My New Thoughts On vBulletin
 

Not bashing vB -- again, this isn't a vB bash thread. My thoughts on vBulletin have recently changed. After reading, feel free to share your thoughts.

First, It's indisputable: license owner sentiment has been declining for a while now. When they go away or slow down, so do developers.

Indicators on vBulletin.com and .org, plus vB's recent actions lead me to believe their stream of new customers is slowing down significantly, and not only that, but people aren't renewing their licenses.

First, they made the amount of a first-time order $250 (to make up for a drop in sales), up from $160. Second, notable staff has been churning... a lot. Third, they released a SaaS platform at $15/mo.

Right now, vB knows they can't win over the existing customers they burned, and they don't care for developers -- as developers have mostly been useless for vB5 -- so it was time for a change in strategy.

The SaaS platform was made to address all of the core problems. It increases the number of first-time orders while also increasing the frequency of orders from the same customer.

In various ways, they'll begin to put the SaaS platform in the spotlight and try to coax existing self-hosted customers into moving into the SaaS platform -- maybe by throttling vB 4.x development.

That said, vB is still, after all of the recent customer dissatisfaction and staff drama, the leader in the commercial forum market. I'd used to say vB will crash, but trends and their strategies show that won't happen.

In the long term vB is here to stay. Rather than grow or shrink, it will go sideways -- but it's not going to suddenly dissappear. As a closing statement, all of this is contingent on one thing:

Nobody else with clout will come into the SaaS market and serve customers better and/or undercut them. Maybe this certainty was baked into IB's recent legal settlement with a big competitor.

Again, feel free to share your thoughts.

Update: Added what I got on Tuesday, Dec 9 '14

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/attachmen...1&d=1418080446

vBulletin isn't dying however it's not like vB5 is taking the community base and avid owners in a direction that seems very promising imo. If things continue down this current path I foresee more customers leaving this platform and moving to others... while they sit and spin wheels on vB5 everyone else is catching up and if vB5 is ANY indication of how vB6 will be I'm scared, very scared to be quite honest.

If things are to turn around, we need to see something from vBulletin and not just a new announcement about the "Cloud", I mean wow just wow... a nice concept but the timing was 100% wrong.

Let's review some things that have occurred since vB4 released up until now i.e. vB5 era, bearing in mind this is all my personal opinion:

What was done: Buyout after buyout... is it owned by Jelsoft... no... owned by Internet Brands now ohh no wait that's right, it's this firm now who owns it - Hellman & Friedman Capital Partners VI.
My thoughts on this: Here are the rocket-scientist currently in charge who have staff running in circles like chickens with their heads cut off, spending time and resources on the "Cloud" before making vB5 very very very stable, sad when we see threads and posts like this on a daily if not weekly basis and no, that one is just the tip of the iceberg and an example from vbulletin.org not including the same and if not more threads of the same nature on vbulletin.com. I want to be clear that in my personal opinion the staff are working hard, they are being told what to do - that's what most call a job and they do their best... it's a management issue and should not be reflected on coding/support/other staff.

What was done: A change to the licensing agreement.
My thoughts on this: What a complete and utter disaster, this overall change to how things worked lead to many leaving this software and others who didn't leave it simply left a very bad taste in their mouth. I could say more about this but I'll keep it short and simple by saying I was here during those times, the tone and overall morale of the community took a hard hit and has never since recovered. *More changes have occurred and most certainly within the last 5 years despite staff comments on vbulletin.com to the contrary, therefor to the contrary of that the EU licensing structure was changed within the past 2/3 years.

What was done: A mobile style was released and it was paid for initially then they quit selling that and included it for free.
My thoughts on this: That was great, then it seemed as if they did not care to support the mobile style and thought to include it in the base product so it could slowly die off without much of a fuss.

What was done: A Mobile Suite released.
My thoughts on this: Ahh so to me this seems like they found another way to make money, smart honestly from a business perspective as they are a business but why slap us in the face w/ a mobile style then not support it only to ask money for a mobile suite? Indeed it is quite different... Android App, iPhone App more similar to tapatalk than the mobile style but another example of one thing being left to die while another one has time invested into it and neither seem too hot currently if truth be told.

