Former vBulletin lead developer Kier Darby to develop new forum software?

[Bram]

So far i am impressed, really impressed. XenForo is what vb 4 should have been in the first place? At least it looks like it. It loads fast, layout is easy and understandable for users. The moment vBSEO decides to develop an advanced XenSEO system for it I am sold

Exciting times !!!

[zshadow]

A blog ? Not available. Profile fields? I did not see so much in this area.

Currently, it's nothing IB or IPB should worry about at all.

Well I was purposely not factoring in the blog or CMS. Those are add-ons that most do not even use. I think the vast majority is only interested in a solid forum product. I bought the entire vB 4 suite only because it was offered at a lower price during presale, as many did.

Custom profile fields may be there. Like I said, we haven't seen the backend yet.

[AlexanderT]

Currently, it's nothing IB or IPB should worry about at all.

And sure they don't. Is there anything or has there ever been anything they have to worry about? IB sure doesn't show any worry.

[ThorstenA]

Not sure how you can say this as we haven't seen the backend yet. From a client-side perspective XF includes many of the same features vB and IPB offer. No doubt there's a lot of fine tuning that needs to be done but in some respects it is a step ahead.

A blog ? Not available. Profile fields? I did not see so much in this area.

Currently, it's nothing IB or IPB should worry about at all.

[zshadow]

Xenforo is no where near vb or ipb.

Not sure how you can say this as we haven't seen the backend yet. From a client-side perspective XF includes many of the same features vB and IPB offer. No doubt there's a lot of fine tuning that needs to be done but in some respects it is a step ahead.

[MRGTB]

The number of members online here now compared to before on average, has dropped hugely. I remember the days when it was common place to see a few hundred members online here.

I noticed a while back that active members online here now has dropped off significantly.

[is_it_me]

Well whatever happens it's going to be interesting.

Talking of interesting, although there's 10x the number of guests here, there's currently 76 members online over there compared to 61 here.

[Alfa1]

And now John's a millionaire with the sale of vBulletin to IB as a result. Amazing stuff, from rags to riches. All because UBB didn't suit his forum needs anymore. Wow!

How many vbulletin admins now know that vbulletin does not suit their forum needs anymore at this time? Competition is good. IMHO there is a huge hole in the forum software market. It seems pretty clear that IB is not going anywhere near it. IPB seems to be heading in the right direction. Kier & Mike might. I hope we see more companies stepping up.

[Gladius]

That does sound a lot like the old mentality many UBB users and UBB management had when vBulletin first came out...

10 years back things were much simpler. So was forum software. As I started with UBB 10 years back, I know all about what is and what isn't comparable. What's missing from your equation is 10 years of continuous forum and extended related product development. Any half-decent coder can put together a basic forum in no time. But today both vB and IPB are lightyears beyond the basic forum features alone.

[MRGTB]

As someone who was there during those days I can tell you that this is nothing like it. There was nobody posting anything negative about John because UBB disallowed any discussion about it.

John was not a UBB dev. John did not quit UBB. John was just a guy who ran a large UBB forum and UBB didn't fit his needs any longer. UBB had long said they would never add mysql support which everyone wanted. John created vbulletin. The development process and feature requests of vbulletin were discussed at EZ Board on a temp forum John setup

And now John's a millionaire with the sale of vBulletin to IB as a result. Amazing stuff, from rags to riches. All because UBB didn't suit his forum needs anymore. Wow!

[ThorstenA]

AlexanderT, I agree with you that a good product is important. Certainly, vbulletin 3 is a great product!

Apart from that, the communication from the old team was not so much better, than it is now. I do not speak about the time frame from the end of last year when we were told to install vbulletin 4.0.0.

As Adrian seems to be the product manager now, he has the power to have people do something they do not like, but he likes to do so (well, that's "power"). I hope he uses his job to do that.

[AWS]

That does sound a lot like the old mentality many UBB users and UBB management had when vBulletin first came out...

