This is from a default installation of a new client project. Haven't even compressed images or set up CDN yet.

Taking as fact that I'm not operating any Forum, and don't plan ever to operate one, I must:

1. Pay $209 to upgrade my license to vB5
2. Waste some months to upgrase at least my most popular mods for vB4 like (eCommerce, Classifieds, Reviews etc).

in exchange of:

1. Zero Donations (10 years now with more than 50 mods for vB3+vB4 the total donations were less than 5 and in amount less than $100).
2. Have 10-15 downloads only as a few only members are using vB5
3. Waste some hours per day to support these (Free) addons.

Sorry, but nobody will do it. You see that IB don't even thought to give away a free license to those who're supporting so many years their software. I don't mean that vBulletin does not deserves to has good sales. It's a good software and it deserves it. But all coders and designers here we helped "a bit" it.

It would be nice to see IB offer a dev/demo license only for the third party developers. It might spur some third party products that could possibly boost sales on their end. But this is probably just a pipe dream.

Exactly as you said. A dream.

Yep. I want to develop some plugins when their plugin/hook system is making more progress but I'm definitely not going to spend money on my license to upgrade it to vB5.

I wonder how we could petition IB to do this. Unless their goal is to totally destroy vBulletin, I can't understand why they wouldn't be open to something like this. I'm a graphic designer and when I was in school, $5000+ software was available for free under a student license. It had some limitations...but still.

I'm pretty sure there would be a huge market for mods and addons for vB5. With social media out the way it is, forums have to keep up or they are going to eventually die. Forums need to have the bells and whistles of social media sites and apparently you aren't going to get those with the software right out of the box.

It doesn't make any sense at all to penalize developers by making them pay full price for a new license if they are only going to use it for tests or to further develop the software. Developers are actually doing IB a HUGE favor by making 3rd party products for it. If vB5 had a ton of addons and mods--more so that its competitors--that would be a definite selling point.

I wouldn't bet on it.

Commercial Forum Platforms - relative marketshare

January 2014:
vBulletin ? 68.3%
xenForo ? 20.1%
Invision ? 11.5%

Today:
vBulletin ? 41.9%
xenForo ? 36.1%
Invision ? 16.8%

That's about a 39% decrease in 2 years. And I've been tracking this on a different scale myself since 2012 (vB5's release) and there's actually been somewhere around a 73% decrease in market share since then.

And with today's stats, vB5 is only at about 3.2% of all vB installations.
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/attachmen...1&d=1467755755

I doubt very seriously Internet Brands would take this request seriously. It took 3+ years to get the hook system re-implemented. Besides that, only a small percentage of forums use modifications on their sites aside from styles/themes. I don't have any idea what the ratio is of cloud customers vs self hosted is, but mods can't be installed on the cloud so that is one whole section of the customer base that wouldn't benefit at all from the third party development.

vB5 you say? I'm still waiting...

One day perhaps! Until then I'm fine with vB3 or vB4 so are all my clients aside from a few who made the leap to 5 before they knew me etc.

Yes it's possible but more trouble than vB3 and 4 were, takes more time and will cost more money than the same mod in vB3 or 4 plain and simple, feel free to point out examples otherwise.

I know you can add in hooks where you want but good golly molly we had them in just the right places in vB3 then vB4 but now we must do as we've been told many times in the past, submit a request via Jira (I still love you Paul but no, someone should be paid to think ahead and add/re-add where common sense says they should be or were prior to a certain degree) when we're not being paid a penny to submit anything - mutually beneficial someone will argue haha I say, haha! I'm here to help to a certain degree within reason just like any of you and I do it gladly however a wife and three kids demand my time when I'm not working though, if not for that I'd gladly sit all day and submit jira tickets so would others I'd imagine.

The company had the system removed a while back (why???? I have yet to hear one good reason WHY they removed it to begin with) then decided to re-include later... Things just don't make sense to me when silliness like that occurs! The cloud and not being able to run mods clues me in though! It clues me in as to why I believe the functionality was removed to begin with - security risk if plugin was outdated and exploitable no matter if on a shared cloud environment or one single site... gave time for things to "simmer" down after a plethora of sites vB powered sites were hacked in a few months time (30,000+ or so) where many saw it as vB's fault when in fact it was just bad timing and an unknown exploit - so my theory is they cut their nose off to spite their face (even though it may have seemed like to them, that it was preventing future facepalmage but this is just imo, my little "conspiracy theory" lol) when it seemed like mods out of their control made them look bad per say.

Hey that's just my 2 cents on some random dribble lol, as I said initially above you can mod it but takes more time and adding in hooks and more to code when you can just purchase a vB5 license and run vB4 fine and find those to customize it for you and possibly use free existing mods (1,953 plus compared to vB5's low 65 or so) to achieve what you want AND no need to pay someone to make a vB3 or 4 mods work on 5 etc etc.

Things are better now than they used to be. Proof is this conversation. It's very much more civil that the same conversation was a year ago. :)