Help me catch up on ten years of being away

[cbiweb]

Hey everyone, this past week I returned to Web development and the vBulletin community after almost ten years. I've installed vB5.6.4, and need to catch up on all the changes and stuff.


Soooooo..... is there much of a vB5 modding world happening? What's needed? Have most mods been ported to vB5 or is it kind of a dead issue? I know that vB5 pushed a LOT of people away when it was released.


Anyway, just trying to get a feel for what I might focus on around here. Not sure how many of you remember me, but here I am again. Let's see where this goes this time around...

[yilmaz]

vb5 meets most of my wishes, you just need to discover.

[napy8gen]

One of the vb5 active modder is Glenn , you can see his work here: https://vbmods.rocks/
Of course you see yilmaz is now very active in here, he will take over the crown eventually.

Still you can see rooms of modding.

Hopefully you guys around will revive the vb5 interest for some people.

[delicjous]

Hello and welcome back. I could recommand to look into the do_not_upload developers folder. There are some examples and howtos as code-comments in it.

Glenn have good addons but last post was 1 year ago, so not active in my opinion.
Others have nice and good ideas but using to much vb4 code.

I have some small examples uploaded here you could look into.

[whitetigergrowl]

Simple. VBulletin is on life support at best.

Social Media has stripped away users from many forums regardless of which software you use.

VBulletin hasn't had a large release in years. Honestly I'm not sure they even really have much of a strategy to compete other than just do incremental changes or additions to the existing VB 5 software.

There is no importer for VB5 which is a HUGE thing holding VB5 back.

Xenforo and IPB have blown past VB awhile ago. While VB5 has a few decent things, it's a mish mash of random things. Currently no plans for VB6 have been announced and honestly at this point I doubt VB6 is anywhere near.

VB.org hasn't upgraded to the latest VB software in a LONG LONG time which kinda says a lot about how they feel about the existing software too. Especially since the company that makes and owns VB hasn't even updated many of its forums to the latest software which shows no confidence in it. From what I'm seeing VBulletin is just limping along until it dies.

At this point I think Internet Brands should just sell VBulletin to someone that may actually be able to do something with it through a fire sale. Or just kill it all together. Because clearly it's just a ship lost at sea at this point.

There are some VBulletin diehards holding on and a few may still buy it. But they have been the exception rather than the rule. The VB official forums are almost non-existent for activity.

I could go on. And not all of it is VBs fault. But they certainly played a decent sized roll in VB hitting the brakes. It has struggled to keep up with the other 2. Xenforo and IPB.

I would recommend just looking elsewhere for forum software. VBulletin simply is on its way out and has been for awhile unfortunately. They are not the company they used to be and the excitement for its software is almost non-existent with forums of all sizes switching from VB 3 or 4 to IPB or Xenforo.

And the big part of the reason you don't hear of really anyone switching to VB 5 since VB4 and VB 3 are EOL, is because they make no real easy way to import content to them from anyone else without you paying someone to do it. So basically VB just slits its own wrists.

At this point VBulletin is dead. The excitement for it is gone. A good chunk of developers have jumped ship. Mods are few and nowhere near what they used to be. It's sad really.

And if you look at the forums out there, most don't run VB anymore as they converted away from it, or they stick around on VB 3 and 4 even though they are EOL. (End of Life) That's how much they hate VB5. In fact, now that I think of it I can't really think of any VB5 forums out there. So yeah.

What's certain is that I think your time and effort would be best spent developing elsewhere. Just look around. Even if you develop for VB 5, it'll bring a minority of interest because there are a minority of people using VB5. VBulletin does a poor job of even trying to promote it to begin with. I think you would be best suited developing elsewhere. But if you want, drop a few here. Though I wouldn't expect much from it honestly.

VBulletin had a good run though.

--------------- Added [DATE]1617517674[/DATE] at [TIME]1617517674[/TIME] ---------------

Originally Posted by napy8gen

One of the vb5 active modder is Glenn , you can see his work here: https://vbmods.rocks/
Of course you see yilmaz is now very active in here, he will take over the crown eventually.

Still you can see rooms of modding.

Hopefully you guys around will revive the vb5 interest for some people.

