Here's The Real Reason vBSEO Abandoned Ship

[vbresults]

I've been wondering what the real reason is that vBSEO shut down. I've read a few things like the topic at admin-talk.com but these are not very revealing.

In my private vBulletin consultancy 3 of 4 clients running vBSEO 3.6.0 have been hacked and had the filestore.info redirect injected.

This leads me to believe that the reason the vBSEO guys really took off was because of the liability incurred by this.

Maybe the owners were fighting over whether or not to send out a proper alert that vBSEO 3.6.0 was indeed carrying a huge security hole.

Their business can now be seen as a hot potato and they're selling it to the biggest sucker. This could be an alternative reason for the disputes between the vBSEO owners.

I recall at some point a staff member said that vBSEO 3.6.0 had no such vulnerability, and they later released a patch fixing this vulnerability.

Those are my thoughts. What does everyone else think.

[RichieBoy67]

I would think their tos protects them from that type of a liability but I'm not sure. I remember the supposed story though that someone I will not name was injured and recovering.

Do you really think they are selling? If so I would think they reduced the value big time by damaging their customer base and losing the trust of thousands of users.

I think some of it had to do with Vbulletin building in some of the features and also with the changing tide in seo. I really do not know but I am glad I no longer need to rely on it.

[ForceHSS]

Why they not put out a fix?

[TheLastSuperman]

You're close vbresults but you're missing the nitty-gritty per say, I was there and reporting to them about that exploit and also furious at them too when all this was going down .

People lost trust in it, that one exploit (can't remember the exact exploit i.e. not sure if it was the filestore one or not) was reported to them, their staff patched it on the site that reported the find and had planned to include the patch in the next release however that never happened and therefor a known exploit remained in the product through several variations of it over the course of one year give or take a month or two until the same exact forum owner was hacked again, he went to investigate and realized they had never included the original fix in the product... he had been hacked again by overwriting files that had the fix in it, with new fresh files that had the exploitable code still within well over a year later - I remember his comments and he was shocked to find that was how he was hacked again! vBSEO dropped not only the ball but the chain, the hook, and the crane it was attached to seemingly into the bottom of the ocean.

vBSEO was still alive for a while after that however to me, I noticed the decline right after that fiasco revealed itself. Their own site was infected, their download system also compromised from what I recall... so with that said I've seen a few asking for copies of vBSEO "I was licensed, I should be able to use a copy if I find it they left me hanging" or similar... well good luck hoping the copy you find even if from a friend was not already infected to begin with, might want to consider that based on the fact their site was compromised at one point in time, think of how many members were downloading files during that timeframe .

To this day I'm still fixing sites and the owners asking me "do you know how this happened" and in the footer is Search Engine Friendly URLs by vBSEO 3.6.0 or Search Engine Friendly URLs by vBSEO 3.6.1 .

[Chris8]

Maybe less and less new people are using old version of vbulletin, maybe that's why.

Personally I'm not going to use it because I have coded a custom lightweight mod for seo friendly urls that suits my needs better and as for other features I either don't need them or I have other mods to do the job.

[Krusty1231]

vBSEO dropped not only the ball but the chain, the hook, and the crane it was attached to seemingly into the bottom of the ocean.

Ha Ha.

I had bought a used license at a reduced cost, so I do not feel I got ripped to bad. What made me choked was after that exploit infected my forum, I was still fairly new to Vbulletin, and instead of asking for help I closed my forum, deleted all the files and started over.

I am on the fence when it comes to installing any SEO options like it. I took a look at the newest one by the competitor for SEO, but @ $200 it seems rather steep for my pockets.

I see enough of the senior members who post here saying products like VBseo are not needed, and content will always be King over SEO programs.

I been here almost 4 years, and am still trying to learn the ins and outs of Vbulletin and all the addons that are created for it.

Interesting posts above. Thanks for the read!

[brihan]

Crap, I have not been paying attention. I have VBseo 3.6.1 and the sitemap generator 3.0 installed. I take it I should uninstall both?

[TheLastSuperman]

Originally Posted by brihan

Crap, I have not been paying attention. I have VBseo 3.6.1 and the sitemap generator 3.0 installed. I take it I should uninstall both?

Yes, immediately.

*Please note: It would be best to prepare yourself and your forum ahead of time, by that I mean;

You need to do one of the following:

*** Backup database and files before doing this, you make a mistake only so many ways to reverse things w/o a backup ***

1) Uninstall VBSEO / Remove all files. THEN setup vBulletin to use mod rewrite friendly URL's by including the .htaccess file from the 4.2.2.zip file. If setup correctly your urls are now mod rewrite friendly and appear close if not similar to how they did before, not identical but best they can be since vbseo was removed.

OR

2) Uninstall VBSEO (read DB Tech install instructions/documentation as you may need to disable vbseo first since you want to import data into DBSEO then uninstall vbseo after importing into dbseo etc etc) and install DBSEO by DBTech (Google it) as its the new alternative to VBSEO.

Most of us experienced in these matters go with option one, the rest option two i.e. purchase dbseo then they import and feel safe that they now have something close to what was there prior.

[brihan]

Originally Posted by TheLastSuperman

Yes, immediately.

*Please note: It would be best to prepare yourself and your forum ahead of time, by that I mean;

You need to do one of the following:

*** Backup database and files before doing this, you make a mistake only so many ways to reverse things w/o a backup ***

1) Uninstall VBSEO / Remove all files. THEN setup vBulletin to use mod rewrite friendly URL's by including the .htaccess file from the 4.2.2.zip file. If setup correctly your urls are now mod rewrite friendly and appear close if not similar to how they did before, not identical but best they can be since vbseo was removed.

OR

2) Uninstall VBSEO (read DB Tech install instructions/documentation as you may need to disable vbseo first since you want to import data into DBSEO then uninstall vbseo after importing into dbseo etc etc) and install DBSEO by DBTech (Google it) as its the new alternative to VBSEO.

Most of us experienced in these matters go with option one, the rest option two i.e. purchase dbseo then they import and feel safe that they now have something close to what was there prior.

Thank you for the quick reply TLS.

Another question if I may. Currently I am running VB 4.2.0. Should I upgrade before or after removing VBseo?

Thank you again. I really appreciate the help.

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by brihan

Thank you for the quick reply TLS.

Another question if I may. Currently I am running VB 4.2.0. Should I upgrade before or after removing VBseo?

Thank you again. I really appreciate the help.

I don't believe it matters the order. I personally would remove VBSEO first though, I think that is more important.