Where did the VBlogetin go?

[jkuang]

I am about to get vblogetin but this ... sigh ...

There is no *reasonable* alternative to vBlogetin at this moment. But this domain issue makes a lot of people nervous about the future of vblogetin. It highlights the "thiness" of the company.

I think I will still get the product so it fills the needs of my site for now but I am planning on exit strategy even before installing it ... this is definitely not good with vbulletin blog engine catching up on the horizon.

[Adrian Schneider]

The attachment feature should have been an application all its own and not applied to vBlogetin when it was. There's the spam thing they worked on and maybe more. Not one of them is gold yet. In fact, they put all the products behind schedule because of a lack of priorities.

The attachment system was something we thought it needed so it was added. Most of the delay is working out the javascript (text editor) out of forum dir issues, and file permission errors which would involve rewriting the datastore system.

I've dealt with hosting and domains enough to know the issue is not that difficult to resolve. If I had a partner in a venture that relied on a scheduled payment to maintain the website or facility, I certainly would not leave that up to one person who I had very little contact with. Once it was discovered that the domain was expired, the partner, who was there to tell Adrian it was due, could easily resolve the problem even if it meant going to a library to borrow a public computer. What happened was total BS and we have been fed more of the same with the excuses.

No, it's not difficult to resolve, but it can take time. It has been transferred to my name under a different registrar which is why it is taking so long. How is that total bullshit?

This domain and server fiasco is just one more indication to me that Sir Adrian and company are not serious about running a quality business. Check the shortcut to vBlogetin and you get a "Coming soon" page that has numerous pop-ups that make it difficult to navigate normally away from the site. It's irritating to say the least.

That's called a landing page, and is completely automated by the registrar. It's a pretty standard thing to see when experiencing domain problems, or even buying new ones.

It takes less than a day to register and set up a domain on a host. I did it with TheFloorPro.com. You can check the WhoIs data and then look at my oldest message on the forum. I feel like I am doing business with children who have not taken responsibility for this issue.

Yes it does. We are not buying a new domain... I talked with the owner and he said something happened to all of his domains. It is being transferred now. A completely different circumstance than what you are describing. How would you have handled this surprise, Jim? I suppose I can fly to Adu Dhabi to talk to my partner, and work out the issue there? That would have taken 2 days (and $3000) to get there, and who knows how long to sort out the domain issue. He did not say what the problem was, only that something happened to all of his domains that were using register.com. I can ask him what the problem was, if you'd like. My guess is the nameservers got wiped out somehow... I was incorrect about it being expired - that was my assumption due to his notice from the previous night.

IMO, we couldn't have fixed it any faster than we did. Sit down and relax for a few minutes; it's not the end of the world.

Blogetin will remain on my board until another product of my choosing comes along that has a conversion script. The developers of vBlogetin have lost my faith and respect. I am not asking for too much. I only ask for professionalism. I could care less about any "other" jobs. To me, vBlogetin IS their job and I am paying part of their wage.

I'll be frank here... You ask for a LOT. Every post. I'm sure a ton of people will agree with me here. You are always condescending and rude on the forums, and you behave like you are the only customer on the site. I have heard this from other people too. We bite our tongue, ignore your attitude, and support you to the best of our ability anyway.

It has been stuck on beta 3-8 for months now. Updates on progress are not so frequent. While I'm sure the picture attachment thing will be really cool, I would have like to have seen a stable base product rolled out and then the cutesie things added on later.

Yeah, that is unacceptable, and I apologize. A combination of a few poor choices (we are coders, not business majors) and also some bad luck (deaths, family issues, moving, etc). We do plan to get things into gold ASAP and you guys will definitely see progress pick up.

Anyway, as I said earlier, this should be sorted out soon. We are waiting for the transfer to go through still. I apologize to everyone about the inconvenience. If you need any support you can contact me via email or PM on this site.

[Brandon Sheley]

Just shows you how many are interested in vblogetin to me
btw, here are our blogs

[Roms]

Adrian;

You have a fine blog and you are a GREAT coder. I'm sure it will be more than competitive with vB blog. I will probably buy vb blog, and also continue to support vBlogetin on my sites.

[eJM]

Originally Posted by SirAdrian

No, [the domain issues are] not difficult to resolve, but it can take time. It has been transferred to my name under a different registrar which is why it is taking so long. How is that total bullshit?

Let me first say that I have been in business for over 35 years. You may not ascribe to the same business philosophy I do, but I always try to have a backup plan. The customer comes first - my primary goal has always been a satisfied customer. Without that, success is only fleeting. If some part of my business fails or becomes inoperable, I go to plan B.

Websites are the virtual offices of every business on the Internet, including vBlogetin. The sweetest thing about the Net is that you can have a number of fall-back offices in case one goes up in flames. Every domain I register, I grab the dot COM and the dot NET - sometimes even the dot ORG. Whether it was your idea or not, you were the driving force of vBlogetin and one of your first obligations to your customers is a stable line of communication. That is what the WWW is all about.