As someone who was there during those days I can tell you that this is nothing like it. There was nobody posting anything negative about John because UBB disallowed any discussion about it.

John was not a UBB dev. John did not quit UBB. John was just a guy who ran a large UBB forum and UBB didn't fit his needs any longer. UBB had long said they would never add mysql support which everyone wanted. John created vbulletin. The development process and feature requests of vbulletin were discussed at EZ Board on a temp forum John setup.

Just to be clear vbulletin on the first release was on par with UBB as far as feature set goes and in fact due to mysql backend was a step ahead.. Xenforo is no where near vb or ipb.

[AlexanderT]

Communication was nearly non-existent with the exception of the use of the announcement forum. You can search up Kiers posts here if you like to do so. That will tell you the communication before IB. If you had luck there were sometimes mystic shortened sentences ending with three dots which could mean anything, and Kier is doing the same now on xf forums. However not so often. It's his style. If you like that, fine.

Whatever you mean by "nearly non-existent", I can say with absolute confidence that I was never let down by the vB product, meaning my expectations were met, meaning someone must have been listening. Perhaps it is just my imagination, but never before has it been necessary for so many old-time users to protest, to get in constant quarrels, to feel unheard, yes, even cheated, as it has been since the emergence of vB4. Sorry if you don't like Kier not replying to you in long-winded essays, but in case you have forgotten, this man's job is to program. Question: How much of a chance did we have to talk to the programmers of vB4? Talk and discuss?

Certainly lots of people were thinking of vbulletin 4 as a software that would bring vbulletin 3 "to a new level". And why? Because we were told exactly that from IB. We were told 4.0 is "gold". Whoever took them by their word and upgraded, their communities suffered. A lot of trust went downhill.

False communication from IB. My point exactly.

You can compare both communication, and then the old one may come up as your favorite. The communication has improved since Adrian is on board and I hope it stays that way.

If you mean communication as in someone is here to chat with us and talk with us without any promising results, then I agree with you, Adrian did as much as he could do. But that's not what I mean by communication. At the end I only care about the product, and if they could deliver a promising product, it'd be a way of communicating to us, "yes, we've heard you and we've fixed this mess."

[ThorstenA]

Have you ever wondered _why_ a majority of people is so picky with vb4, while at the same time perhaps overly enthusiastic about XF? A lot has to do with communication, and if you follow how the XF team is communicating with their prospective clients, and compare this to how IB is communicating with us (or not), then it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone why things are the way they are now. And by communication I mean talk _and_ listen.

Not so sure I agree with you on that one. Communication was never a strong point here before IB purchased vBulletin.

Communication was nearly non-existent with the exception of the use of the announcement forum. You can search up Kiers posts here if you like to do so. That will tell you the communication before IB. If you had luck there were sometimes mystic shortened sentences ending with three dots which could mean anything, and Kier is doing the same now on xf forums. However not so often. It's his style. If you like that, fine.

Certainly lots of people were thinking of vbulletin 4 as a software that would bring vbulletin 3 "to a new level". And why? Because we were told exactly that from IB. We were told 4.0 is "gold". Whoever took them by their word and upgraded, their communities suffered. A lot of trust went downhill.

You can compare both communication, and then the old one may come up as your favorite. The communication has improved since Adrian is on board and I hope it stays that way.

[MRGTB]

Have you ever wondered _why_ a majority of people is so picky with vb4, while at the same time perhaps overly enthusiastic about XF? A lot has to do with communication, and if you follow how the XF team is communicating with their prospective clients, and compare this to how IB is communicating with us (or not), then it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone why things are the way they are now. And by communication I mean talk _and_ listen.

Not so sure I agree with you on that one. Communication was never a strong point here before IB purchased vBulletin. I'd say people where picky about "Quality and attention to Detail", and hence why vBulletin was a big hit. And seeing as Kier and co was responsible for that.

Hence why people are showing a lot of interest in XF now, because they think it will have that also.

Communication here now, is no better than it was before I think.