You won't find a better board program for the money. Even for my little site, it was money well spent.

I (finally) convinced the larger site I work for into buying a license, after using a freebie (cgi/flat file) board for the last 5 years - and now they're in VB heaven :pleased:

vBull gets first place!
period :D

[QUOTE]Originally posted by BesigedB
apart from the free ones ;)

I just thought I'd say I have been very happy with VB; I just started my site 1 week ago and with no advertising I get about 3-4 new members a day and 1,500 page views/day.. :stoned: It is great in keeping people coming back again and again...

[QUOTE]Originally posted by newvbuser
Hello all what's the main difference between leased and owned license? Is there any drawback in purchasing a leased license for one year?

BTw what is the policy regarding changing color of the vBulletin copyright information posted below each message window? UBB has an option in the style setting where the moderator could set the color to match the background color so that it is not intrusive and allows webmasters to highlight their own copyright information.

Thanks in adv!

I went from EZBoard to vBulletin.

vBulletin paid for itself in the first 2 days. The customizability, the robust searching. I love it.

I think vb is an excellent product and it's cheap.

*raises his hand infront of the masses*

There seems to be a lot of people here who like to knock the guys and gals at YaBB/phpBB etc because they're free boards? Before switching to vB, I originally used YaBB and I have to say, I would not be here to purchase vB without them. My site was born and bred on YaBB... if we had a problem, they answered it within hours, if not minutes, if you have a suggestion they really listen to you and what you have to say, and not only that, they give an awful lot of people the ability to host some damn fine forum software, build up a community and get their site moving in the early stages.

There's plenty of coders here who'll knock the faults of some of the other free boards (knock UBB all you like, $200 for an inferior board and bad support..?), but these guys are real hero's. I bought vB because I could afford it, and because it's the best board by a mile, but, at the end of the day, Jelsoft is doing it for the money, the programmers are doing it for the money, people from phpBB and YaBB lay their backsides on the line for nothing in return, get nothing but abuse for their efforts, and still manage to produce some damn fine forum software.

I personally think Yabb and other boards are great to be free.. I wanted all the features of vBulletin but that does not mean that a free board wouldn't meet the needs of some people.....

Oh one more thing.. Once/if Yabb and all these other "free" boards get a foot in the market they will probably just start charging....

Obviously YaBB and the other free boards will start charging if the cornered a set % of the market.. who wouldn't? But don't you admire the plucky devils for the ammount of work they put into it?

I'm not saying YaBB doesn't have it's problems, if it was flawless I wouldn't have went the vB route, but I just don't like seeing something great, that comes free, knocked. I hope the crew from YaBB bring out an awesome next version, start charging $30 a pop and get something back for their hard work, same goes for phpBB..

They deserve the ca$h, as does everyone at vB who programmed this, the ultimate bulletin board of the moment. It really is a brilliant piece of kit and long may it continue.. if it gets more expensive though I'm going back to YaBB ;D

Im sure even people who think it sucks appreciate someone making a free product.. But if the whole motive is to get the market and then start charging what makes them a "hero"? I personally just say use what you like and let others use what they like...

Well, I would have to disagree on two accounts with you, the first being that Jelsoft is in it for the money, the second would be that phpBB and other boards do not get money (when I know they do).

I will start with Jelsoft, I am not taking up for them just because I bought the product and like it, I am disagreeing with you because if they were really in it for the money they would charge more like UBB and have less. You really have to take into consideration that JS has to pay employees and pay for the server costs (which I know from exp. that servers are not cheap, not good ones anyway). They are also paying people that do not use their product (Comission Juction fees) so there goes more of their money. The next thing that is paid is the DigiBuy fees from each purchase. Lastly from my knowledge (I am sure there is more) they have to pay taxes.

From all of that, I would say they are not making as much as you think from buying the product. Sure they are making money, just not as much as some people think.