Did you think to look into the ability of vBlogetin to meet its obligations to its customers when you first realized, hey, this might make me a living one day? Did you make sure vBlogetin would always have a recognized home? You knew your partner had registered vBlogetin.com, but what about vBlogetin.net - just in case. Even discounting the possibility your original domain might go up in a cloud of smoke, how about protecting your, I would hope trademarked, name from vandalism and abuse by registering vBlogetin.net.

You didn't do that, Adrian. Your partner didn't do that. Not even did your trusted co-hort, Hugh, do that. I found it languishing in the ether, NOT ready to let you set up a temporary vBlogetin site. You could have been up and running all this time simply by restoring backups to that domain and getting the word out that you were alive and well and ready to serve your customer base.

I registered vBlogetin.net. That's right, that jerk customer who insists on being treated well for the financial and beta support I have given you. I know it ain't much, but it's what you asked of me and I willingly gave it. You have perhaps hundreds of customers, some of us more difficult than others, but none of us deserves to be disparaged so that you can be relieved of your responsibility to us.

No, I didn't register vBlogetin.net for myself. You check your PM box shortly and you'll see you have access to the site via FTP, if you want, and you can do whatever you want with it. You can PM me back with the proper info and I will gladly turn the domain over to you, switch it to whatever nameservers you want and take the steps to have the domain transfered to you. No charge. No obligation. I only did it to give you the opportunity to honor your commitment to your customers and quit coming up with BS excuses why I and others have to get slaughtered with pop-ups trying to get to vBlogetin.

That's called a landing page, and is completely automated by the registrar. It's a pretty standard thing to see when experiencing domain problems, or even buying new ones.

Good hosts and registrars don't use those tactics.

We are not buying a new domain... I talked with the owner and he said something happened to all of his domains. It is being transferred now. A completely different circumstance than what you are describing. How would you have handled this surprise, Jim? I suppose I can fly to Adu Dhabi to talk to my partner, and work out the issue there? That would have taken 2 days (and $3000) to get there, and who knows how long to sort out the domain issue. He did not say what the problem was, only that something happened to all of his domains that were using register.com.

What is this BS about flying to Abu Dhabi? You don't have a phone? Your partner doesn't have a computer? Please don't insult me with this. You (or your partner) call tech support and sort it out. Why don't you have the same access he does to your domain name? Why no backup plan? Why didn't one of you register vBlogetin.net or .org, whatever, so you had someplace to go in a situation like this? Why didn't you get on GoDaddy or whoever and register vBlogetin.net the first day you went down?

IMO, we couldn't have fixed it any faster than we did. Sit down and relax for a few minutes; it's not the end of the world.

No, but it might be the end of your business prospects as you knew them. Are you coding for the hell of it, or are you charging 50 bucks a pop because you want to make a business out of it? The minute you took my money, you made a promise to me that you would do your best to give me a finished product and do it as a professional. Your competition may not have as fully featured and attractive a product as yours, but they are a damn site more professional and a lot of people trust them enough to build hacks and add-ons and plug-ins that could possibly put vBlogetin to shame. You can't afford to gamble on your customer's loyalty.

I'll be frank here... You ask for a LOT. Every post. I'm sure a ton of people will agree with me here. You are always condescending and rude on the forums, and you behave like you are the only customer on the site. I have heard this from other people too. We bite our tongue, ignore your attitude, and support you to the best of our ability anyway.

It's a damn poor businessman who takes an opportunity to disparage a customer to take the heat off their own failings. I don't care whether you like me or not. I had a lot of customers I couldn't stand. But my goal was steadfast: satisfy the customer. Give what I promised. My nick-name is Grump. My first website was GrumpsPlace.com. The license on my car is GRMPJIM (GrumpyJim). I have been a grump for 57 years and it don't matter how many people tell me, I am still and prob'ly always will be. But that doesn't relieve you of your responsibility to all of your customers. You can kick me to the curb, but another, even more obnoxious guy will come along. It's what you get when you put your hand out to take my money. The sweet and wonderful ones make up the difference.

I never posted that much, but when I did, I just wanted the program to work. I remember a few posts where I just wanted to help you, or someone else. When you disappoint me or others, you take the chance we will say things that might be rude. As an official old guy, I don't particularly like dealing with children. Unfortunately, the Net is full of them and I don't have much choice. So, I get cranky and difficult. All you have to do is the job you promised me you would do and you won't have to deal with me much.

You are a coder that wants to make a business from your coding efforts. You can run a legitimate business like vBlogetin, or you can work for someone else that will allow you to code and not deal with the day to day business issues that are so very important to the existence of the company.

Now it's time to get past the animosity, embarrassment or whatever. vBlogetin.net is yours. As soon as it propagates to my host, I'll send you FTP access. You can give me the information necessary to transfer the domain name to you so you can put it on your own host (or leave it on mine for up to a year). If you want me to change the DNS so you can get it set up before the registrar transfer, just let me know the nameservers. My suggestion would be to set it up on my host the way you want temporarily until vBlogetin.com is ready for prime time. I will provide you with all the info via your PM here as soon as it's ready. Again, I want no money, no special consideration or anything. You can continue to treat me in the same manner you have and it won't change a thing.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Originally Posted by shredded

....I started looking at the possible candidates and really only found 2 and a half. I say a "half" because the vBlogs piece that vBulletin is working on is not a real product yet. .......