What was done: A Facebook App developed, sold separately. Did well for a while, had many using it but then it died off as well.
My thoughts on this: Doesn't seem like its being supported anymore, pity.

I could list more, I could clarify more but I won't as the past speaks and current actions and direction taken regarding the product speak for themselves. I do not find vB5 to be a very promising future for vBulletin and I sincerely hope it improves, promptly.

^ Perhaps it's a little or a lot of that involved but in the least part of the equation and I'm not alone in thinking some of this, I may have worded it differently but others think the same if not similar per some recent discussions and others.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=308445

^ Notably from that thread this comment regarding big-board customers and he's exactly right imo:
So while I'm not bashing vBulletin either, I must still stand my ground opinion-wise and hope for improvement.

Xenforo is hardly a competitor. It was just a temporary hype filled with propaganda, and it is dieing for a while now. 50k registered members/client on their main forum --> Members: 50,866, is hardly any competition compare to VB.

It is true that whenever we are disappointing with the way IB is handling VB and the lack of innovation and future features, we always tend to hype another forum software that isn't even complete. It is just how things appear to grasp more attention, so they can start listening and i think the main issue here is investment. I don't think IB has a vision for forum software and wants to expend it in the market to make it more social rich in features or similar to twitter. They neither appear to want to invest in it or hire more quality and new web developers to advance Vbulletin.

What on earth are you talking about here ?

Hasn't this entire episode felt - to folks old enough to remember - alot like the "New Coke" disaster, or the Windows Millennium disaster? Only drawn out over years instead of months?

There's something to be learned from this, IB. Both above tried to fix what wasn't broken, trying to become something they were not and were never intended to be - and the loyal employees, customers, vendors, everyone else be damned.

For those folks even older: Didn't this same thing happen to the big three automakers, back in the 70s and 80s when they tried to compete with the Japanese and German car makers who were worming their way into the US auto market by kicking Detroit's collective ass in quality and reliability of the product?

The difference is, nobody was kicking vBulletin's ass. Nobody was kicking Coke's ass, or Microsoft's ass. vBulletin is kicking its own ass. The other difference? Coke, Microsoft and even the US auto industry woke up from their fantasy of being a "me too" and went back to their roots and saved their own collective asses.

If IB continues on its present course there will be NO saving vBulletin's ass. You better wake the hell up and start studying some product history and the blunders - and recoveries - therein and the lessons taught.

You've taken a once robust, market-dominating platform and turned it into garbage and a punch line to tech nerd jokes. Enabling far inferior competitors - who never had a ghost of the prayer of even sniffing decent market share for forum platforms until you stepped on your own penis with atrocities like version 5 and to a lesser degree, version 4 - to begin taking over the market, filling a void YOU created.

And that's the memo. You may now resume shaving your back. :D

Fixed that recently part.

Movement of Digitalpoint Forums to XenForo, exactly describe what i feel.. Change in User Interface and make it light weight ..

Again, explain what are you talking about.

I am pretty new to vBulletin. I was on a vb forum about 8 - 9 years ago which lead me to buying a vB licence last year.

I looked at a few different bulletin boards and vB was honestly the only thing that seemed to offer the functionality and style that i wanted.

I brought vB5 in april and was sorely disappointed. By june it had fully crashed and nothing, and i mean nothing worked at all. It was dead. We were then offline until november where i had to pay a developer to downgrade from vb5 to vb4 costing the same, if not a little more than the original licence. This was mainly for migrating everything over as it had to all be done manually which i knew nothing about at the time.

Once i downgraded to vB4, i've found everything runs perfectly. The mods are available and developers are plenty.

In my opinion, vB is the best on the market. I'm still annoyed about the additional costs, but it does what i need it to.

My 2 pence

Something that I also don't get are the others as we see that seem to be convinced that VB is still doing great and we don't have a problem at all. Just looking at the stats lately on VB I remember the time when you would see hundreds of members online at any given time. It was also impossible to keep up with new threads no matter how often you logged in per day. So where are we today with an average of 20 to 30 members online and around 50 new threads per day.

Those that still feel that Xenforo is not a contender better start thinking again :D

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/

So are you still using vB or have you switched to xenforo?

