This site...
 

Is there ever going to be any active leadership here or is it going to be allowed to waste away into nothingness? Really would like a straightforward answer from the admin of this site before I recommend having its official status pulled and the site removed from the vBulletin servers.

Wayne, please check your e-mail.

Regarding the email...

It is good that the site is going to expand its administration and will be able to move forward. Hopefully, there will be better cooperation with vBulletin.com and vBulletin.org in the future along with link backs to the other sites as well as an updated forum here.

In time, maybe the traffic will return.

We have had plans for awhile now wayne, John has just been real busy with his other projects, hopefully this place will be back to the site it was when I first came here soon :)

Yes, I do still have plans to revamp and upgrade the site, though my time has been limited more so than before during the past 2 months, 95% due to my business and me having to work around an odd schedule which is sometimes needed when running your own business.

I know I promised an upgrade and it will be delivered as soon as I have the time to do so. If brad is willing to do the upgrade, I will send him the vBulletin file and allow him access to go forward with such.

Faranth has been nice enough to port over the older vBT style so we will have something to use again should the current one not work as it should, so I wish to thank him very much for his contribution to the site.

Again, Wayne, I am sorry if you felt or still do fell that way about this site, though as in the e-mail, I really am doing my best, being that i am only one person and can get only so much done in a day :).

Saint Dog, I think that your doing a very good job on this site. People don't realize sometimes that there is life other than the boards and people get caught up with Real Life things and can't always be avaliable 24/7.

I figured from reading some of your posts that you have had a very busy schedule the last couple of months and that as soon as you had the time to sit down and do the upgrade that you would.

The issue isn't really one of your business. It is one of neglecting an obligation you made to the vBulletin Community. If you can't handle the time commitment needed for this community and the tens of thousands of vBulletin customers who would be referred to here, you should have transferred that commitment to another months ago or contacted Jelsoft and let us know about the situation. Instead you basically disappeared with no contact whatsoever. I do understand there was a problem with email but that should has been resolved and there still hasn't been any progress on this site.

Excuses are easy. Owning up to your commitments is where honor and dignity come from. Due to your negligence of this site, you have not only harmed this site but the vBulletin community which ensures the longetivity of this site. At this time, I don't think anyone is interested in anymore excuses but expect to see results. I see you have appointed another Administrator so that is a good step forward and hopefully will result in positive changes over the next week to bring this site back up to speed. Whether or not you personally have time to manage the site is irrelevant when there are people who can do it for you. Such a change should have been made 6 months ago when the general decay started here. However giving the benefit of the doubt, I haven't said anything until now.

I should add that overall, the staff here needs to be beefed up. Three moderators is hardly enough to manage a site such as this could become. There is no reason why this site is not as busy as vBulletin.org.

why do you two have to go on about this on public boards? keep it to yourself. seriously, you both make yourselves and communities look bad by arguing over something that should be kept private.

Josh, I am not here to argue nor make excuses as depicted above, rather state the reasoning for my absence, whether it be understood by all or not.

I do not believe my absence from this site has done harm to the vBulletin product or site in general as we were not even linked to until a short while back, all traffic to the site was directed by way of word of mouth, through other members linking to the website, through search engines and the like.

While I am more than greatful for what Jelsoft/vBulletin has done for both myself and the website as a whole, I don't belive I am soley to blame for a lack of traffic, Wayne. As you can see from the posts here, the license system here is short of being 100% as it takes some members 1-2 days to even become noticed here at vBT, as opposed to it being instant at vBulletin.org; this is even with me running the link John provided to me to update the database.

A non-working system does deter users from visiting and does cut traffic and while I cannot say it is 100% non-working, users having to wait 1-2 days to become licensed on this site soley.

Now, I have said all I honestly can. I do apologize for the lack of updates and my leave of absence, but I am working the best I can to work on adding staff to the site and will continue to do so, but until the license system is working 100% as it *seems* to be at vBulletin.org and vBulletin.com, I don't believe I am the one soley to blame.

I will work to improve and upgrade the site, but again, as in the e-mail, if you feel John or James needs to e-mail me, they are free to do so.

Couldn't have said that any better. SD, I think your doing a terrific job bro. Seriously. I don't post alot on the forums here, but I do read close to, if not all of the threads here. My opinon, the way you've been treated here is not really fair to you. Don't worry about what anyone says...Just know that there are a few of us, that know exactly what your going through, and understand whole heartedly your situation. It's not easy. Your a good guy. :) Keep up the great work! Thanks for all your efforts! :up:

Metro.

The only reason this was brought out in public is because previous private attempts went un-noticed.

