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.