vBulletin

[KiwiDexter]

Given Jelsoft's recent bombshell it might be a while before anyone answers, we're certainly getting a surge of people who are opting to move away from vBulletin at the moment

Downside of course, we had just brought a licence and we're in the process of setting up

[Nightwalker83]

Given Jelsoft's recent bombshell it might be a while before anyone answers, we're certainly getting a surge of people who are opting to move away from vBulletin at the moment

Could you provide and explanation as to what you are referring to?

[RobDog888]

vBulletin is the #1 forum software. I doubt there is anything that could drive people away from it.

[KiwiDexter]

Could you provide and explanation as to what you are referring to?

A recently announcement by Jelsoft, in a demonstration of how to alienate your client base, has it that when each major new version of the software (note not point releases or minor bug fixes) requires a licence owner to effectively re-purchase the software making a mockery of the "owned" licence concept.

vBulletin is the #1 forum software. I doubt there is anything that could drive people away from it.

Actually vBulletion is no longer the #1 forum software, Invision have overtaken them, though I have a sneaking suspicion that the free option SMF has caught up a lot of ground on both products, no figures but seems like a lot of SMF sites and activity recently.

Rob we are currently dealing with 20+ clients who have moved from vBulletin following the bombshell Jelsoft dropped and most third parties are also reporting increased numbers of clients moving off the vB platform. As stated this is unfort for us as we were starting to develop heavily for vB and were about ready to launch.

If you check the relative post rates over at vbulletin.com to what they were six months ago you should note a massive decline.

[techgnome]

A recently announcement by Jelsoft, in a demonstration of how to alienate your client base, has it that when each major new version of the software (note not point releases or minor bug fixes) requires a licence owner to effectively re-purchase the software making a mockery of the "owned" licence concept.

Huh... interesting. And the reason that I find this interesting is not because they are doing it... but rather I'm amused at the outrage since... isn't this how software works in the first place? When there's a major upgrade, I have to buy a new Windows License if I want to use the new version. Or the newest VisualStudio... or the latest version of Mac OS ... so I fail to see what the outrage is over, or what mockery you are referring to.
If I purchase v3.0 of something, and I get a license... I've got a license to run v3.0 ... should I really expect to be given v4.0 for free? Ok, SURE, it would be NICE.... but that's not the way companies run.

-tg

[techgnome]

Huh... I dug into the FAQ over at vbulletin.com ... . Isee what the fuss is about... looks like the software may have undergone a revamping (GASP! Noooo! That never happens) ... since what resulted is essentially a new product, a new license needs to be aquired. OK. 1) Doesn't invalidate your old licence, which is still good in perpetuity, 2) the new license won't expire either.

I still think it sounds like a simple evolution of the software, and essentially they are saying the old verions won't be supported. Reminds me of moving from Win2000 to WinXP ... at some point support for the older stuff stops.

Still don't see what the big deal is.

tg

[KiwiDexter]

Huh... I dug into the FAQ over at vbulletin.com ... . Isee what the fuss is about... looks like the software may have undergone a revamping (GASP! Noooo! That never happens) ... since what resulted is essentially a new product, a new license needs to be aquired. OK. 1) Doesn't invalidate your old licence, which is still good in perpetuity, 2) the new license won't expire either.

I still think it sounds like a simple evolution of the software, and essentially they are saying the old verions won't be supported. Reminds me of moving from Win2000 to WinXP ... at some point support for the older stuff stops.

Still don't see what the big deal is.

tg

You need to be maybe more involved in the forum industry. Regardless of how it works it other areas of software, and cost structures do vary remarkably between differing areas, in the forum world you cannot re-charge customers for a new version regardless of what the practice is for Microsoft et al. People did not expect to pay for a new version, ergo a lot of people have jumped ship to other products and hence why the forums are slower than an English opening partnership.

Standard practice for commercial forum products is a set licence cost followed by a yearly maintenance agreement thats approx 20% of the purchase price. There's a total cost of ownership thing going down there of course.

Jelsoft have effective alienated serious hobby and small business site owners. Downside for us is supporting clients who are still thinking in vB terms in supporting their communites, upside is a lot of those clients are getting blown away by some of the features in the products we use that apparently weren't standard in vB.

I help run forums using both vB and Invision, as well as a couple of lesser known products. For mine Invision is simply streets ahead of the other products in terms of managing a site.

Maybe one of the Mods should movie this subject to general or something?

[techgnome]

"Standard practice for commercial forum products is a set licence cost followed by a yearly maintenance agreement thats approx 20% of the purchase price. There's a total cost of ownership thing going down there of course."

