What's Happening To vBulletin.org?
 

i posted a thread a week ago. i posted another thread almost 2 days ago, replied to 10 or more and couldn't even get a single reply to any questions or inquiries in any of my posts.

so sad, i chose vbulletin for my new project because of the great things possible through vbulletin.org (i used to frequent here in 2005-7) when it was still pretty active. but now i guess i chose wrong. it looks like the majority of coders really did abandon vbulletin. too bad i realized it too late.

where did they all go to?

or is it just that they grew out of it, and no new people seem interested in vbulletin?

I have to say that I am too surprised at the lack of participation here lately, granted I lurk most of the time but typically check in once or twice a day to view new mods, etc. New mods have all but stopped being released, with a trickle of what it used to be. Not sure how much vB4 plays a role with this, new features and less mods needed or what but judging by the lack of participation it's probably that fewer people are using vb, it's not just here either I see it happening with a lot of boards. With FB being most people's primary source for social networking it's hard not to see why, I think the days of forums being the staple for internet discussion are behind us. Just my .02

Yeah, I agree to an extent. Facebook has dealt a blow to many forums on the internet, but at the end of the day it depends who you're catering to and what kind of community you have.

Facebook is a very general thing. You rarely see lengthy discussions on something productive. It's generally full of people updating their statuses and commenting on photos. Not to say that's all too it.

If you ran a general and broad forum then you're in trouble, but if you're in a good niche and can provide a good resource for it then Facebook 'stealing' traffic will be the last thing on your mind.

Anyway, I haven't really seen a lack of activity on this forum, but then I only jumped in on VB4 aswell so I don't know about the good ol' days.

Many people are on xenforo or IPB. Plenty of activity there.

In my opinion the problem is not facebook or other forums. The problem is the users themselves who ask for support here. From what I have noticed here during my year as a member at vb.org 85-90% of the questions asked are things which have been asked and answered countless time before and can be found very easily with doing a search. But do they do that, no. What they do is they don''t bother to help themselves and expect others to do the work for them. And when they don''t get any answers they start to moan and complain how bad the support is here etc etc.

But even when they get help, they don''t bother to say a simple Thank you to those who helped them.

It is no wonder than no one feels like heling around anymore.

This is something I have raised before but so far it has fallen in deaf ears.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=241258

is it true that xenforo and ipb are so much more active?

@borbole, since you have only been a member for a year i would like to circle out the fact that it would seem impossible for you to relate to how it "used to be".

let me try to make your other points a little more invalid as well.

i have been a member here for years, posted a 4 paid requests in my lifetime. all 3 i posted before 2010, filled up by inbox with more than 10 different coders wishing to take on the project., regardless of how big or small it was the one i posted a week ago got me 1 real coder to offer me his services.

secondly, i did do my search found a lot of threads were people were asking other questions regarding the same topic i had 2 questions on, sadly non asked my question, so instead of hijacking someone elses thread (which i was sure wasn't going to get me any replies considering the inactivity of the board), i started a new thread, 2 never before seen questions, and still no answer.

i'm not placing any blame on the vbulletin.org staff, or anyone else for that matter. i mean if some many migrated away from vbulletin there must be various reasons for that. such as stated before, with facebook, myspace, twitter, youtube, etc, a lot of people no longer have the time to run around forums. luckily i have another solid forum idea i'm sure will take off.

my only disappointment here is that i chose vbulletin for this project rather than look into it's competition first. if it is really doing much better, i'm sure there is a reason for it. if it does have more coders lurking around it's forum, for example, that would be enough reason for me.

While you are certainly right in the respect that people often show too little effort, it does not help that modification discussions are just 1 thread to handle bug reports, feature requests, questions about tweaking the mod, problems & answers, etc. And some answers reside in the thread that relates to another vb version.
Some threads have thousands of replies and have been read over a million times. This makes it virtually impossible to keep up with all information in a modification thread. Its madness to do that.
So while people should definitely throw in some effort to research, the infrastructure to find things with relative ease is missing.

The most active and contributing members of vbulletin.org/com may have accounted for a very tiny portion of of the license holders but they contributed to most of the activity here.