Nor do vBulletin team members have access to backstage areas of this site like we do at vBulletin.org in order to resolve issues such as a license system in a timely manner. It isn't so much as it works better on vBulletin.org or vBulletin.com but that it is managed daily.

i'm completely behind saintdog with this. i respect him greatly for what he's brought to the vbulletin community, and the fact that his schedule is slightly more taut than yours constitutes to this community 'wasting away into nothingness'? Please. Give the man some time, I'm sure if i were in his shoes, i'd be *ahem* deeply sorry for my schedule not being as flexible as yours.

That is great... Be behind him and support him. When a site with 13,000 members only gets a few dozen posts a day, there is a problem. The only real interest I have is trying to resolve that problem in as timely a manner as possible. If Saintdog doesn't have time to run the site then he should hire someone to do it for him. It is only logical. It isn't because my schedule is more lax than his. I usually work from 6:00 in the morning to Midnight, 6 days a week.

However, it is my job to make sure that the best interests of Jelsoft and vBulletin are taken to heart here because 1) this site is on our server. 2) It is the official template site where all of our customers are referred.

it isnt saintdog's fault that posts counts arent high here. don't blame it on him. just by the fact that they have 3 people on their staff doesnt mean posting is low. maybe you dont notice, whenever someone has a problem here, and it's posted, it's more than usually addressed by someone in the community and is usually solved. dont blame low staff numbers on posting.

Actually, you are absolutely correct, I am basing my opinions of this site threads like these:
http://www.vbulletintemplates.com/mo...ead.php?t=5103
http://www.vbulletintemplates.com/mo...ead.php?t=5201
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=91574

As well as dozens of complaints we get through the vBulletin Support System. Really has nothing to do with the current staff, though having more staff and more admins to cover for the fact that the primary admin is stretched tight at the moment would go a long way in being able to resolve these problems. That the site is running an insecure beta after 4 new releases have been made when the upgrade takes all of 10 minutes to do is another issue but not as pertinant as dealing with customer complaints about the site on a continual basis.

Anyway, I will be going away for the weekend and will see if this site is upgraded when I return. At that time I will contact the owners of Jelsoft because if it isn't then it is not in the companies best interest to support this site further.

I guess it's my turn to say something; this site for a long time wasn't nearly as active for a lot of reasons:

vB.org also has a templates section and many questions were answered there, also this site was not made very public like vBulletin.org was. Even today not many members of vBulletin.com are aware of vBulletintemplates.com. I bought up that fact to Kier and asked on vBulletin.com, "if we are a sister site, why do we not get the same treatment as vBulletin.org?" Now we do have a link for both vBulletin.com and .org, which I my self am very grateful for, and I would like to see the same done here, and I believe it will be done.

I personally have been trying my best to spark the community; I release template mods as I can and I also release skins, as I'm able to. I give support here, and I ask people who post template questions at vBulletin.org to ask here. I have done what I can.

While I'm aware you work for vBulletin and Jelsoft I don't think you have so much say over what the site does. Although I'm not totally aware of your position, you yourself have not been here to help contribute and if you have I have not seen it.

It is not the fault of anyone specifically that the community isn't active. When this site began it was not an official sister site, and there was a flood of users. It is partly due to most users attitude that vB3 is not stable, and that templates have been changing so much over time. The community hasn't had a chance to recoup, and rebuild it self properly.

There are still tons of great vBulletin 2 mods here, and we continue to try to promote the site and get more traffic here, but the License system problems is a bit out of our hands, most of us here are html people by nature, that's why we mostly choose to post here. I hope that in the future with Brad helping that the site will once again prosper and be as active if not more than vBulletin.org.

Being busy is what I always hear in each email and pm and chat that I have with vbt staff member(s). If you aren't up to the task no more, and just enjoy the title .. shame.

Since I can't post more then 1 paragraph without running into flood errors about images that aren't used, here is a follow up.

The site runs beta 6, and if I remember correctly, the beta 6 wasn't installed directly after the release. The beta 6 release was in beginning of September if my mem serves me right.

I am willing to upgrade this board to RC 3 if needed, and will keep it up to date if needed, just send all info about the upgrade to my email and when you would like it done.

There is no need to take sides here, IMO everyone is begin truthful here, we all know this site needs work and as needed it for awhile.

There is quite a difference between someone who is a staff member and tries to be active on a site, and the person who started this project in the first place and got a deal with Jelsoft about becoming official and stays the admin and stops running a site.

Users put the effort of informing others, After they found out this has become an official site. That doesn't take away this couldnt' harm the overall community.