-------->

Onto free based boards, sure I would agree that those like XMB are probably not making any money but the larger more known boards such as YaBB, phpBB, ect are making money, you just don't know about it. Take a real close look at things, they have to pay for the servers they run the boards on (I don't see to many boards with so many members run actual on a shared hosting account). They make more than you know about, they just choose to hide it.

I am not trying to stir up arguments, just stating the facts. I believe it may have been FireFly that brought up what I just re-stated about vBulletin before, I could be wrong but I remember hearing that before from another member either here or at vBulletin.com.

I think Jelsoft makes a great product, again, but let's be truthful everyone has to make money someway - Jelsoft makes money by selling vBulletin, enogh to keep people employed.

If you can't afford the 85 / year or 165 / unlimited liscence, then the real question to be asking is whether or not you (the user) can afford webhosting. That alone can run you 250 - 300 $.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by AnDy_LiN
I was just wondering.

I think the board:
infinityboard.com
is a great board, it has a lot of potential

But, I have to credit VB, it is some great software!

I will give them credit for IB (InfinityBoard) for development, but I hate the way it looks and the way they have laid things out. I would not be willing to pay for it as I don't know anyone that has used it (in fact, that is the first time I ever heard of it).

Just from looking at their prices and they way they have their ordering setup, I would think that they had visited vBulletin.com and took a look and then made theirs ;) - maybe not, just kinds looks the same, in a way.

I don't know who started a lot of forum "traditions" but I see a lot of similarities in vBulletin and a lot of other software.. The way the hot thread works, the column for moderator, etc.. I would bet most free ones copy popular software like vBulletin, but it's always possible it was the other way around.

I am glad i brought it. I was using Ezboard and even considered buy the decent version, but this is much better, so many extras it is great.

yeah, its the best thing my friend ever bought for me as a present :)

Just wanted to chime in why I purchased vBulletin.

I have been running my site since 1995. I was using UBB since 1997. As I started getting more users I realized that I couldn't target my audience. It's hard to just type up a query and find out who's on your site. You can't do anything with a bunch of flat files especially if you don't know Perl.

Anyway, about 1999, a company bought into mine. And they wanted me to switch to CFBoards, a version of UBB written Cold Fusion. They hired a Cold Fusion guy ($85 per hour) to write a script to convert UBB flat files into a SQL database. (Now that I know PHP it's actually not that hard, but it's still a lot of work.) This job ran about a week (50 hours, you do the math). And in the process I had to shut down the site for about 8 hours so that no new users would join or post. The first import didn't take, so about 3 month later we did it again. (Another 50 hours, you do the math.)

The company that bought into mine went under and I was stil stuck with UBB. Then I heard about PHP and came across vB. I bought vB because it was using a DB and it could convert from UBB.

The software paid for itself just in the conversion. Because thinking back, I could have bought vB just to convert the files into a database.

If you're running a serious site, don't let $160 be what stops you. Since day one, vB has been good to me. From tech support, upgrades and basically still being around. I can't say the same for these other clones.

And people forget that vBulletin's price isn't that high, compared to UBB and co. Of course there are free boards, but they will never provide the same quality when it comes to support, let alone the product itself.

I like to say that I used to run wBB and it was good (untell I heard that you have to pay for the new version of it)....once I heard you have to pay for the new version, I just said to myself "If I have to pay for a board, why not just get vBulletin"...and it's the greats thing yet to get!!! I've been using it for about 2 weeks now....sure, some board makers that does it for free (phpBB, ikon., etc) well take up suggestions and actuly "helps you" but, trust me, they won't stay free forever, plus nothing can beat vBulletin ;)

And another thing, too:

If you buy an owned license, even though you pay $160 up-front, including the first year of updates, you only pay $30 every year after that for continued ugrades. This for a product that has so consistently improved even over the last 12 months (when I got my license) -- it's a great deal.

Doing the math, after 2 years, I will have paid $95 a year. That's about $0.26 a day. After 3 years, I will have paid $73 a year. That's only $0.20 a day. This product gets CHEAPER the longer you use it.

yep, you got that right ;)

I must say that I find XMB nearly as good as vB, but some futures have got me thinking of "upgrading".