Unfortunately, some of the most brilliant minds of vBulletin.org started leaving 2 years back and this has been continuing ever since. Also the vb community has split and many have changed loyalties sometime back.

Also previously there were many forums and sites dedicated to discussing vbulletin. Many of those are also gone or are in decline now. There were also many sites making skins for vB and most of which too are gone now.

There is nothing much we can do about this except stick around and hope that new members join and start contributing. vB still has a lot of potential in it.

I will try to post more and answer questions in the coming days.

You are right that I don''t know how it was here before, but I guess that mybe the other coders and those who provided support put up with the selfishness and the ungratitude that they got in return for their efforst and now they are fed up with it. I will speak for myself, I used to be very active here in way of pruducing mods and giving support. But after a while after I saw that my efforts were not appreciated, I had more than enough of it.

I will give you a few examples. Look at My mod thread here. I extended a mod with an extra feature and placed the download link to my forum, for free. One had to register only to download it. Look at this user''s post demanding that I put the extending version here as well as he couldn''t be bothered to register at my forum.

Please read this post and a few others that follow.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....0&postcount=23

Or at my other mod.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....6&postcount=34

As if it is not enough that they get the mods for free but they have to moan and complain and demand all kind of new features that they like without a single regard to the fact that all the mod authors here do this on their foree time.

Or here, one this user doesn''t bother to respond if the solution I posted for him worked or not.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=257913

But when someone doesn''t get an answer to their support questions and threads for a few minutes they are very quick to yell how bad the support is here and what not.

Maybe other persons who provide support here and create modifications don''t mind that other users don''t appreciate their time and work, or maybe they are used to it or whatever. But not me. Where I come from we are used to be appreciative of others time and efforts that they put in for things that help and benefit us. And it is the same for the other way around.

It doesn''t matter how easy or not the information is to find. Most of them just won''t use the search feature. They simply want others to do the work for them.

If you would look at my posting history, you will see that I have never asked a single support question here. And believe me, I had like a zillion questions. But I searched and searched until I found what I needed to know. And the information is there, very easy to find if one really wants to do that and put a little effort.

There have been 79 new releases in the last 30 days. I dont think that quite counts as a trickle just yet.

The vb4.x add-ons forum has 1053 mods in it, compared to 1025 for vb3.7, or 1157 for vb 3.8 - so not really much of a difference, esp given that 3.8 has over a years headstart on 4.x.

Most of the stuff released for 3.x is now available for 4.x. The greatest release activity is usually after a vb version change - but due to the way IB do this now, the change from 4.0 to 4.1 didnt require a mass re-release.

I would say the BEST coders are mostly all gone now that IB has taken over. I'm talking about people, who KNOW how to code VERY well. The best one Chen, who used to admin here at vBorg was one of the best.

It shows the quality of coders have moved on wards...

Chen left vb.org years before IB ever came onto the scene.

actually, Chen left way before any good coder was there... rofl

ok i was in, Boofo and John were too, but hey, we were not legion.. lol

and now, yeap, most coders left... any generation of vB make a move in the list of coders, some will raise in the next months as there is new gaps to fill in the market.

My own visits have been less frequent lately because things are working so well.

Perhaps a lot of the coders have built up a steady amount of work with repeat business from forum owners that they dont need to come looking for work anymore. Speaking personally.....i throw a lot of work at the coder i use and am pretty demanding of him, i know im his biggest customer, but if he has a handful more that give him anywhere near the amount of work i do, then he certainly isnt going to need to be looking for any extra. just a consideration :)

@Wordplay I don't think it so xenforo suckcs yet 'cause there is no blogs, there is no social groups, there is no photo albums, there is no arcade games, there is no point market system, there is no more! Of course this is the matter of taste I'm respect people who using it.

