[Wayne Luke]

Originally Posted by The Geek

Wayne, what do you feel the pros and cons are of a directory? To me, a list of certified people doesnt tell me that they have something I may be insterested in using for my site. It would be a good list of 3rd party custom developers if I was looking to farm work out... but not as helpful to 'go shopping' with (at least as far as I can see it).

Honestly don't know at this time. Haven't put much thought into it yet. I think what has to happen first is to organize the existing site here before we can add to it. The staff are working on a really great database interface for searching plugins, hacks and such. So that is the first step. Then there are some ideas to back away a little from the reliance on forums for distributing tutorials and other static information which would be good in my opinion. I am hoping these thing will allow for a reduction in the clutter of the forums and allow ease of use in helping find things that already exist. Then we can really look into ideas for a commercial directory of script addons and styles. I am taking note of the ideas but can't guarantee that they will be implemented. Though having a certified partner program would be a first step towards such a directory because those partners would be the ones to pre-populate it if it is created.

To be honest it is all up in the air right now. However, I feel that if Jelsoft is going to satisfy the needs of the customers we need to start "legitimizing" the commercial ventures out there around our products and introduce those ventures to our customer base. I don't understand the hostility towards commercial enterprises that exists on this site as vBulletin is not an Open Source project and it never was. This site is meant to provide all resources to create a community website powered by the vBulletin Engine. Yes, with 3.5, vBulletin is much more than a mere forum system. It has morphed and evolved into a community website engine where anything is possible on your site and vBulletin.org needs to play a larger role in that over the long term.