Modders will not be able to drive interest to VB 5. Period. Only VBulletin can do that and they can't seem to be bothered to even really promote it themselves. Heck, Internet Brands doesn't even use it on their forums. Kinda says a lot since they own VBulletin. They have no faith in it either.

And VB doesn't obviously want people using their software as they offer no importing solution unless you chock up $$$ to someone to help do it for you.

If you ever want to see what a poorly run company looks like with poor mgmt then look no further than the ones running VBulletin. Social Media hasn't helped forums. But VBulletin hasn't helped themselves either. Only making the problems worse.



No clue why they have held onto VB this long. It's a dying/dead forum software with minimal interest.

[cbiweb]

Originally Posted by whitetigergrowl

Simple. VBulletin is on life support at best...


...No clue why they have held onto VB this long. It's a dying/dead forum software with minimal interest.

Thank you for that. I started to see a lot of what you said soon after coming back. Sad really. vBulletin was my first love, and I hoped it grew and matured the past ten years. Unfortunately it wilted and is dying. I've actually latched on to XenForo, renewing a never-used license that I purchased when they first released it (curiosity at the time, since I was on the vB beta team).


You say IPB has surpassed vB? I should check that out as well. Always good to have options. :up:

[whitetigergrowl]

Originally Posted by cbiweb

Thank you for that. I started to see a lot of what you said soon after coming back. Sad really. vBulletin was my first love, and I hoped it grew and matured the past ten years. Unfortunately it wilted and is dying. I've actually latched on to XenForo, renewing a never-used license that I purchased when they first released it (curiosity at the time, since I was on the vB beta team).


You say IPB has surpassed vB? I should check that out as well. Always good to have options. :up:

It's pretty obvious to me at least that the reason for us still being on VB 5 after 10 years is because when it first launched it was a steaming pile so they keep releasing incremental upgrades to try and fix it's countless issues. MANY who had high expectations and hopes were let down and frustrated. The official forums got flooded with complaints.

As such, VBulletin and the people running it didn't know how to handle the stream of complaints. Customers, even long time ones, were banned or had their access limited on the official forums if VB felt they were speaking too loudly or causing too much disruption. In turn that created a lot of ill will with customers. In turn all that did was confirm everything customers were saying about IB and the developers and staff so many long time VB owners out of spite switched to Xenforo or IPB. IPB was already familiar to many and Xenforo was comprised of some of the old VB developers which gave people hope for Xenforo.

Then to add to all of it over time like I mentioned, none of the official IB forums upgraded which shows lack of confidence in the product.

Then they of course tried suing Xenforo which set Xenforo back a few years, but in turn ended up helped give them more customers as disenfranchised VB customers went their way.

At this point if I was running VB, if I was the one in control, I would get rid of all existing VB Developers and get rid of all of the existing forum mod and admin staff and soft reboot the software from VB 4 and disregard VB 5 and make it easier for people to import their forum to the new software. Basically I would do the opposite of everything they are doing now.

I've never seen such a blatantly mismanaged and poorly run company in a long time with such little regard to the customers. At this point they are just developing VB for themselves. Not for the customers. They are behind on multiple things.

They truly have fallen a long ways. And at this point there is no hope in sight.

As for IPB it's a great piece of software. Honestly I see general respect from customers on their official forums towards each other. It's not as rabid of a fanbase as it use to be. So someone on the official Xenforo boards will prefer Xenforo, but also compliment certain things IPB is doing over Xenforo. And vice versa.

The most common thing? The customers from both in general hate VB and not because it's a threat. Xenforo and IPB are both forum software. Xenforo has focused more on the forum side and IPB more on the CMS side with forum software. So while the same in some respects, different in many others.

No forum software is perfect of course. IPB has some issues and Xenforo has some issues. You'll prefer some things on IPB and other things on Xenforo and vice versa. So you just gotta roll with what suits you best. But they are both stellar software in their own right. But VB? While it may serve a purpose for some, many end up unhappy from it from what I've seen that try it so they switch. VB 5 is DOA for most people. And VB doesn't seem in a hurry to try and convince people VB 5 is even worth a damn. Sad really.

Few developers even support VB anymore and Xenforo and IPB smoke them in mods and mod development for VB 5. And most sites don't even list VB anymore as a forum software to use.