I must say no no.
All the restriction we daily run into while posting and sharing our work is not processed after mentioning and I am still using xiphoid as username and never had any replies to the mod job I offered to get things spiced up again. They all refer to sd being the one who can apply the changes, having to wait for the upgrades before applying them and 'no need for new staff atm' answers and 'bit busy right now to discuss' removing any credibility I had in this site. Reading how slow the response time on rant posts are and community members helping before official replies, doesn't motivate me to participate in discussions much, let alone take the time to read things through or help others.

In all fairness, the site itself isn't experiencing technical problems within the capabilities of vBulletin 3 beta 6. Not sure why you would experience this kind of error as I have never seen it here.

floris altho these things arent normally brought out in public we did discuss you becoming a moderator and we decided at the time the current staff has it covered. This was some time ago, I do not know why you did not recive a responce.

The quote tag has images which get counted to the number of images allowed in a post. This is where the error comes from.

At this point, this is the best way to proceed. Honestly, I think this can be a good site. I don't think you can blame vBulletin 3 on the decline, though in all honesty I am sure it is a contributing factor. Also the License System is an issue we are constantly working on. It works no worse here than it does at vB.org, vB.com or vBulletin-Germany. There are always glitches that have to be handled manually. The difference is for the longest time there hasn't been anyone here to handle those glitches.

So going forward, I think the best way to handle this would be to 1) Upgrade the site 2) Create the reciprocal links to other official vBulletin sites.

Then work on traffic. vBulletin.org no longer has a template forum open to the public so that should not be an issue anymore. I personally recommend this site to hundreds of customers and potential customers per month over the phone, through email and by other means. Unfortunately, at this moment in time it seems like a bad referral. If the license system is really that bad of a problem here then appoint a liason with proper vBulletin Staff to look into issues and resolve them. I personally would take on that responsibility as having a template site is that important to vBulletin. There really isn't anything that is insurmountable here.

Wayne, I would be more than happy to appoint you, though I had never received any word from you that you were directly interested in doing such except by the above posting. I would be more than happy to move your status to administrator as well as any other vBulletin staff member in order to maintain control.

Brad has volunteered to help with the upgrade and so we will proceed with him doing such as soon as I can gather the FTP information (right now, I only have a PM from kier with the e-mail password and login, not FTP).

New staff will be appointed as needed and the forums are already planned for revamping as per a post in the staff lounge by a mod with a very nice structure, of which I would like to see here as well. I have upgraded Brads status and will continue to appoint worthy moderators and admins to help carry out the duties to keep the site moving.

Once my business work load is lowered, I will be back to maintain the site with the efforts I originally did, though I cannot control the amount of work per day that comes in, as customers e-mail us, they have to be answered so there is little I can do as I can't not provide support for them :).

For a long period of time, especially around September 2003 until now, I observed the site go down and down. I, as well as Faranth, and other people have worked to get more people aware of vBulletinTemplates.com. Like Wayne said, with 13,000 members and only a handful of posts per day, you can see that something isn't working.

A community really excels when there is active administration around. Members feel like when they're having problems, that they can contact an active admin with ease about anything regarding the forum. That's definently one of the reasons why the forum started to die. I would get frequent messages over AIM, and even threads here as you have seen asking where SaintDog was. SaintDog is a very big part of vBT, and I realised that it could not function without him, without an admin to be on the forums when needed. It came to the point that people asked me to do administration jobs for them, when I couldn't. At a time during last year, I was the really only active staff, but brad.loo started to come alot more and it helped me, and the community alot.

All this, together with vBulletin.org being the place for template questions brought vBT to where it is now. But I feel, I know, things will change.

I have always offered my services to SD and vBT, supporting, and helping around here. It's my duty, as a moderator, to do that. The last thing I wanted to do was let down the community, non-active moderators would be the last thing we needed. But we need more people, like I have, devoting some time to vBT.

I am happy to see that SD has appointed Brad.loo to admin, and planning to appoint other people to help out too. This will bring the place some active admins, and will make members feel better again.

Also, the planned upgrade, will help members to come back.

But more must be done, awareness of vBT needs to increase like it was back when we were on vB2. Together with all these improvements, vBT will improve.

xiphoid - I spefically remember telling you over IRC that we had decided that no new staff were required at that time. I know you had waited a while, so I informed you at the time. The administration was struggling, but with little posts, the mods were doing fine. I thought you understood that at the time. It means as much coming from me as it did coming from SD in an e-mail. And the problems you address in your post, with no name changes and such, are because of administration, not moderation. Community members have as much right to help out as staff do.

But in summary, better things are to come, and I'm glad these changes are coming. :)

I want to bring up some more points to attention:

The biggest problem this site has is the rather chaotic way modifications are released and supported here!
If you are a user of vB.org and you search for a hack you directly see in the topic for wich version it was made.
If you have problems with a hack the support is in most cases quick and good

If you look for a hack here you see a topic like "[release] Flag in postbit".
There is no mention for wich version it was released sometime not even in the first post(for this one it was a gamma release)!
You try to install and it doesn´t work because templates have changed.
You ask for support and you can mostly wait several days or solve the problem yourself.