This time next week my import will be completed to xenforo

All, i see is 56! votes only, 56 new client may be? That is really a strong contender :d sarc // XF total members --> Members:50,957. Sorry but that is the false hype and propaganda I was talking about.

It gets really boring by now that after a year, we still see Xenforo members posting about XF on VB threads that contain complaints or issues and then the topic gets hijacked and changes into an argument between the two. I hardly see any VB members posting on Xenforo saying VB is better because we've seen how the community acts over there.

I've tested Xenforo myself and never liked it, its admin panel is a mess and lacks many features, not to mention that they are there to just be yet another forum software, no innovation or something new to bring to the market and they prefer to use the quickest shortcut like their redactor editor http://imperavi.com/redactor/ instead of http://ckeditor.com/

In any way, this thread is about VB not Xenforo.

PS I am a VB customer BTW and yes it is a small number of total votes but surprising large number of then come from VB. What will it take for some to actually see that VB is in serious trouble right now. Will it only be the day when VB closes shop or will that also be seen as um well you see it is not really that bad ........ :D

Um also if you did miss it the poll says "What forum software did you use before XF" to me that would imply that I was using x Software now I have changed to XF software or did I miss something here lol

Thanks for the info DR, and don't worry about katie hunter, just a disgruntled xenforo customer, not that many of them around..lol..unlike the 100s of 1000s of disgruntled vB customers..

lol Thanks, so what is your game plan then

Again, this is not a thread about XenForo, it is about vBulletin.

Also as stated in the OP:
If you don't have any constructive criticism to offer, best bet is to not post, or I see this thread following suite like all the other threads that go off track, it will get closed.

This highlights how many have come from vB rather than the overall increase comparison on users on both. It doesn't lead any conclusion either way. It only a statistic from origin traffic.

hmm, we could consider why they would bother if XF are doing so well. Does their posting here suggest a confidence in their product or a desire to win over more?

Stick with vB 4 for the time being.
Maybe one day I'll do the switch just can't be bothered with all the work involved at the present time. Lucky vB 4 works okish so it will do for the time being.

--------------- Added [DATE]1393938105[/DATE] at [TIME]1393938105[/TIME] ---------------

Once such as these Threads get started it's only really going to go one way.:rolleyes:

Here XF members coming like usual trying to hijack a VB conversation like they always do, it is getting old.. way too old may be? And Joe, you don't even know me! (: so, ok whatever.

Can we please grow up! the issue should be addressed from the top IB, contacting IB and complaining about their management of VB.

http://www.internetbrands.com/
http://www.internetbrands.com/contact-us/

Their twitter may be ? https://twitter.com/INETtweets

Their management team ? http://www.internetbrands.com/the-co...anagement.html

Robert N. Brisco
Chief Executive Officer

Scott A. Friedman
Chief Financial Officer

Chuck Hoover
Chief Marketing Officer

just to name few

http://static.ibsrv.net/ibsite/pdf/2...ges%20Beta.pdf
Contact vBulletin:
Joe Ewaskiw
vBulletin / Internet Brands, Inc.
310-280-4539
joe.ewaskiw@internetbrands.com

Again ladies and gentleman, lets act like adults and keep on track with the original post please. :)

Sigh oh well what can I say it's is about VB so yeah I am sorry that I am one of the very few that seem to think that VB is in a bit of trouble, but then I suppose that is just my humble opinion really.

I'm a vB member/customer not xenforo but doesn't mean I don't like xenforo.
But been following it for many years now as vB has had its day really.

--------------- Added [DATE]1393939216[/DATE] at [TIME]1393939216[/TIME] ---------------

Which was? vB has had it's day? ;)
i still love you though ozzy:p

--------------- Added [DATE]1393939295[/DATE] at [TIME]1393939295[/TIME] ---------------

It's not though, ;) aas per this Thread and the OP
Many have had enough, including a lot of the vB mod developers.

It's only natural that most of the people switching are coming from VB because VB is the most used forum package out there. Everything is relative. If you asked new Apple computer buyers what their last computer ran if it was not an Apple, chances are that the vast majority of people would say that it was a Windows based system. If you get a 95% rating on that question, you may want to attempt to say that the majority of Windows users were switching to Apple. But you'd be wrong.