Well, I just think the one main reason is facebook 'cause it offers so much and also the users could create groups etc within the site, the usage of forums have gone down. but still if the content is good enough the users who really get something out of the active forum conversations will stick to it. A forum conversation is more on thread but facebook has many distractions when compared to a forum. I really don't like facebook it 'cause people being lazy to increase their acknowledge especially in forum that can be useful if we can manage it. sometimes people just seeking fun but don't know the benefits of it. Keep sharing on mailing list and Forum don't be junk by facebook so I've said this on my this post.

to be honest about xenforo. Yes it does not have photo albums, social groups, arcade, point etc YET but most of them are mods. THe software has not gone gold yet. Its completely re-written. Kier and Mike took what they did best with the old VB and applied that to zenforo. You can see this by looking at there bug tracker. Its in RC2 and there only 32 bugs. 32! Vbulletin 4 hah, i dont even want to say that number. They are focusing on making the product stable before they release the photo album, social groups, etc. Smart developing ritght there.Its in the works for version 1.1. Xenforo might be small in add on right now but in a year they will be bigger

everyones gone over to xenforo. Im still using vB though for my main site as Im waiting for xenforo to get user albums.

Are you sure about that ?

I dont recall them ever saying they intend to add such things to the core. I understood they planned to keep it pretty basic and allow features like that to be add-ons.

Not everyone. ;)

Hear Hear!

Damn straight! :D

If Marco van Harwarden was here then he would have boiled your post in oil for this blasphemous advertisement.

So true...gonna miss his post.

I love vbull, and got too much custom crap on my 3.8 to ever think about changing.

sorry, didnt mean to say everyone. damn now i look like an ass. sorry guys

It's probably better they leave it to the community as well.

Ahh it was just your opinion at the time of posting so no need to feel that way... I've changed my perspective on many things once someone else said something logical :p.

Yes and no imo, I miss some of em' the rest simply kept preaching negative things, hoping that one day someone would agree. Some people are like that, they keep whining until someone says ohh you poor thing and when your almost 30 with three kids that becomes irritating post after post, after post, after post as it reminds you of your own arguing = pointless and the xenforo stuff went on for ages if not here then vb.com with most of them being none the wiser to any of it, just like beating a dead horse imo :p.

It is simple for me, I have no need for VB4x as VB3.8x serves me fine.
I also work AFK 40-60 hours a week and do not have all the time I use to in creating hacks.

If I see something in Vb4 worth the time to do a site conversion, I might make the time.
Until then VB4 is only on my DEV system.

i hope moderators have the time to merge or delete duplicate threads so as if one will use the search button, it is easy to find the correct mod / answer.

ditto, it would cost me a fortune to change to another piece of software, and the associated headaches arent worth the risk. im more than happy with vbulletin!!

No? Facebook hasn't killed that many forums. Twitter has also taken away certain discussions - but, that doesn't mean anything is to blame for the lack of activity, nobody is partipating, perhaps; everyone is too busy?

Sorry, offtopic, but I wanted to say you've done a great job with your site(s). Can I ask what you're using for your fungi directory?

And during this year VB 4.x made it already to more threads in the support forum than 3.8 in the entire time - not bad ;)
Software doesn't get better if you blow it more and more - and that's maybe the problem since the VB 4.0 release. More functions, more bugs, next release has some bugfixes but again more functions and other bugs.
Like Facebook for users, people (admins) want it simple and working and at the moment VB just doesn't offer this.
Just saying that with the upcoming of Facebook and Twitter the timing to "convert" VB from the nearly perfect 3.8.x into the buggy overloaded 4.x release was very bad. Not to forget that other software - if it didn't got better, they at least were able to hold their standards.

I agree with you Paul.



Haha, that was awesome... ^^



A facebook admirer... Lol.

@borbole, sorry for not replying sooner, since nobody replied to any threads i posted i haven't been around the forum much. only checking in to view pms, as those are the only replies i receive here.

you are completely right though, the tone of some of the people replying to threads (mods) is ridiculous. i understand it to an extend, as i am not a coder at all, i'm more of a leecher. but i reply to every mod i install, and always thank who ever codes a mod i or try out. i've donated to 5 people on here in my lifetime, for mods i no longer use as they are outdated, and i don't see that as thrown out money at all. the unwillingness to register on a coder's forum to show some appreciation or even download a mod-fix/update i cannot understand, but i do understand some posters catching feelings over lack of support. i was looking for a facebook lookalike skin, there are 3 or 4 i believe on here, with practically no information to them, some the examples/demos don't work and they also don't have screencaps, i replied to every one of them weeks ago, and pm'd every one i could who created one, but didn't get a single reply to any of my questions on their mods nor any pms. which is frustrating, i mean imagine looking for a mod for so long, finally finding it, and
a) not getting it to work
b) not knowing how it works

