If people could post comments and/or ratings on the directory link then it would provide people with honest feedback.

I'd like to see some sort of directory of paids hacks, simply because I think signatures are a terrible place to advertise hacks and such and I automatically skip over them after a while.

What if:

1) Commercial Add-ons should not modify code any more than necessary. They should be concentrated on Products and Plugins.
2) There was a certification program that verified that the work was created to vBulletin standards as laid out to the programmer/designer. In order to be listed you would need to be a part of this program.
3) Instead of listing and making commercial hacks available, the listings would be links to the provider themselves.
4) The provider list included Designers, Style sites, Add-on/Extension developers, Hosting Companies and for-hire programmers.

Frankly, I have witnessed too many personality clashes and vendettas on these forums to "trust" that any rating system/feedback would necessarily reflect the quality of any commercial script.
And how in the heck would Jelsoft know if the person commenting actually purchased the software from the 3rd party vendor? And would the vendor be allowed to respond to negative feedback? And does Jelsoft want to play hall monitor?
Control ... control ... control!

So you mean a 'certified vB partner' program?

Its an improvement, but may cause as many problems as anything.

Who is going to validate the code?
What about future products?
Future upgrades?
What if a serious security flaw appears AFTER you have given it the gold chaquita bannana sticker?

Im just chuffed theres a constructive discussion about it now :)

(crikey im on a posting roll)

I agree spence... ratings are useless when they can be taken advantage of. Thats why I was trying to brainstorm on a way that only those that purchased could give feedback. Maybe only once.

It was just a thought - I can see the difficulty in it though.

and what about a Products Reviews system, where a moderator only can post new products listings, and users/clients posts comment over them ?!... if it's the moderator that post new products, nobody would see a favorable advertising...

btw, nobody can evaluate the impact of a solution or another... because nobody have done it here... i know how this was done in other projects, they are dealing with other situations... here we talk about vBulletin... and even different, most of the other projects have a single administration process that manage usually all details... here, we have Jelsoft at vB.COM, and the team here at vB.org that have to deal with different situations...

having a directory or anything else is a Company decision, with some suggestions of the participants... not the opposite.

Jelsoft won't be recommending products. If we were to follow up on this, we would list Providers the fit a particular list of restrictions, some of which could include public releases on this website.. Anyone would be able to become a provider. Think along the lines of the MSP program, thought simpler. You would apply to become a service provider and get the same "thumbs-up" as your soon-to-be competitor if you qualified.

For years, Jelsoft has reaped the benefits of an enhanced feature list based on the "free" donations of it's customers. It's a two-way street here, but the money has always flowed one way. I can hardly think of a more seemingly implausible yet brilliant and successful business plan than that of Jelsoft.

So, now you are asking about requiring a "free" product as a requisite for your "Certification" ... which, you know increase the sales of the annointed.

Why not just let the market place determine the fate of commercial products --- without Jelsoft involving itself in that process? Why does Jelsoft feel it should always flex it's muscle?

Me ofcourse :D :D :D

And the stickers will have the face of Bobfool (a trustworthy looking old man :D )

Sorry just couldn't resist.

I better get some pics taken then, huh? ;)

My idea has nothing to do with flexing muscle but providing customers with the services and resources they demand. Believe it or not, many of our customers do not want to use this site. They find it chaotic, unresponsive and unhelpful. I am not saying that is true but that is their experience. They would rather we just point them to a list of providers who can fulfill their needs. Now, I can create an arbitrary list of providers with designers, webhosts and programmers and feed this list to the customers who call on the phone every day. Or, I can devise a way to allow longstanding members of the aftermarket community and vBulletin.org to monetize their hard work, receive paid contracts and profit from vBulletin.

It is hardly a one-way street as you said and never has been. There are quite a few companies that exist today because they provide services and/or software for vBulletin. I am just trying to think of a way to make our thousands of customers aware of them so they can make more money. However the history of this community and the aftermarket of vBulletin has already proven that without some control, people will take on more work than they can handle, disappear for months on end without notifying their customers and so forth. We, Jelsoft, need to try and insulate our customers from that and the only way to do that would be a Certified Provider program. It would be a voluntary program if implemented and any requirements would be reasonable with feedback from potential providers going into the program.

You may see that as flexing muscles but I see it as protecting our tens of thousands of customers. And no matter how you slice it, this site exists for the sole purpose of satifying the needs of Jelsoft Customers in expanding vBulletin. It has no other purpose. It is used as a minor sales tool but it isn't a single source largely responsible for sales of vBulletin.

Respectfully, Jelsoft is a company that exists for the sole purpose of making money. That's not a put-down. That's just the objective of any commercial enterprise.

Perhaps up to this point, Jelsoft has focused on programmers/developers ... but there is a whole community of commercial developers who do not code ... they hire people who code.