One thing XF have going for them is a significantly lower price which could make a difference for people on a limited budget who want to start a forum or those using a much older version of VB who want to upgrade.

The price is not really that much lower if you add up the options you need like the search and the resource manager. These are basically built into Vbulletin.

Now Can we please stop talking about xf? That was not the purpose of this thread at all. It is like comparing a Classic Corvette to an old Ford Pinto(I used to have one of these).

#Now back op topic - I am happy for the most part with Vb4.2.2 but surely will not spend money on Vb5 or encourage anyone else to do so until it is out of beta. It may not be labelsed beta but it sure seems that way to me.

I was very upset about the license change that happened right after the ownership change and I do believe Jesloft was much better for all of us but I still believe at this time VB is tops and there is nothing better.

As far as Vb being in trouble goes, while certain things may have declined I do not think this software is even close to being in trouble when there is nothing else out there that comes close.

Just my opinions on this matter for what ever that is worth.

Well talking about it does follow the timeline of this discussion in a sense i.e. vB4 was still going when they started Xenforo, it was going well during vB5's release and such so it is related to this thread in one way or another.

I don't care if you bring it up so long as it follows the topic, "My New Thoughts on vBulletin" and surely some of ANYONE'S new thoughts about vBulletin could stem from using xenforo in the past correct? Bingo! The issue with threads like this that keep getting closed is when all of you start making it personal and calling out people under your breathe or directly, you can have a valid point without doing that. When I start to see that bickering/snide type of replies between a few of you I close the thread, it's that simple to me i.e. play nice or don't play at all :p.

While it may related in a way we do not need another VB VS XF thread. If we agree going that route we may as well discuss all the other forum scripts out there. Some of the ones are not really bad either and may also get a share of Vb customers, perhaps more then xf.

In my opinion xf just does not seem relevant. The fact that a single pole shows 56 people using xf from VB means nothing. If that pole was 5600 then I may be a little interested in it but even then it would not necessarily mean anything.

VB is still the best and has the best support communities anywhere. :up:

Should we write an online petition and sign it for IB? http://www.change.org/ , http://www.change.org/petition

We need complaints to grasp their attention, after all, no business company likes to see complaints about their company, complaints = bad reputation for future businesses and lack of responsibilities.

So instead of making threads and topics about VB on VB which i think gets no where, we should really start contacting IB and drafting a legit petition and to be signed by many.

http://www.internetbrands.com/
http://www.internetbrands.com/contact-us/

Their twitter may be ? https://twitter.com/INETtweets

Their management team ? http://www.internetbrands.com/the-co...anagement.html

Robert N. Brisco
Chief Executive Officer

Scott A. Friedman
Chief Financial Officer

Chuck Hoover
Chief Marketing Officer

Contact vBulletin: http://static.ibsrv.net/ibsite/pdf/2...ges%20Beta.pdf
Joe Ewaskiw
vBulletin / Internet Brands, Inc.
310-280-4539
joe.ewaskiw@internetbrands.com

To me vB5 is not relevant, should not even be considered vB5 and should be thrown in the trash and burnt to a crisp and if we must burn the whole building down to be rid of it then I'd be up for that too :p. It's just not up to par and today alone I've already seen 2+ new threads/posts regarding the "lack-there-of" many already knew existed in 5.

We honestly don't care if you discuss Invision Power Board, Xenforo, Burning Boards, or even ProBoards (one of the current competitors to the new vBulletin Cloud based hosting) so long as the discussion takes place in the proper forum and remains inline with the discussion. Compare away, you're all free to discuss things here just be respectful to each other is all I'm asking and try not to derail the thread topic toooooo much as we don't want this to become a xen vs vB thread only because those already exist however the discussion of other software is a major factor when deciding your current "thoughts" on vBulletin imo.

VB5...??? This was the most horrible version of vBulletin that i''ve ever seen. i have designed many vb4 free templates and i loved to work on vb4 platform.. but i did not develop any single style for vb5 and i have not even checked its admincp or any vb5 style available at vb.org..
vBulletin should have continued with VB4

Yep....