And so now, they are abandoning that for a one-time cost for the license with future upgrades and patches for free. Gee what an outrage.


For the record, I'm not trying to defend their actions, just understanding what the big deal is. Seems to me, that the change in the licensing and pricing structure should be a good thing. But then I'm a cheap arse and haven't paid for any version of forum software I've used over the last 10 years (it's all been Open Sourced or simply free) so what do I know?

-tg

[RobDog888]

Jelsoft has spent years rewritting 4.0 so its more W3C compliant and removed most, if not all, the tables from the html and is all CSS with divs. True the enduser can not see or understand why this is important. Mainly software developers and site owners will see the benefits. Ranging from increased performance to a broader based browser compatibility.

So they jump ship because they changed the licensing. I dont remember what it was originally but to go from one major release version to another is warrented to have the customer pay the full price. Imagine if you worked for years on a version and only reap $30 license renewals from it? Im sure Jelsoft has done its homework and I bet there will be some returning customers after they see how bad the competition is. After all they dont have the resource backing that a professional paid software forum vendor like Jelsoft has. Put garbage in and get garbage out.

I continue to pay their costs gladly and will remain on their platform. After all they did give current owned license holders the opportuntity to purchase the new license at a redued discounted price. Now if they waited and didnt take advantage of that then thats their fault, not Jelsofts.

[Nightwalker83]

Jelsoft has spent years rewritting 4.0 so its more W3C compliant and removed most, if not all, the tables from the html and is all CSS with divs. True the enduser can not see or understand why this is important. Mainly software developers and site owners will see the benefits. Ranging from increased performance to a broader based browser compatibility.

What? Back when I was in my first year studying web development we learnt it was bad practice to use tables for page layout and that they should only be used to display data.

[dclamp]

What? Back when I was in my first year studying web development we learnt it was bad practice to use tables for page layout and that they should only be used to display data.

he is saying that they removed the html tables and replaced it with css, which is more compatible, and is now standard.

[Nightwalker83]

he is saying that they removed the html tables and replaced it with css, which is more compatible, and is now standard.

Yeah, I know! I just couldn't believe that they used tables for layout in the first place though.

[RobDog888]

Every version before 4.0 was heavily table structured.

[JPnyc]

Well, forums are pretty much tabular data in my book.

[KiwiDexter]

Yeah, I know! I just couldn't believe that they used tables for layout in the first place though.

Most forum products did and to a certain extent still use tables were appropriate. The danger currently is overuse of ajax imho, but that's another arguement.

Rob you need to get off your vB fan high horse and actually go out and see what other products are offering. In many cases the software, graphics, and third party support sites far outweigh the vB world in scope and share product offerings.

Jelsoft's decision to reprice a new release hasn't been supported by the rank and file, as witness by the drop off in posting rates at vb.com and the increase at competing sites. Those people with smirks on their faces are third party resellers getting a windfall over recent months btw from ex vB sites switching to their products.

Any Industry has constraints on what it can do with pricing strategies, clearly Jelsoft missed that little truism. As stated somewhere above this really did damage to our medium range planning in 2010 which involved heavy roll out into the vB world.

A couple of the smf and phpbb support guys I talk to also are reporting a heavy increase in tickets for vB conversion to their products. The trick as they see it is to retain the new customers via superior service. Interesting times ahead.

[Nightwalker83]

Most forum products did and to a certain extent still use tables were appropriate. The danger currently is overuse of ajax imho, but that's another arguement.

Yeah, I look at the source code for this forum (version 3.8.1) and it uses the tables which, make a mess of the code. I also noticed this version has the styles in the same page as the html code, which is not a very good programming practice.

[RobDog888]

Yeah, I look at the source code for this forum (version 3.8.1) and it uses the tables which, make a mess of the code. I also noticed this version has the styles in the same page as the html code, which is not a very good programming practice.

Storing the css in a separate file is an option and needs a supporting directory. Obviously this site is not utilizing it. option: "Store CSS Stylesheets as Files?"

[RobDog888]

Most forum products did and to a certain extent still use tables were appropriate. The danger currently is overuse of ajax imho, but that's another arguement.

Rob you need to get off your vB fan high horse and actually go out and see what other products are offering. In many cases the software, graphics, and third party support sites far outweigh the vB world in scope and share product offerings.

Jelsoft's decision to reprice a new release hasn't been supported by the rank and file, as witness by the drop off in posting rates at vb.com and the increase at competing sites. Those people with smirks on their faces are third party resellers getting a windfall over recent months btw from ex vB sites switching to their products.

