of the interview. Nor do they want to comment on it here. The product guy Don Kuramura has gone MIA or at least completely silent for many months now. I've been trying to get answers about this interview from Adrian, but all I got was a promise they would post an announcement about it... That was way back.

IB promised an iPhone app quite a while ago. Possibly as a paid app. Soon after IPB released one for free. I'm not sure if that affected IB's plans with the vb iPhone app, but after months there is still no release or news about it.

[Abomination]

I was going to switch to try to stay above the forum curve and be able to offer more to my members.... I'm by no means a fanboy of any particular forum software. I try to simply give my community the best available product on the market while being able to offer features other communities don't have or are lacking. Whether it be from vBulletin, phpBB, SMF, IPB, Wordpress, or any of the other available packages out there, I simply want the best, and won't settle for less....

You may want to consider buying a used copy of vb, any version that can be legally sold to you. Some are really inexpensive. vb assists people in buying/selling individual licenses, as opposed to entire accounts.

If you owned a copy of vb software, the way things are currently setup, you would have full access to vb.com and vb.org forever. As opposed to the IPB forums where a license needs to be active to use some forums.

[digitalpoint]

IB promised an iPhone app quite a while ago. Possibly as a paid app. Soon after IPB released one for free. I'm not sure if that affected IB's plans with the vb iPhone app, but after months there is still no release or news about it.

Yeah, it has me a little worried to be honest. It's been 2 months since Adrian said it has been "under development for some time". I would think something like that would be touted if they had something to show (even a screenshot) by now. It's certainly not a secret since IB has mentioned it. The question about it even was in the top 10 voted questions for the recent developer chat, and the question was ignored there as well.

http://www.google.com/moderator/#15/e=1b409&t=1b409.40&f=1b409.63355

I'm starting to get the feeling the iPhone app might be a pipe dream and by it being "many months into development", maybe that means a PHP developer (iPhone application development is a far different beast) has installed the iPhone developer kit and bought a book about iPhone development.

I sincerely hope that's not the case, but it's starting to feel like IB's Sphinx search. We got a Sphinx search that gives errors on the latest version of vBulletin, requires use of an outdated version of Sphinx, has other issues I'm not going to get into right now and then on top of it, then slapped with a beta title and thrown into vbulletin.org as an "open source" project that no one is working on, fixing or updating. It seemed more like a bone to throw out so people would stop asking about it.

I'm starting to get the feeling I'm going to have to make my own iPhone app like I did with a Sphinx-based search...

[Alfa1]

Yes, I have that feeling as well. I am interested to know how many manhours approximately would IB or a coder hired by IB need invest to create it? It seems to me that IPS was able to whip it up quit quickly.

[kyrgyz]

The product guy Don Kuramura has gone MIA or at least completely silent for many months now.

He's very much around judging from the last developer chat.

As stated, there's no 100% release time for VB 4.1; however, can you supply us with the steps you will be taking during its development to ensure a quality product in a reasonable timeframe?

IB Adrian:
Bob - sure.
First we scoured the feedback sections of the site, and discovered what could be described as areas our customers felt most needed improvement.
Don, our director of product then implemented as many suggestions as possible, brainstormed etc. and scoped out each aspect and wrote up very solid specs for our developers and QA people to work from.
The developers then take those specs, write the appropriate code, which is reviewed, and QA'd concurrently.
We also release it to our Beta test team, support staff etc. before release to get them to test it out

Don Kuramura
Last Activity: Fri 16th Jul '10 7:42pm

[Alfa1]

When was the last time you saw communication from him then? After all he is the director of product management and was introduced as the communication link between customers and management and as the person communicating with us about functions and features. He did do this actively for some time. I thought this was a very good thing.

Hey everyone,

Thanks for the warm welcome. I am looking forward to interacting with the community. Specifically, in the near future, you will be seeing me post mock-ups/wireframes of new features, designs, and kicking around new product ideas.

And just to clarify some earlier posts:
- @psylenced: I am 100% a product guy. Yes, I will be owning functional requirements, feature requests, and the 4.x Series Product Roadmap.
- I do all of my own mock-ups. Mostly using Photoshop, Illustrator, Powerpoint. And sometimes in Flash or After Effects.
- No, I will not be coding. I'll leave the programming/architecture to our vB dev team. They're smarter than me. But, back in the day, I was a C++/Java/OpenGL programmer.

Currently, I am focusing on 2 major areas:
1. I am working very closely with Ed and Darren on the CMS (improving usability, UI, and trying to squeeze more into the 4.0 core feature sets).
2. The vBulletin 4.x Series Product Roadmap

Cheers,

Don

Don unfortunately has gone completely silent on vb.com and has not responded to any matter since the beginning of this year. The last activity only shows he is looking at the forum, including important matters asking for his response. But since months there is no communication by him on the forums.

Anyhow, none knows if there is any validity to the article on foruminsider. That was my point. You can divert the argument all you want, but then we are just conversing for the sake of argument. That would take us back to the very thing you just addressed to cfnet: trolling. So lets not do that.

[cfnet]

I do not think that basing my decision off facts makes me a troll. Just because you may use vbulletin doesn't mean its right for everyone.

Personally I won't spend that much money on forum software and not at least know one planned feature for the next release. If you guys are cool with being in the dark about the product then that's your choice, but I don't have to be so I'd rather not given the past record here the last few months.

Remember just because you have a different opinion, doesn't mean that I am trolling. It just means I did a lot of research and things don't look good for the future of vbulletin.

[kyrgyz]

Anyhow, none knows if there is any validity to the article on foruminsider. That was my point.

Since there is no roadmap, we kind of forced to make our own picture from bits and pieces of information available. But, you are right I should've refrained from quoting foruminsider article given what's going on at vBulletin right now.

Personally I won't spend that much money on forum software and not at least know one planned feature for the next release. If you guys are cool with being in the dark about the product then that's your choice, but I don't have to be so I'd rather not given the past record here the last few months.

As far as I know Jelsoft (vBulletin of old) was veiled in secrecy as well. It's not something new here. I guess people used to it by now.

I did a lot of research and things don't look good for the future of vbulletin.

Before jumping into conclusions I'd give them another year. Judging from the feedback here, 4.0.5 doesn't look that bad. It's WIP (work in process of code refactoring).

[cfnet]

Since there is no roadmap, we kind of forced to make our own picture from bits and pieces of information available. But, you are right I should've refrained from quoting foruminsider article given what's going on at vBulletin right now.

So then I gather profile styling will be in 4.1 the initial release and not a point release of it? Along with all bugs fixed, features working as intended, valid code, proper RTL support, and external login support.

As far as I know Jelsoft (vBulletin of old) was veiled in secrecy as well. It's not something new here. I guess people used to it by now.

I dont care what vBulletin of old did, or how it was operated. If they ran a shoddy business, that doesn't mean it needs to continue to the new owners. Justifing why things still suck, by saying they've always sucked, is really just a way to come to terms with wasting so much money on a product that...well sucks.

Before jumping into conclusions I'd give them another year. Judging from the feedback here, 4.0.5 doesn't look that bad. It's WIP (work in process of code refactoring).

Another year for what? Another year for my competitors to continue to grow? another year to wait for a stable product? It was my understanding that vbulletin 3.8 was a head of the forum software. It was my understanding vB 4 was to continue this market dominance. In the mean time numerous forum software packages have started to pass vBulletin up, and it seems the company is just one blunder after another. As a matter of fact it's almost like Bartman himself purchased vBulletin....

PS. Go Cubs!