What can the Vbulletin community do for VB 5.x ?

[katie hunter]

I have all these great ideas and been sharing them on Jira but then I made this topic on Vbulletin customer feedback section by the title ( Is there a solution for fixing VB 5.x speed? )

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum...g-vb-5-x-speed

Well things for me didn't turn clear, until toward page 2 and 3 and then when I google Internet Brands reviews and I came across this http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Int...iews-E9344.htm it made me feel really bad about Vbulletin developers and staff.

Vbulletin fell in the wrong hands and we always put the blame on Vbulletin staff and developers when it is out of their control. Probably they can't even talk about it because they are employed by IB.

Would it be possible for IB to sell Vbulletin to a different company? Not sure and if it is possible, which company would be interested in buying it. IB doesn't have any vision for Vbulletin.

[final kaoss]

VB5 is a bloody trainwreck. They need to just scrap it and try to improve on vb3-4 with vb6.

VB3 code is much easier for me to read but vb4 is a bit harder to work with but has more functionality. It'd be best for both of these worlds to come together in developing vb6.

[katie hunter]

Originally Posted by final kaoss

VB5 is a bloody trainwreck. They need to just scrap it and try to improve on vb3-4 with vb6.

VB3 code is much easier for me to read but vb4 is a bit harder to work with but has more functionality. It'd be best for both of these worlds to come together in developing vb6.

My topic isn't about VB 3 or VB 4 and i see VB 5 having great potentials, we just need better management and more hired web developers.

Look up these Jiras, if implemented right, VB 5 will shine beyond imagination.

Profiles Feeds Discover like Twitter (A new Vision, not just a feature)

http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBV-12337

Blogs & Articles Redesign [Grid] Vs.[List] mode

http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBV-12406

Header redesign + Search bar improvement

http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBV-12426

Implementing proper live notification system

http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBV-12698

Improving Member's list

http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBV-12663

Profile Media Tab + Album Image Views Features

http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBV-12676

Vbulletin's Group Redesign

http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBV-12379

[cellarius]

Agreed. If implemented right. Too bad hardly anyone seems to remember when IB implemented somthing right.

Anyway, somehow I really am impressed by your ability to hope a product already sold as final for over a year might sometime, say, three years from now, become a shiny, or at least a halfway decent piece of software.

Somehow I don't get how the subject of the thread fits wiht your first post. Do you expect the community to buy the software? And what about all the time and effort the community already invested into vB (and IB gave a damn about?)

[katie hunter]

Originally Posted by cellarius

Agreed. If implemented right. Too bad hardly anyone seems to remember when IB implemented somthing right.

Anyway, somehow I really am impressed by your ability to hope a product already sold as final for over a year might sometime, say, three years from now, become a shiny, or at least a halfway decent piece of software.

Somehow I don't get how the subject of the thread fits wiht your first post. Do you expect the community to buy the software? And what about all the time and effort the community already invested into vB (and IB gave a damn about?)

I'd expect for a signed online petition and spread it through the business media and to try and contact IB by phone, email and twitter in mass. Only then, they will worry about their reputation and respond to our demands, but venting our frustration within topics on forums isn't going to do anything because you're not affecting IB, you're affecting VB and they honestly could care less for one of their brands. They own many brands and some probably they make more money with than others.

You really don't know the power of a strong community and when everyone works together for one purpose but everyone has to be serious about it.

[cellarius]

No offense - but do you really think vB still has a strong community? Just look at how dead the vb.com forums have become. And, of course, IB did not care at all about bad press in the past, so why should it now? Those ideas you have, they were around years ago, when there still was a very active user base around. Nothing has come of it, and nothing ever will, in my opinion.

[Zachery]

As someone involved in the day to day, I care. And I'm very happy to see suggestions going into the tracker. If we can get votes on the ideas, we can try to move forward with them.

[katie hunter]

Originally Posted by cellarius

No offense - but do you really think vB still has a strong community? Just look at how dead the vb.com forums have become. And, of course, IB did not care at all about bad press in the past, so why should it now? Those ideas you have, they were around years ago, when there still was a very active user base around. Nothing has come of it, and nothing ever will, in my opinion.

There is a difference, in the past all I've seen were hate blogs and topics related to Xenforo Vs. IB, a dispute the community should not have been drawn into or get involved in it from the start. In general it is a lawsuit between two parties and it is not business news or related to leadership and visions - at the end of the day the dispute is resolved in the court of law not by media or hate blogs and there wasn't news worthy of being mentioned in the first place (2 ex developers being lawsuit by the company they use to work in, that is what it was).

