Request - Stimulate 5.x Plugin Development
 

I take this to mean that somewhere there's an interest in expanding the development of mods for vB 5. In this context, what does the staff think about allowing premium plugins here?

It seems to be working well for XenForo, so taking the former into consideration it (or a trial balloon) is at least worth discussing.

nope

Nope, no way.

I take this to mean that there is effort being made to make it easier for product developers to develop for vB5.2.x. Once this system of PHP plugin hooks for vB 5.2.x matures, I am certain the publishing of products for vB 5 2.x will certainly be encouraged and welcome. :)

Nope, he means allowing developers to sell mods on here, rather than offering a lite version on here, and a pro version on their site.

Oh, okay...yeah I don't see why the policy regarding that would suddenly change. :)

Right, vB2, vB3 and vB4 do/did just fine without developers pawning their paid mods on here.

If premium plugins were allowed or a dedicated section was made for premium plugins, it would demotivate coders to make free plugins. Most coders will start making premium plugins only.

In my opinion there are currently quite some lite plugins with a premium version released by certain coders that are horrible. They basically force you to buy the premium version. DBTech is a good example of how to do it right.

This theory has been proven false by the xF add-on community.

Don't matter what another platform does, vB is not the right place for it. Besides, there is only around 2% of the vB installs running 5.x, and also any cloud members can't use addons.

So you want to simulate addon development for vB5, spend your time fixing the many bugs in it, spend time adding hooks in as many locations as possible. You could do all this in your dev environment, and submit the fixes and improvements to vB. Then more users will adapt to the 5.x version, then you can start doing lite/pro mods as has worked on here for years.

This is a symptom of an issue that would be resolved with the idea in question.

It would be the same thing, you will be forced to buy a premium version since you are not offering a free solution.

yes please i will like if i can somehow spend more money on my vb5, and if i could be denied functions for not having it, that would be great also thanks...is it possible? someone get on that :p

I have been in xenforo resources. I can tell that it really works.
Developers start to flooding the resources with add on to create sales and competition will down the price and create better quality add on. Don't worry about free add ons it is alive too. You can see no price tag that is free one.

2000 add ons you cannot never denied the success of stimulating add ons.
https://xenforo.com/community/resources/

The idea to stimulate by allowing premium section is good. But the resources add on by xenforo itself is a killer.

Indirectly you stimulate vb5 sales when new buyer deciding it take a look at this market too.

vb5 seems like alot more powerful software at core any time i try to compare to xen...

i think the community can develop it adequately? 5.2.0 has hardly even been released and 5.2.1 seems more like the "major" release thats less rushed...imho it is still basically coming out of beta tho...

i dont see why there should be a hurry to supporting paid addons for 2000 categories but i can appreciate the sentiment...personally im 3 yrs into my vb5 ownership and yes there is a feeling like pls god can this go any faster, but locking up functions with paid additions right now i really feel is a bad move that will not be good for the community...

its not a good incentive for coders i would think either as there are still frequent upgrades, low customer #s, and in some cases, vb is adding basic functions anyway just in their own time lol

idk...personally i will rather rag vb to fix their product and make solid groundworks for 3rd party community than to pay more...i do have some customization i will gladly need to pay, but the idea of 2000 pay modification really um...who will that benefit, i dont want that

XF is cheaper because by the time you buy enough add ons to match vB4's core product you've spent over $1000.00. XF doesn't even sniff vB 4.x for add ons and modifications. Some of us like to test the lite version of add ons before we decide whether or not the product is worth paying for. If all that a developer offers is a premium version I guarantee they'll never sell it to me. I never install anything on any site, my own or any client's, without having fully tested it. I'm not paying to test an add on. I'm not going through the nonsense that comes with being sold a bad product. vB can make any policy they so choose but a knowledgeable consumer never purchases anything that cannot be tested first.

Agreed, and I don't want to see some silly timed demo either.

hahaha.... what? this was a joke post right :D

good one

vB not allowing paid add-ons is one of the main reasons I recently pulled all of my add-ons from the vB site.

As an example, one of the add-ons I pulled had 418 installs, 2882 downloads. Out of all of that, in 5 years I had 3 people purchase paid upgrades (total $60.00), and one donation of $15.00 for the add-on.

It reached a point where sales of the more robust version for XF (it became more robust over time) was supporting vB users. That was not fair to the XF users for me to be supporting a free vB version on their dime.

I personally offer about a 50-50 mix of free and paid add-ons for XF. So, free add-ons are still there. Just those that require constant support or will have constant updates with new or improved features are paid.

The idea that people will not purchase something unless they can test it doesn't hold water. I'm living proof of that.

With vB, what it boils down to in many cases is people hope the free version will fit their needs and if it does, they never upgrade to a paid version or even donate to help with support/updates. I know there are some developers that think the lite/paid model works, but if they really pay attention to what is happening they will discover many more people are using the lite version than the paid version and they are losing money by supporting a lite version.

I remember a time were developers made plugins to help the community, now it seems many are just interested in making a buck.
There are plenty of ways to monetize your time, allowing "paid plugins" here at the org isn't going to make you rich and using it as an excuse as to why a developer removed their plugins is just the lazy way out IMO.

I don't think anybody expects to get rich off of add-ons. At least I don't. Minor plugins were always free from me, and are on XF too. It's the major add-ons that I charge for.