It´s very sad because I think this is what drives users away form your site.
Back in the old days where template hacks are on vB.org it was totaly different.

Suggestions to improve the quality of your site:

1) make clear rules for hack postings (eg vB version in topic title)
2) make a better structure for your modification forums (eg add Forum Home improvements, Profile improvements, etc)
3) make the hack coders support there hacks and if hacks are not supported make a category "unsupported modifications"
4) allow HTL files as attachments

I hope the quality of this site will improve in the near future cause otherwise it would make customers wish the template mod forums would still be on vB.org

Don´t take this personaly I know how much work it is to support a big community but it can be done (see vB.org).
If you can´t manage it yourself because of lag of time get people who are willing to do so!
I think you would get more then enough volunteers

Greetings

StarBuG
ps: please take this as constructive critizism

We are currently aware of how disorgnized we are and were hoping to remedy that with the upgrade.

I peronsly dont see a need to have each template group broken down into differnt modifactions, this would only confuse the end users more. As most users come here asking what templates to modify in the first place ;)

With template mods almost no one will release a non working copy and if they do, trust me no one will use it.

As ive said before i dont see a need to have HTL extensions allowed here. the HTL is a hacking tool, and while it can do template instructions alone, there are alot of users here who will customize there style ine very way but not ever touch a php file. and forcing them to install the HTL just to install a template mod would be stupid and unneeded.

vB.orgs template section is part of the reason we havent had much traffic however now that its gone im hoping to see more trafic here :)

What does the fact to offer the possibility of attaching htl files force people to use HTL?

vB.org made a rule every hack has also to be released as txt installer version and HTL now supports creating txt files as well.

Your way is forcing people who want to use htl to make the hack entrys themself.

I don?t see the problem in allowing htl as well (simply make a rule txt files have also to be released)

The second point is "With template mods almost no one will release a non working copy and if they do, trust me no one will use it."
I never said that some releases non working hacks but there are quite a few hacks made for beta or gamma versions that don?t work in RC1,2 or 3 cause the template system has changed.
And for many of these hacks there is no note at all for wich version they were released and after installing you have to read several pages to find a fix here and there and sometimes don?t even find help at all.
(eg. take your Forum Spacing modification as example. ;))

I think you should spend some time thinking about a better way to manage this site.
Right now it?s very chaotic and not very helpfull
10k members and a few posts only every day speaks for itself.

There is much that has to be done but I?m confident that you get it back on track.

Best of luck

StarBuG

I

IT only takes a small ammount of brains to figure out if a hack will still work with antyhing, check out the release date ;)

That attitude brought vBT to the position it is in right now!

Don´t you see that it can´t go this way any longer?
Why dismiss every good suggestion members make?

I am a regular board hacker and I speak for quite a few (at least I think so) hackers who visited your site.

It´s your choice how you try to make the situation better then now and I hope it will get better fast but try to listen to the end users like me when they give you feedback why they don´t realy like your site.

Greetings

Star

For mine (a former, and recent re-visitor to this place) it seems that it's the support for hacks that is the difference between this place and vB.org ...

I'll be sticking around here and answering what questions I see I can help with (something I can't help myself from doing) - and I'll try and release some template mods as well ... I look forward to seeing if this place can become as active as it could / should be :)

Tony Brad Jon one of you i think this needs to be closed now >.>

One of the problems is that people visit and don't post at all. Just come for the template mods. The community itself is what the problem might be, the posts the place is getting are just fine IMO. Maybe some motivation to post could help? :D

I did 27 posts so far and over half of it was requesting support i didn´t get.

I think that´s the main problem.
If the hack support was better and good rules made for posting and supporting hacks then more people would participate.

Greetings

Star

Star i havent seen your request or if i did i currently did not have time, but also try to search ;)

if your willing to pm with your threads that youve request ill be happy to take a look and release them if i have time over the next two~ days

Rules are easily broken in any community, though as before, the community is due for a revamp and hopefully for the best. I am simply trying to find the FTP password and the information will be off to brad for the upgrade of vBT. After the upgrade takes effect, we will move to place the newly suggested forum layout (i.e. the way forums are laid out, not new design) into effect.

With the latest vB3 mods, I've made sure that 'Gamma', or 'RC1/RC2' is in the topic of new modifications. So these are for use with the new templates. The vB2 mods should work with all vB2 versions past 2.2.6.

This was the temporary measure before we could put in a new forum layout.