Now, pretend for a moment that I want to develop a commercial product that would ultimately enhance the sale of vBulletin. I hire a programmer ... and my conversation begins with ... well, first, I must pay you to develop a full-rights script that I can give away. THEN, you have to be "certified" by vB. THEN, we will finally get to the original concept I hired you to develop.

A highly implausible scenario for a commercial developer; would you agree?

hum, this thread is going to be OT soon... comparing apples with pears is not good... why evaluate the value of Jelsoft on the market, when the goal is to provide a solution for advertising external sources ?!

we just need a way to add external sources to vB.org/.com without being chaotic, that's all...

Couldnt a certified partner chiquta bob sticker of approval co exist with a directory?

Wayne, what do you feel the pros and cons are of a directory? To me, a list of certified people doesnt tell me that they have something I may be insterested in using for my site. It would be a good list of 3rd party custom developers if I was looking to farm work out... but not as helpful to 'go shopping' with (at least as far as I can see it).

I said could require contributions to this site. As a Site Integrator, you wouldn't have a contribution to make much like a web hosting company would not have a contribution to make. Any program created would cover people in the following groups: Designers, Programmers, Site Integrations, Webhosting, Database Administration, and Site Administration. Each would have their own requirements for being certified but not necessarily the same requirements for each group.

You are jumping the gun and putting to much though into the wrong pathways. Besides as a Site Integrator wouldn't you want to hire developers who you knew could get the job done using the vBulletin platform. These developers would not have a learning curve, they would produce faster and more optimized results and they would ultimately make you more money while saving your customers money and headache.

Honestly don't know at this time. Haven't put much thought into it yet. I think what has to happen first is to organize the existing site here before we can add to it. The staff are working on a really great database interface for searching plugins, hacks and such. So that is the first step. Then there are some ideas to back away a little from the reliance on forums for distributing tutorials and other static information which would be good in my opinion. I am hoping these thing will allow for a reduction in the clutter of the forums and allow ease of use in helping find things that already exist. Then we can really look into ideas for a commercial directory of script addons and styles. I am taking note of the ideas but can't guarantee that they will be implemented. Though having a certified partner program would be a first step towards such a directory because those partners would be the ones to pre-populate it if it is created.

To be honest it is all up in the air right now. However, I feel that if Jelsoft is going to satisfy the needs of the customers we need to start "legitimizing" the commercial ventures out there around our products and introduce those ventures to our customer base. I don't understand the hostility towards commercial enterprises that exists on this site as vBulletin is not an Open Source project and it never was. This site is meant to provide all resources to create a community website powered by the vBulletin Engine. Yes, with 3.5, vBulletin is much more than a mere forum system. It has morphed and evolved into a community website engine where anything is possible on your site and vBulletin.org needs to play a larger role in that over the long term.

Thanks - makes sense. i think Im getting a clearer picture of Jelsofts direction.

How about a new site? Maybe an offshoot of vb.org, where you could create 3rd party apps. It would be a sister-site of vb.com and vb.org but would also be independant in much the way the current system is. Have a feedback system, but also set up a panel of some of the better coders, and maybe 1 vb.com or vb.org staff member with some free time, to test the code, and certify it for release. Then it could get feedback from the userbase.

Maybe I missed something, but i thought the whole point of vb.org was for people to share hacks for FREE. I do not believe paid hacks have any place here. Simple as that to me.

that's like saying if the college i went to needed some stuff made for a radio or tv station (what i learn't at college) i shouldn't charge them, i never had to pay for college as is the rule with Britain and i see no harm in putting my expertise to profit, people have to eat.

On a side not, just like the Service Requests, you shouldn't be able to have your commercial mods listed on here until you've put in so much via the way of free stuff.

We just merged vBulletinTemplates and this site to lower confusion among our customers. While another site is a possibility, it would be much nicer to have a single resource.

Every site must evolve to serve the needs of its visitors. These needs are not being met currently which is why there are half a dozen style sites out there, multiple vBulletin hack resources and a disjointed collection of commercial venture sites. This all takes away from "The Ultimate vBulletin Resource".

So then buy the name vBulletin-Commerical.com :p

Folks-

I don't have a degree in computer sciences, I am not a php programmer, and probably never will be one--and I know that some of you think that disqualifies me from even having an opinion. But, I am a vB customer--I think a more-typical one than the coders--and I do have an opinion.

That was my initial impression--not entirely dissipated.

When I look at other software categories--whith which I am more familiar--Quark comes to mind. QuarkXPress came to dominate its market mostly because of XTensions. Without them, the software was not quite as capable as its major competitor. XTensions allowed it to be easily customized to accomodate niche markets.

Quark (IMHO) has had many assinine corporate policies--the XTension Developer program was not one. The program was easy to join. Quark promoted program members in its literature, it took them to trade shows, it gave them space on its discussion boards, it promoted the hell out of them.

