[dreamhost]

Well I've been off the vb site for quite some time now. Between vacations, new nephews, and frankly mostly playing, I've had my hands full, LOL....

I'd like to offer an update as to the situation with the bridge since there seems to be continued interest in the project. At this point vb works perfectly. Photopost has worked perfectly since day one. Oscommerce was backshelved untill their new vs. is released. After having a number of different coders look into OSC it turns out that there is virtually zero security built in, and is quite dangerous to run as is, esp if processing your own cards.

I've asked our coders to completelly rebuilt the lost password system that vb uses as it's just to involved for the normal user to want to go through. It has great security and all, it's just to complicated for the novice to go through.

Second is the import scripts to go from pnphpbb2 to vb and vice-versa.
I do not have those scripts, and at this point have no desire to build them myself.

The real issue behind deciding not to release it as of yet is 3 fold.

1. We have zero plans of ever going to .750 or .8 on the pn side, so I doubt I would ever have the new system built on that platform for future upgrades. If the pn authentication system has not changed then I suppose there wouldn't be any work to be done anyhow, but I frankly have not even downloaded .750 to check. Of course we do plan on updating the code as vb comes out with updates as it's critical to our system.

2. I have finally given up looking for an encoding system that does not require the end user to have root access to their server. Having been down the road of releasing open code and having it flood the market via people sharing it, the one thing I do know for sure is that I would never under any circumstance release unencoded code, what happened to Magicx is the perfect example there.

3. Trying to have an automated site built that would create the "custom" code needed for the client purchasing it turned out to be cost prohibitive.
There is nothing I hate more than purchasing software on a site and having to wait untill they wake up for them to email me my code, that's poor business practice, and I'll never purchase from such a site again, esp after getting screwed 2x on those.
The least expensive bid I received was over 10k to build an engine that would take the url of the site the bridge is being used on and to encode that on the fly into the download for the client.
Between the money allready spent on the script connectors and the extra 10k for the sale site, I would have to sell hundreds of copies to just break even, and frankly I do not see that happening.
I am a 1 man crew, and honestly I cannot dedicate the time to be online everyday in order to fill the orders that would come in, not to mention the tech support involved in such a system (This upgrade is NOT for the faint of heart, and is quite involved).

Finally, how do you answer to all the people who want to "hack" their vb forums with the amazing hacks that are allready available, and I'm one of them.
As vb has strict rules against selling their code, we had to separate out the entire bridge to their own files with simple include statements in the needed vb files in order to get the system to run. Basically what that means is I cannot sell a "package" with any files from vb allready modified, and would have to resort to giving manual directions on installation, saying "insert following code on line x in file x from vb".
Well that's all good if your using a stock vb, but if it is hacked, well then that idea is out the door as well.
We have added numerous hacks to our own vb forums quite easilly, but that does not mean that we could ever cover all hacks, nor would desire to.

I realize this sounds quite pessimistic, and gives the impression that the bridge will never be released. That is not the case. I hope you can understand from what I have written here what our real obstacles are, and trully hope to overcome them all someday soon. I will try to post another update next week if anything changes.