@blackthorn, i have never even looked at xenforo, i just read it was an option people chose over vbulletin, but i'll take your word for it. and yes i think facebook and twitter dumb-down people, i mean telling people that you feel like eating out today is alright, but publicizing your zip code, street or phone number, and telling people what time you're going to "that" cinema, to watch "this" movie, etc, is just asking for trouble. imagine al capone or 2pac had twittered, they wouldn't have survived a single day. but i get it, knowing what your friends are up to and who they are dating can definitely be entertaining.

@steveman, kier is doing xenforo? i did not know that, so he left vb? wow... i'm late on everything... again.

i think, the old coders have just gotten too old, and have got too much going on in their life, to even make time for their old vb-hobby, and because there is too much around (facebook, twitter, youtube, wordpress & blogger (people just creating their own blogs to talk about things)), the younger people don't even have an opportunity to get into something like vbulletin. there used to be a lot of social forums around which worked great, and were highly popular, nowadays people find it better to socialize with their friends rather than with strangers, so facebook comes in handy, and everyone you don't know has a picture of themselves, so you always feel like you know who you're dealing with. the only reason to sign up on a forum these days is to ask/talk to specialists regarding a specific topic. I own a 3D TV, only 1 of my friends does, so who am i gonna talk to things about it? i look for then sign up on a 3D movies site, to talk, ask and download some 3d material.

When I first became an admin here, I went through this forum to reread the threads. You know what I found was interesting? Every year since the beginning, there have been threads just like this one.

Things do change. Some devs move on, or find real life takes precedence (get married, have kids, get a real job, etc.) and new ones move in. It changes constantly. I don't think that's bad or good, it's just the way it is.

Lynne's right. Forums are constantly evolving and your just seeing the evolution of vBulletin.org

I think forums are becoming more less popular. These days forums are very difficult to even get going, and if you do not have a bigboard forum today, then chances are you never will have one; at the sametime forums seem to be a dying breed, as forums become less popular, then vb becomes less popular, then forums like vb.org become less popular. I already know one forum that is vb related that has died like 1-2 years ago, at one time they did have traffic, now their forum like a trickle of posts here and there...some may not admit to what I am saying, but times are changing, but not for the better of forums, as facebook, twitter, and other social groups
have taken forum traffic, and I am sure if you have a bigboard then you probably have lost some traffic yourself, if you are a good
forum, then maybe you have picked up some traffic, but overall, I bet you that people will report a loss of traffic rather then a gain in traffic, and its not all social networks either, people are finally growing up to figure out they can not get rich setting up a forum,
and some people finally realize this just isnt going to make me rich so I am getting out of the forum business, as I bet you that
if you asked 9 out of 10 people, then 9 people think they will make money setting up a forum. 99.9% of all forums fail. It
is very rare these days that a new forum will make it over to the bigboard side; I will not say it is impossible but very rare, and
once people do grow up then finally realize they are not going to be the next get rich forum, then they are out....

We used to use pay phones, now we use cell phones.

We used to use BBS/SLBBS - now we use VB/Internet
...and whatever happened to the creators of search light bbs?
evolution and the internet killed them...at the time, I am sure
we all thought BBS would be around forever, killed by DSL/Internet...
what will be the killer extinction of forums?

We used to use dial up, then we dumped AOL for DSL.

We thought VB 3.x was cool, then we are slapped with 4.0

We use forums now, now social platforms are here...

If this keeps going downhill, then it will be pointless to setup a forum altogether....

So yes, times are in-deed changing...and maybe not for the best....

Ya, the fact is through, this place isn't as active - some questions go unanswered and leaving the forum owner in the dust.

vBulletin.org's still the same... I'll hope it is "vBorg" will better ^^