For someone to accuse a developer of being lazy when some add-ons have weeks, and in some cases months of time devoted to developing them, is just ludicrous.

Expecting all add-ons to be free (and supported) is even more ludicrous.

If vB allowed paid add-ons I would have converted precisely 2 of my add-ons to paid. All others would have remained free. But, I can not justify supporting add-ons for free. My time is worth something, even if it's pennies per hour. But a total income of $75 over 5 years doesn't even work out to pennies.

I never said devs were lazy, I said using the excuse that "vb.org doesn't allow paid addons" so "I'm not going to develop them anymore" is lazy..

I never expect someone to work for free but as I said, devs used to make and share mods for the better of the community. That isn't as widespread these days but I don't visit the vb support sites as much as I did at one time so maybe I'm overlooking a large group.

The next developer to come up with an essential plugin for vB5.x will be the first.

Don't get me wrong. There are some nice plugins but they are bells and whistles.

It's entirely possible to make one hell of a nice website with the core vB5 product.

We waited so long for vB5 to be similar to vB4 or vB3 in regards to having a decent plugin/hook system that imho it tanked vB5, lack-there-of in regards to previous customization capabilities compared to "can't do that on the cloud", "can't do that on vB5", "no decent plugin/hooks system exist" is what killed the community here and the developers soon followed so basically you waited too long and the girl you loved married the other guy! :p

I mean after all if the community can't depend on the developers who depend on vBulletin themselves to maintain a VIABLE product then what was there for us to do besides sit and twiddle our thumbs or help the community. Many of us do help, some more than others and some as often as possible but to have others assume that we should work for free and help for free is not right in the least, it is however their prerogative and right to assume and ours to simply know the reason why we do work for free or ask to be paid and simply keep on trucking.

Like I said above in the first part of my semi-rant (lol) "waited too long and the girl you loved married the other guy" is what vB5 sounds like in my head :p. I mean I could be proven wrong, there is still time to make it more VIABLE to countless customers but since it took this long just to have the system that allows you to make it "yours" by customizing to be re-introduced while still "lacking" as it is now does not speak highly to me that it will be anytime soon that we shall see a viable worth-while vB5 that's been customized in and out and looks sick as HELLO!

Exactly. They gave, gave and gave -- and didn't get back in proportion. This isn't sustainable and has resulted in so many things, mods taken down, mods taken off-site, etc.

You'll see this clearly with devs who have skin in the game, like @nhawk. Going back to what I said earlier, another symptom.

BINGO! What I was looking to say but you worded it perfectly. Definitely out of proportion!

Edit: vbr why you showing as unlicensed? I know you still own a license but PM me lemme know.

Not sure, but since I'm showing as unlicensed I can't PM :D

Edit: This can actually be a neat license validation method!
Edit 2: Paul said he'll look into it.

I remember when vb.org styles and mods was the best thing about vbulletin. The competitors didn't have much or it was mostly paid. I came over to vbulletin originally for the available mods which were 90% free as far as what I was looking for.

I don't see myself doing the same if I was brand new to running websites and wanting to start a fresh forum looking over vb.com and their pile of junk called vbulletin/5/forums/forums/community/index.php

so sloppy still and if you look at the architecture you'll quickly see why, who would want to build off that.. it's no wonder the plugin count is low.. hell, wasn't it locked down until recently when vb5 had plugin hooks added?

^ K so long as Paul already said he'd look into it, I just asked because I've never seen you show as unlicensed until today :p.

i agree it seems the priority list was all messed up for a while(like the 20 themes and hundreds of jira to fix them for example)

but vb5 i think is only just starting coming to its prime, or out of beta basically to be more accurate...and i still didnt see any needs to jump ship to another half measure i just want to see them prioritize basic functions more the next....2-3 versions even and perhaps that can be good enough...

5.2.1 seems to me like more of a major upgrade and less rushed than 5.2.0 and it maybe took forever to get here but its still going forward....maybe if ppl think like 5.2.1 = 5.0.0 it can make more sense :D

i mean...i think it should be clear that this was released GOLD early to trick customers to help them build it for free...if anyone remembers those first super raw versions lol u especially know what im talking about

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsT0Sod377I
heres some comic relief from 5 years ago, slamming xen for features they still didnt build aha but it is actually kinda funny to look back on.... i know alot of ppls frustrated but depending what you are trying to do and for me vb5 still has the most promise of future imho...we should get a free t-shirt by then tho....something:p

Seriously, is that video STILL getting posted?

Unreal.

Completely off subject but related only to the animated video... I was surprised to read this today: http://www.engadget.com/2016/03/21/t...n-open-source/

Pretty nifty imho, I'm going to give it a try when it's open source! Okay back on subject folks (lol).

These are the exact reasons I learned the ins and outs of VB5. There are plenty of ways around "the vb5 core" to get things done and once you understand how it all works, it really isn't that hard even without the hooks/plugin system, although, I welcome the new hook system they have put in place as it will be easier to do what I want to do..

Replicant but then you need file edits yes?

No, I don't edit core files. I do edit templates though but that is irrelevant since the template is included in the custom styles. Most of the api is available in the templates and via ajax so pretty much anything that needs to be done can be done at template level or dom level via javascript.

EDIT:Currently, if you want to use the new hook system, you do have to edit files, obviously to put the hook where you want it. This won't change until more developers give input to vb dev to identify where they want or need hooks added.