Unfortunatly there isn't a XMB -> vB script so it must wait *sigh*

XMB is nice, but the coding is of such poor quality, it is also run by a vast amount of children that do not know how to conduct themselves in an orderly manor. I was visiting their "Today's Posts" page and looked to the bottom and to my surprise it ran 350+ queries just to call the posts from that session (1 query for each post for that day).

After I seen that amount of queries that were within the page, I asked if they intended on fixing it and they banned me from their forum for asking, what I though, was a support question.

The vBulletin team has never failed me in anyway, I have always had my questions answered in rather quick manner and they have always been friendly.

- SaintDog

One of the greatest reasons Vbulletin is so nice is because of its developers environmental interface (my term, much known as the AdminCp). No other bulletin board system I've used has one this nice, reliable, and easy to use. I wish webpages were based on structures and layouts like the templating system in Vbulletin is. When VB3 is released I'm sure it'll stomp all those bulletin boards out there, mostly with its improved template system that will make us all awe at it's power. If I could make only one suggestion to VB, it would be to stylize their website more ;) (attract more attention). Maybe use flash. I know that suggestion had nothing to do with vbulletin itself..but umm, oh well..

Speaking of flash, has there been any development on a totally flash-based PHP/MYSQL forums? that would be coooool (if possible)

There's always this: http://www.phpforflash.com/board/
It's actually pretty good, but it's not like an actual fully uh made board like vB or anything lol It's still interesting.

It's more the people that make vBulletin what it is. Aside from a few authors here, everyone one else is more than helpful with just about anything that has to do with vBulletin. If it can be dreamed up, it can usually be coded to work with vb. If you look at most other bulletin board software out there, it doesn't even come close to having all of the possibilities that you have with vb. Just take a look at the Attachment viewer, for instance. A simple idea that turned out to be one of the greatest hacks I have ever seen. And there are a hundred more that I could mention that make owning vBulletin the only way to go.

If it wasn't for the people, like Firefly and Lesane and Scott (PPN) and yes, even you too, Logician :) and everyone else here at vb.org and over at vb.com, vBulletin would be just another board as far as I am concerned. Just my 3.75 cents worth (inflation, you know). :)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by FireFly
And people forget that vBulletin's price isn't that high, compared to UBB and co. Of course there are free boards, but they will never provide the same quality when it comes to support, let alone the product itself.

The TCO for vB is simply lower than anything from Infopop and MUCH lower than any free solution imo.

yeh it sorta is expensive.......i live in Australia and cause of the currency here it would cost us $320...........so it sorta is expensive but it is good ;)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by pattox2k1
yeh it sorta is expensive.......i live in Australia and cause of the currency here it would cost us $320...........so it sorta is expensive but it is good ;)

Well, I just turned 16 3 days ago, and if it wasn't for my grandparents giving me $100, I wouldn't have vBulletin.
I spend most of my money on monthly hosting fees, so saving up was always a hard option.

I've used alot of other boards (phpbb, ikonboard, invision board, yabb, several others) and I thought they were really nice. Then I got a job as webmaster for a site that had vB. I saw the admin panel and loved it.

vBulletin is amazing software. They have every right to charge more then they do.

I'm sure you've noticed, looking on the posts about other forums, that they suck and are crap compared to vB. And alot more expensive.

I'm going to be paying for another year of every year for member access until vB is gone. And I don't think that will be anytime soon.

I went from WWWBoard (ecch!) to Discus (ecch!) to vBulletin. In the past, the bulletin boards didn't generate much traffic. A few months after installing vBulletin, the boards now generate about half the traffic on my site. Folks like posting images, playing around with avatars, and helping to moderate.

The only hitch -- no conversion utility for Discus. Last August and September, I cut and pasted about 2,000 messages from Discus to vBulletin; another member transferred about 600 more. Not fun.

If you think its expensive dont bother coming here again, go and download PHP bb. You only get what you pay for in this life.

Matthew