The first version of vBulletin Blog product is already running on vbulletin.com, you can have a preview of what is coming soon.

[TheComputerGuy]

I was hoping of an update by now....I feel Jim is correct in what he has said. You might consider it rude, but it's true none the less.
I can be very forgiving, but please don't test my forgiveness.
I thought the project had been abandoned as someone else mentioned, and started to look into the vBlog.

Jim - nice for you to help them man. SirA - Get on the ball and make us proud!

[ShawnV]

Well since I am rather irritated with this whole subject at the moment.

/rant on
I buy branding free products always meaning in this case I spent $100, I spend allot of time researching and asking questions before I buy products, I did the same with vBlogetin, everything on the site indicated that this was going to be a well supported and well updated product. To be honest I like the software but once VB announced that they had a BLOG coming out the development and announced updates seemed to grind to a stop, week after week nothing but its going to be out next week, then there is the “we are working on other projects thing”. I don't know perhaps it’s just me but I am getting rather sick of buying premium (not free) products and then seeing them put on the back burner while the authors work on the other “bigger better deal” things. If I did that with my clients I would be out of business in a week. I really hope that vBlogetin gets it together soon, and delivers on what is expected of a business and a product that they are “Selling” However if your not going to get behind your product fully then offer a refund to the poor saps that bought into the hype of a fully completed and actively upgraded product, I for one don't enjoy paying for abandoned or back burner BETA products.
/rant off

_V

[RedTyger]

If they've got any sound business sense (by which I mean if it were me in charge ) then they'll wait to see what vBulletin's blog product has and then tweak their own to offer an alternative to cater for what vBulletin's blog doesn't deliver. Personally I wouldn't have done any further work beyond the very basics until I'd seen what I was up against. Then I'd pick it up again and deliver the goods. Granted it would arrive much later, but nevertheless everybody wins.

I'm watching this project with renewed interest, since what I've seen from the official project has been, IMO, grossly disappointing so far. It couldn't be any more bog-standard if it tried.

[Adrian Schneider]

Originally Posted by TheComputerGuy

I was hoping of an update by now....I feel Jim is correct in what he has said. You might consider it rude, but it's true none the less.
I can be very forgiving, but please don't test my forgiveness.
I thought the project had been abandoned as someone else mentioned, and started to look into the vBlog.

Jim - nice for you to help them man. SirA - Get on the ball and make us proud!

Register.com replied saying the transfer may take 5-8 days. We are just waiting on it to go through.

Originally Posted by ShawnV

Well since I am rather irritated with this whole subject at the moment.

/rant on
I buy branding free products always meaning in this case I spent $100, I spend allot of time researching and asking questions before I buy products, I did the same with vBlogetin, everything on the site indicated that this was going to be a well supported and well updated product. To be honest I like the software but once VB announced that they had a BLOG coming out the development and announced updates seemed to grind to a stop, week after week nothing but its going to be out next week, then there is the “we are working on other projects thing”. I don't know perhaps it’s just me but I am getting rather sick of buying premium (not free) products and then seeing them put on the back burner while the authors work on the other “bigger better deal” things. If I did that with my clients I would be out of business in a week. I really hope that vBlogetin gets it together soon, and delivers on what is expected of a business and a product that they are “Selling” However if your not going to get behind your product fully then offer a refund to the poor saps that bought into the hype of a fully completed and actively upgraded product, I for one don't enjoy paying for abandoned or back burner BETA products.
/rant off


_V

Jelsoft announcing a blog means that we have to make other products in order to keep revenue coming in, otherwise I'd have to take on other jobs. I don't want to live in a tin shack. As for bigger better deal things... no, much smaller things. Two quite small projects that are unique enough to have little competition, yet small enough to not take away too much time from vBlogetin.

Originally Posted by RedTyger

If they've got any sound business sense (by which I mean if it were me in charge ) then they'll wait to see what vBulletin's blog product has and then tweak their own to offer an alternative to cater for what vBulletin's blog doesn't deliver. Personally I wouldn't have done any further work beyond the very basics until I'd seen what I was up against. Then I'd pick it up again and deliver the goods. Granted it would arrive much later, but nevertheless everybody wins.

I'm watching this project with renewed interest, since what I've seen from the official project has been, IMO, grossly disappointing so far. It couldn't be any more bog-standard if it tried.

We didn't care what vBulletin blog had to offer - we continued vBlogetin without worrying about it too much, but to be safe we had to start another project to make sure we can keep doing this. As for features, it currently looks like we have quite a few more at the moment. The actual thing that hurt is that it's official.

Anyway, to repeat myself again. We are still working on it, and are just waiting for the transfer to go through. I'm not happy with it bieng down either, but hopefully it comes back soon. It went down on July 4th, so the earliest it would be up (according to them) is tomorrow.