As a result, not only were there many commercial XTension developers, but a community of amateur developers grew and produced many excellent free Xtensions.

Similar things can been seen around Photoshop plugins--commercial products and high-quality amateur (free) products are not mutually exclusive.

As a jelsoft customer, if i want to add to/change the functionality of vBulletin, what are my options:

1. Study programming and Learn to code it myself--yeh, right!
2. Ask how to on vB.com--and be told tha modifying source code is not supported and to ask on vB.org
3. Ask here--and either be told its a stupid idea or be ignored
4. put in a service request--and have a bunch of people, whose qualification I have no way to evaluate, pm me saying they can do it
5. discover later that there was a commercial product I could have bought off-the-shelf that wasn't allowed to be discussed here

This place is very insular, and set up in a way that supports the needs of a small community of coders, and not the needs of a larger vB-using community. It needs (IMHO) to be opened up


--don

I totally agree.

On the other hand, I think that a directory of the type that The Geek Speaks of, would be better off in the .com site as opposed to here.

i think it should be a seperate site vBulletin-xtns.com and it should be a review site of commercial extentions, who runs and maintains is another thing but yeah, theirs many software review sites out there, i think one for vBulletin wouldn't be a bad idea, and if one already exists, just add an official to to the front, give em a free license and call it a day :)

No no, best place... you're the one to be heard, because you're the one that would use that database of information after all...

coders have their manners, they can handle complicated content and complicated communities where to discuss and share, but the client is the one to satisfy at the end...

the ones that would disqualify your opinion have no right to be here...

(btw, this is a great opinion!)

I'm trying to follow you logic here. Could you tell me what you envision would be the fate of the sites that you mention if vB.org were to meet the needs of its visitors?

If it were a second site, it would be the place we (vBulletin support staff) would send customers first. With a list of add-ons and providers, we would be reasonable certain their needs would be handled. This site would be relegated to secondary status because of lack of promotion on vBulletin.com except for the links in the forum list. I mean it is in our commercial best interest that customers are satisfied as quickly as possible and for many plug and play commercial extensions will be the answer.

I don't envision any fate. Through my idea commercial projects like vBStyles should get more business and be able to produce more products because of it. My idea will have no impact on non-commercial ventures so they will whither or prosper on their own merits. I don't see why it would have any impact. I am not talking about replacing them, just figuring out a way for customers to find them better and so that I have a better solution to common questions than go visit a search engine.

So, ultimately you do not envision independently developed commercial products being downloaded directly from this or an alternative Jelsoft supported site?

At this time I do not. There is no infrastructure to support such a thing. I do envision bringing awareness to commercial endeavors to our customers. If there was the infrastructure for a commercial marketplace, it might be a different story. Such a marketplace would require much more rigorous controls on commercial addons than can be implemented at this time.

What if someone went out on there own and created a vbulletin commercial product database? Would you guys point users thataway?

If you read the other thread, I bought the domain name vbulletincoders.com. Which would be a directory listing on third-party sites offering paid and/or commercial hacks to the members of vb.org. I emailed vbulletin if the use of vbulletin in the domain was allowed, and this was the response:

So, I really didn't get any of my questions directly answered. I also asked if I weren't allowed to run such a site with the mentioned domain name, why were others allowed? (ie. Floris and www.vbulletin-fans.com)

That wasn't answered either. So, I'm quite dissapointed in the response..

I was given EXACTLY the same response re: vbulletintoolbox.com and vbulletinhandyman.com.

Quite disheartening then to see all the other vbulletin*.com sites that are allowed to flourish (and get onto the BOTM).

See here for more on this.

I just found this on vbulletin.com

Found here

Now I am really confused....would Jelsoft lie to it's customers?

Maybe it's more a case of 'Although he posts as if he does, Floris doesn't actually know everything that is going on'?

That post annoyed me too, because it was Floris that gave me the impression that 'non-commericial' uses of the domain name (like he was doing) were acceptable...so I registered the domains, then was told that it was not.

I read it as the trademark process is ongoing for the name vBulletin. It does take a while for that to go through (upwards of over a year).

getting back the vb certified thing, maybe a small fee to become ceritifed would be a good idea which would help fund the program and the team that moderate it. it would probably also deter those who really would not be qualified and would waste the moderator/certifiers time. now this certification could apply to developers, vendors, hosts, and softwares. here are some ideas

everytime a software is upgraded it must be resubmitted for certification. a developer/vendor/host would have an annual or periodical certification to make sure they are up to date and following vbulletin's guidelines and standards. if they fail to pass the certification the person's/software's certification is removed. also if a provider is certified they could maybe have access to customer emails such as vb.org to verify purchases and prevent unlicensed people from downloading their software. this of course is up to jelsoft and their team.