But this is different, contacting IB in mass, and initiating an online petition to tell them that they need to show more commitment to VBulletin 5.x in term of good management, leadership, and hiring more developers in order to assist with the development is a business news. No business company would like to hear that they aren't showing leadership and great management, that is the essence of any business and future business or investment.

As for the community, well that is the tough part, the community is there, they aren't just sticking together and they took sides between vb and xf, thinking that xf is actually the escape boat, honestly it isn't by far. 2 developers (mike and kier), not enough financial support and backbone, lack of deep features, and empty propaganda.

If the ideas that I send to Jira are implemented very well with VBulletin system + optimizing it for better speed, Vbulletin will shine, the core issue here is VB needs more expert developers and a management with great vision. VB is a huge and complex project, it is nothing like XF at all.

Originally Posted by Zachery

As someone involved in the day to day, I care. And I'm very happy to see suggestions going into the tracker. If we can get votes on the ideas, we can try to move forward with them.

There are votes but not like 2 years ago, they go anywhere from 5 - 15. There isn't much activity on Vbulletin.com and that is because primarily as i stated on VB, the speed of the forum is one of the main issues, you have 70 performance issues in jira that aren't resolved. Fixing those and i think will improve VB speed greatly and will encourage more activity.

But i think the first thing here is working on features of pages per batch, not work on different things at once, for example blogs/article redesign that i send to jira, they need to be worked on untill it is fully completed and implemented properly, then after that, the developers can focus on the profile and media tab, then after that the header redesign + proper notification system. But working on all these things at once is a bad idea.

On my site when i work on a set of features related to a certain page and release it, everyone gets excited, i also can tackle bugs much easier and faster. Instead of working on many areas at once.

Vbulletin needs to show front-end features, that is what gets customers and communities excited + spread it through the official youtube channel. I haven't seen VB promoting VB 5.x too much on youtube. I have one video that has over 2 million views on youtube, that is a good attention to my site. VB has the social tools, use it well. When members find excited features being implemented, they will spread the words for others to try it, it comes automatically.

[tpearl5]

katie, I think you're missing the point here. I've been working with vbulletin for a long time and have seen it evolve into what it is now. Trust me, the community is far from what it used to be. It's not just about people not sticking together or not. When IB took over they almost immediately shot themselves in the foot, and that shooting has continued to every other appendage.

It shouldn't take customers contacting IB in mass to get a company to give what their customers want. No one has time for that. They will gladly go to a cheaper, better built platform that has a community and a company that cares about customers behind it.

At this point IB is fighting and uphill battle. If they really want to turn things around they'll listen to their customers, scrap vb5 (or at least release a drastic update), and stop wasting everyone's time.

[cellarius]

And here we go again. All this has nothing to do with xenForo at all. You're so fixed on that other software. People did not leave because they liked other software or didn't like developers fired in the first place. They left because vB4.0 was practically unusable at first release (and it stayed that way until up to 4.0.7 at the least), and became halfway good only with 4.2. And many of those staying with vB during the long stony track that vB4 was and prepared to give IB a second chance, were apalled when IB pulled the same stunt again with vB5 - selling customers a software for very good money that would clearly take years to be in state to be used productively.

You see, I have been using vB for years, was a fan, coded lots of addons, did alpha and beta testing, ddicating lots of my spare time to that. The problem was: I did it not only for free, but also for nothing. I (and I'm not alone in this) more and more got the feeling that we were being ignored, much like the support and even dev staff must still feel. Our opinnion on basic pruduct design questions was not valued, our feedback usually was in vain. What do you think with how many of such nifty design ideas we did come up for vB4, or, for that, for vB5? How many of the issues that IB now sells as vast improvements in minor releases were already pointed at in alpha/beta testing? The problem always was: Once the users (including alpha and beta testers) got a look at the product, practically everything was set in stone, including the release date (although no one ever admitted that). The state of the product did come into the matter, neither with vB4 nor with vB5. How else to explain the catastrophic state of vB4 and vB5 at release? A state, that was very well known to IB management, if they only once listened to our feedback?

You see, different from those working for IB, I (and many others) had the possibility of turning away in disgust at that. And given the employee fluctuaton in the last few years, even some of those getting their paycheck from IB did not really fancy working there, or develop any pride in the product. The lawsuit just added to that, but it's not the core of the grudge. As I said in the beginning: Had IB continued to deliver even halfway decent software, many of the old hands would not have turned their back. Really, you don't seem to understand half of the problem here, being all fixed on your own grudge with xF.