Why BuddyPress is vBulletin's Big Opportunity

[donnacha]

Hi NorCal and Nwingate, thanks for adding your names to the list of people who would consider a BuddyPress Bridge to be worth paying for, and apologies for my delay in getting back to this thread.

That gives us 11 definite buyers, not quite as many as I wanted to present as an incentive to developers in the Paid Requests section - I think the problem here is that most vB site owners are focused on purely vB issues and aren't as switched-on or aware as you guys, they won't understand the massive difference a properly designed social framework can make until rival websites, using BuddyPress, start draining away their users. That will be the point, probably in the Spring, at which people will start clamouring for a BuddyPress bridge, the developers will respond and we'll have something by early summer. It's just a damn shame that more people in the vB community aren't aware of what is going on outside the vB community.

I will go ahead, anyway, and post a request in the Paid Requests section.

[Wordplay]

not interested in the buddypress thing, because i think i can do way more with the vbulletin userprofiles. but i'm definitely interested in the new wordpress getting a vbulletin bridge.

that would be nice.

[Brandon Sheley]

count me in as interested as well
[high]* Brandon Sheley bookmarks this thread[/high]

[donnacha]

Thanks Loco.M, good to have you onboard, that makes 12 of us now

Wordplay, there is already a bridge for the standard WordPress which, presumably, will soon be updated to cater to the new WordPress.

Having said that, you will find that trying to hack vb user profiles, in an attempt to roll your own adhoc social network, will be a lot more work than you think - the Jelsoft company has spent years trying to bolt social features onto vB and the results just haven't been good enough or intuitive enough to encourage users to participate. Vb is an excellent forum but Jelsoft simply don't "get" social networking.

Seriously, take a look at the BuddyPress demo, use it for a while, you'll see that they've created a deceptively simple interface that allows a new user to get stuck in right away.

Then, look at vB's social features and ask yourself: if you were a member of an online community and had been offered a vb blog or any of the new social features, wouldn't you just ignore them and go on using the forum part of the site, just as you always had

Look at the way that BuddyPress have implemented their native forums within each group, with the most active forum topics appearing prominently on the group's main page.

Now, imagine if you could swap the native forum out, and replace it with vB?

It would be awesome, wouldn't it!

"Choose the best tool for each job" is my policy

[kapoor22]

count me in, I am looking for this integrator between BuddyPress and vbulletin. Infact I have been asking developers to work on this plug-in.
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?p=1694368

[donnacha]

Good to have you onboard, Kapoor.

[brainfood]

Hi,

I have been looking for a MU/VB bridge for some time. I have been going back and forth on whether to scrap VB and just go with Wordpress MU exclusively. I will gladly pay for this bridge as it will allow me to keep the best of both worlds Wordpress MU and VB.

[nwingate]

Originally Posted by nwingate

I have more than one site That I'd like to install this one ... at least three if it helps.

I've moved on so I'm dropping out from this offer. Sorry.

[Taragon]

I've been looking for a vB Blog alternative before, but now I think vB Blog is actually getting better I've stopped searching..

If we're talking about a perfect member profile page I am surely not dazzled or amazed by seeing buddypress.
This is an example of what I mean by perfect: http://wolfgar.digart.pl/ and this comes very close to it when talking vBulletin: http://www.absolutepunk.net/member.php?u=1083

With some time, effort and experience, it can be done. It'll only require some basic html knowledge to get a basic mockup even.

[donnacha]

Originally Posted by brainfood

... I have been going back and forth on whether to scrap VB and just go with Wordpress MU exclusively ...

Yeah, I know what you mean - the native WordPress/BuddyPress forums are looking more tempting than ever, especially the way in which they are cleverly separated into the social network's Groups, seems to work very well. Like you, I find myself wondering if it is really worth going to all this trouble to shoehorn a proprietary application, VB, into an Open Source application that is clearly evolving much faster.

For now, though, I'll keep this little campaign going, to see if we can't get some VB developers to realize how big BuddyPress is going to be.

Good to have you onboard, Brainfood.

--------------- Added [DATE]1230447339[/DATE] at [TIME]1230447339[/TIME] ---------------

Originally Posted by nwingate

I've moved on so I'm dropping out from this offer. Sorry.

Sorry we didn't manage to attract the some developers in time for you to be able to use it; I really thought the VB developer community would have latched onto BuddyPress by now. Thanks for your joining in.

--------------- Added [DATE]1230448435[/DATE] at [TIME]1230448435[/TIME] ---------------

Originally Posted by Taragon

I've been looking for a vB Blog alternative before, but now I think vB Blog is actually getting better I've stopped searching..

If we're talking about a perfect member profile page I am surely not dazzled or amazed by seeing buddypress.
This is an example of what I mean by perfect: http://wolfgar.digart.pl/ and this comes very close to it when talking vBulletin: http://www.absolutepunk.net/member.php?u=1083

With some time, effort and experience, it can be done. It'll only require some basic html knowledge to get a basic mockup even.

You know, these things are subjective but, honestly, your examples of "perfect" profiles are actually perfect examples of why vB Blog and the new vB social features have completely failed to set online communities alight.

Yes, I can see that the owners of those profiles put a lot of work into them, but that's part of the problem, you need to give your users something that works out-of-the-box, without them having to invest "time, effort and experience" - ordinary users run away from almost anything that requires effort.

It is worth noting that one of your two example profiles belongs to a moderator on that site, the other belongs to the site owner, so, they both had a reason to invest time, effort and experience into their profiles.

The BuddyPress demo may not strike you, with your particular tastes, as impressive but let me tell you what I see and what I believe most of my community members will see: a clear, simple system that they instantly "get". As I've said, the key thing here is not to just look but to actually sign up and give it a test-drive; for me, the first time I tried the demo felt like the first time I used an iPhone - it just made sense.

I know which approach I'd go for as a user and, as an owner, I know which one would do the most to give my online communities momentum.