Any Industry has constraints on what it can do with pricing strategies, clearly Jelsoft missed that little truism. As stated somewhere above this really did damage to our medium range planning in 2010 which involved heavy roll out into the vB world.

A couple of the smf and phpbb support guys I talk to also are reporting a heavy increase in tickets for vB conversion to their products. The trick as they see it is to retain the new customers via superior service. Interesting times ahead.

Without getting even farther off topic, we all have our opinions and you are entitled to yours as well as me. Im a happy vB owner and user.

Lets get this back on topic which was about getting the custom feature which probably has been answered

[Nightwalker83]

Storing the css in a separate file is an option and needs a supporting directory. Obviously this site is not utilizing it. option: "Store CSS Stylesheets as Files?"

I wonder why though? It means that every page would have the almost exact same css code in it making the size of the page bigger.

[RobDog888]

Who knows. If we had big performance issues Im sure it would be one area that they may look into.

[JuggaloBrotha]

I wonder why though? It means that every page would have the almost exact same css code in it making the size of the page bigger.

But if all 45 pages reference that same style sheet(s) and you need to make a change to all 45 of them....

[KiwiDexter]

But if all 45 pages reference that same style sheet(s) and you need to make a change to all 45 of them....

While agreeing with Rob that we are getting well off topic here, in vB's defense they have a skin/template/whatever thing going down, just like all heavy duty forum products, that allows rapid change of look and feel, ergo you don't need to change 45 pages just change your template. Like most forum products it has a drop down skin selector for those sites running multiple looks.

[Nightwalker83]

But if all 45 pages reference that same style sheet(s) and you need to make a change to all 45 of them....

However, you could put the individual layout for each page in there as well so you only need to reproduce the general style once and then have the individual style settings for the pages as well.

[RobDog888]

But if all 45 pages reference that same style sheet(s) and you need to make a change to all 45 of them....

It uses a single style sheet. When the page is loaded it injects the css into the stream. If the option is set to use css file then it should use an includes statement

[RobDog888]

Posts split off to a new thread for this topic

Original thread - http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=607056

[KiwiDexter]

Should add here when IPS (invision) went commercial they had a huge amount of people spitting the dummy as well, unfort at the time some of the top coders and graphics people. So Jelsoft isn't alone in totally missing the market response.

[gmiller]

Jelsoft's vBulletin is the #1 forum software. but they charge $285 for one year subscription. They provide Search engine friendly urls and many more thing.

[KiwiDexter]

Jelsoft's vBulletin is the #1 forum software. but they charge $285 for one year subscription. They provide Search engine friendly urls and many more thing.

And how exactly do you determine they are #1? Stop throwing stupid comments out there that have no support beyond what fanbois are claiming.

Most if not all the features held up as being vB positives are included if not surpassed in other brands of forum software.

Before blindly repeating what other people are saying do some research to support your arguement. You will find IPS et al have caught up to and passed vBulletin in terms of feature sets.

[Nightwalker83]

And how exactly do you determine they are #1? Stop throwing stupid comments out there that have no support beyond what fanbois are claiming.

Ask Rob he said it in the 3rd post of this thread.

[KiwiDexter]

Ask Rob he said it in the 3rd post of this thread.

Rob is wrong on both accounts.

1. Define the length of a piece of string, if you go to any of the forum product websites you will have fanbois calling their product the best.

2. Check the number of people who have moved from vB to other offerings through the latest price change (we have picked up 20 or more new customers due to directly this), ergo there is somehting that can drive people away from vB ... like any other software.

If people are going to make claims about vBulletin, back them up rather than repeating what other ill informed people have said on various vB fan sites. Simple really.

[Nightwalker83]

Well, every person is bound to have his/her own opinion on the software they use and have good/bad the alternatives are.

[kfcSmitty]

Rob is wrong on both accounts.

1. Define the length of a piece of string, if you go to any of the forum product websites you will have fanbois calling their product the best.

2. Check the number of people who have moved from vB to other offerings through the latest price change (we have picked up 20 or more new customers due to directly this), ergo there is somehting that can drive people away from vB ... like any other software.

If people are going to make claims about vBulletin, back them up rather than repeating what other ill informed people have said on various vB fan sites. Simple really.

Judging by bigboards (http://rankings.big-boards.com/?sort...=vBulletin,all) vB is still the number one by far, with more than triple the listings over Invision.

And also looking at the comparison here (http://www.forum-software.org/forum-...d-vs-vbulletin) vBulletin comes out on top simply because there are 14 votes vs 84 votes.

I'm sure IPB's score will fall when it gets as large of a userbase as vB has. Also, looking at the reviews, the score has basically dropped because of complaints about the new changes they made with the license.