[The Geek]

*** Edited: No personal attacks on members please ***
[edit]I was making fun of myself! Am I not even allowed to call myself names here? [/edit]

Marco was spot on with the fact that the member base changing has had a radical impact on modification releases.

The new plug in system and methodology of coding for easy installing, installing and upgrading has opened the site up to be far more accessible for far more people that were previously scared crap less by the previous style of 'find and replace before/after' hacking.

This is obviously a plus for Jelsoft, but a potential burden for modification authors. Overall, I would say that it is more time consuming designing and executing a large scale modification now then it was before the plug in system. Couple that extra time and work with the additional support as more and more users that don't even have to know what a line of the code means and you can easily get overwhelmed and disenchanted.

Many modifications today are no longer 1 line template changes or even 5 find and replace instructions, but rather very long, complex projects that take a substantial amount of time to create and maintain.

You must stop expecting people to spend all of that time for free. Some people simply do not have it in abundance. Don't get me wrong, most would love to, but personally I would rather purchase a modification that had a reasonable price tag and the right functionality and support rather than not be able to purchase anything because what I was after did not exist!

Whether vb.org is the place for a commercial directory or not is not why I bring this up (however my opinion is that this is the best place) the reason I mention it is because I get a bit irritated seeing people that request time for their money being tarred.

Authors should pay Jelsoft for creating add ons for vBulletin? Ridiculous! I charge for some of my work because of the time and effort I put in creating, maintaining and supporting it. Did I learn everything I know about coding from vB? Hell no, I've been coding for 20 years as a hobby. Has coding for vB helped my php understanding? Crap loads (didn't really do much php before I started tweaking my own board) however thats like saying Adobe should pay Apple and Windows for creating Photoshop as they are invariably using parts of the operating system. Instead, products like Photoshop are a bonus for operating systems. 3rd party products encourage people to buy computer systems. For a designer a Mac is pretty useless without the software to run it on. Heck, to many, programs like Photoshop are far more useless without the amount of 3rd party plug ins available for it. Software houses champion 3rd party developers because they enrich the software for their customers.

Saying to someone they owe 25 hours a week to vBulletin because without vBulletin their modification wouldn't exist is silly. Without the 25 hours per week - the modification wouldn't exist. Without the time the coder has put into developing and supporting their product, it wouldn't exist. Or... perhaps it would only exist for a competing product.

And in closing...

This site can not go back to the 'good ole days' because your member base is primarily users that come here to get the end result (not be part of it). The good ole days is what made that happen. What needs to happen now is to evolve the site for all stake holders. The mods and admins need the space to try to make that happen.

nJoy