Discussions on what "should have happened" have been done to death and are not really going to help or change anything.
vBulletin 5 is what it is and IB are not going to go back to developing vBulletin 4, that should be clear to everyone.

^ I seriously doubt the links Katie posted will help either, you're all free to "give it a go" though and hope for the best.

As I've said before it can only improve as time goes on, if you don't like how vB5 functions or "feels" then simply run version 4 and customize it how you want.

Think of it this way... many of you are on slightly older version of vB4 regardless correct? (Some of you 3.x) The point being you've heard all the stories from fellow forum owners about heavily customizing their site either with many modifications and/or custom style changes and then when it was time to upgrade it was either a PIA if they were doing it themselves OR $$$ and either way that did not sound too promising so you waited and here you are now, still waiting... Why? If you think about it, 4.2.1 or 4.2.2 are solid and without issues so if you upgrade now there shouldn't be a new version out giving you issues in a month. For example, there will not be a 4.9.1 released if anything perhaps a 4.2.3 so you won't be required to redo this or that because of a huge leap between versions, my point being if you upgrade now there shouldn't be any more updating (customizing) required that will be considered a "be-in-the-way" for many thus preventing them from upgrading. So with all that said you could upgrade to 4.2.1/4.2.2, be solid for a while and simply wait on vB5 until you see the improvement you deem necessary to upgrade.

Is this what XF staff does lately --> "This message is awaiting moderator approval, and is invisible to normal visitors." complete censor of any legit reply. Any new post i made is being moderated. I haven't been on XF for quite few month now, like 5 month so far.

Think again before thinking about XF b/c that is how they behave. They will alter the permission placing you in a certain permission group if they find you criticizing them.

http://i.imgur.com/TJGpqQY.png

Aye-ya Katie I feel like a Pirate here LOL but ummm the screenshot is a bit much :p. I say that jokingly because I know you but I'm going to remove it as it's huge and well I dunno perhaps I skipped the part in the thread where we were talking about each side moderating posts but good golly if we start posting like that in here this thread will 100% be derailed imo.

*The link can still be copy/pasted from "Last edited by" info at the bottom of your post for reference.

Edit: How about this, in order to keep a thread open and discussing it in a proper manner let's only discuss competing software IF you are comparing it to vBulletin and your current thoughts on why that does or does not make vBulletin better. I dare say we've slightly gone off topic so be sure to try and stay on topic it can't just be a "OMG vB5 sucks" or anything one sided we want to see good ole' fashioned points, an outline like I did or something that makes people think and helps them decide what to do if they are "lost" :cool:.

I removed it, pasted a link instead of an image : ) an image resizer is needed on vb.org

It is??? Sorry running on a 40" monitor here so I only notice the image outside the border a little but I was trying to hint to you as well... what does that have to do with vBulletin? :p

Ok I'm not using you as an example but I've come to the conclusion that this just can't be discussed properly and it will never be. If anyone has a valid and legitimate question about the software or want to compare it to other softwares please post on vBulletin.com OR in the pre-sales questions here and staff and other members will try to provide as much info as possible for you to make a well-informed decision.

*Please remember that at one point in time vBulletin 4 had quite a few customers not happy with it, it improved to the point it is now which is SOLID so I can only re-iterate that vBulletin 5 will improve too and become solid :cool:.

---

Yes, this was announced almost a month ago. :)

Our board was originally set up in 2000 with phpBB and has migrated through a lot of stuff on the way to 4.2.2.

We are pretty happy with 4.2.2 but we wish that the vBulletin community, if not the developers would at least give CKEditor the attention that Sphinx has received. The most serious problem we find on our image intensive site is that new users running Apple and Windows 8 compulsively drag and drop images into posts.

CKEditor has a community just like this one and they, of course, have solved that problem in a number of ways both free and paid but the version of CKEdit in vBulletin is so heavily modified that no one seems willing to tackle installing a "standard" CKEditor and fixing this very annoying image problem.

This is my most glaring example of what it means to lose development support. The world is evolving and vBulletin is not keeping up.

The Facebook and Mobile Suite fiascoes cause us similar pain but it is not as obvious because the customers we do not get are invisible to us.

Since 4.2.2 is so stable and not really subject to change, why doesn't the developer community address these problems more aggressively?