vB5 license agreement?

[Wayne Luke]

Closed at the request of the thread starter.

[slinky]

It seems the largest complaint being lodged in this thread is that vBulletin customers are being forced to "suffer" with version 4.2 until version 5 Gold is ready, and that is no complaint.

Of course it is. If you (a) develop engaging integrated features with your forum, and (b) plan to create many indexed URLs, sticking with version 4.2 until VB 5 Gold is actually ready and usable is a huge issue. I'd rather not deal with the reindexing in a year and I'd rather just get it over and done with now. And until VB 5 is even stable, I can't develop anything compelling for VB 4 which would be wasted efforts and that's a substantial time period.

There are always those who leave vBulletin for another product for varying reasons. Many have returned. The reason is because, for all the issues inherent to software development, vBulletin remains hands down the most functional product of its kind. Nothing else comes close. No one is being held under duress to purchase vBulletin 5. It's an option. There is a demo site. There are fora upon fora detailing what the product is and what the product is not. There are YouTube videos. There is voluminous customer feedback. This is anything but a case of misrepresentation. Caveat emptor.

Misrepresentation is pretending as if VB 5 is in any way comparable to or an extension of VB 4 as has been done on the home page.

At the core of vBulletin is the forum software. This software powers many of the largest social sites on the web. Over 100,000 sites are built on vBulletin, including:

This is marketing done at it's very best. It's not entirely false but it's certainly greatly misleading. To a person who doesn't know much about vBulletin, they are led to believe that at the heart of VB 5 is the core that powers 100,000 websites. But that isn't true. VB 5 is a whole new product with some pieces of VB 3-4 which really aren't what "powers" the core of vBulletin. It has a whole new database schema - no templates, no plugins and we've already seen the usability problems. Most people will never pick that up with a few YouTube videos. They will only discover that post-purchase.

In the distant past, some forum owners returned here because the VB 3 engine and the plugins that were endless, incredibly useful and free. The admin capabilities were fantastic. Even with the VB 4 nightmare, many of the VB 3 plugins were modifiable and updated. But people left in large numbers to go to XenForo. The "what's to come with vBulletin 4" never came. And if you go to the IPB forums or even try to discuss development, they are booked. I've been using IPB for a while on a test drive now because of what happened here and to say that "nothing else comes close" to VB is a misrepresentation. I'd say that now it's the other way around. I think it was a big mistake to now have two versions of vBulletin that are middling and one already outdated and not PHP 5.4 supported.

[In Omnibus]

I was using forums/bulletin board systems before the Internet came along.

Which has nothing whatsoever to do with vBulletin specifically or web-based message board fora generally. Nor, for that matter, does Agora.

It seems the largest complaint being lodged in this thread is that vBulletin customers are being forced to "suffer" with version 4.2 until version 5 Gold is ready, and that is no complaint.

As you stated, there are options, if all one cares about is having forum capabilities. phpbb is free. Personally, if I cared to work with an inferior product I'd take the freeware over the other paid options.

There are always those who leave vBulletin for another product for varying reasons. Many have returned. The reason is because, for all the issues inherent to software development, vBulletin remains hands down the most functional product of its kind. Nothing else comes close. No one is being held under duress to purchase vBulletin 5. It's an option. There is a demo site. There are fora upon fora detailing what the product is and what the product is not. There are YouTube videos. There is voluminous customer feedback. This is anything but a case of misrepresentation. Caveat emptor.

[acwatts]

What kind of forum did you run prior to the advent of dial-up internet in the 1980's? Inquiring minds want to know.

I was using forums/bulletin board systems before the Internet came along.

[AlexanderT]

What kind of forum did you run prior to the advent of dial-up internet in the 1980's? Inquiring minds want to know.

Since you asked.

[In Omnibus]

I have run a forum for almost a century, and do you know how many times I had to merge two users? Not a single time.

What kind of forum did you run prior to the advent of dial-up internet in the 1980's? Inquiring minds want to know.

[slinky]

Regardless of what administrative features XF may or may not have, there is far more usability on the front end that one can present the appearance of a finished product that works well to visitors. You can have thousands of administrative tasks and the ability to merge 2, 3 or 10 users but they are worthless if you don't have users and posts to administrate. It will be a long while until anyone should even consider planning plugins or templates for VB 5 as well.

[Deimos]

VB5, in it's current state, doesn't come near anything, well except perhaps Facebook Alpha 0.1

[Ramsesx]

Sure, it has other nice features vB is lacking like the alert system. Even vB5's notification doesn't come near to it.

[AlexanderT]

I've used it 10 or more times. So, everybody has different needs and it makes sense to have some features in a forum software.

Absolutely agreed. And XF is far from being complete in comparison to, let's say, vB 3.8x. Just saying that the possibility to merge users is probably not the benchmark for most forum admins.

[Ramsesx]

I have run a forum for almost a century, and do you know how many times I had to merge two users? Not a single time.

I've used it 10 or more times. So, everybody has different needs and it makes sense to have some features in a forum software.

[slinky]

Xenforo lacks the features that even vBulletin 5 has.
Spam management is awful on XenForo (just look at their forums)

You can't stop people from registering and posting junk. Works fine for me with general spam management and my vBulletin forum has similar issues with dumping in creative ways.

User management is terrible (can you merge 2 users on XF?)

I don't recall using this feature more than a handful of times in more than 10 years with vBulletin.

Really, I don't think it's fair to say that vB5 is behind XF when clearly it's not. It might not perform as fast right now due to being in early beta stages, but wait for the final version before passing judgement on performance.

It's way behind. Faster isn't even the word. Plus there are tons of templates, plugins, use, etc. I'll show you numerous Xenforo sites that are mature and rather remarkable, spam free and incredibly impressive. VB 5 is still a beta, I grant you, but it is far, far behind. Don't kid yourself. How many bugs does it have?

Now even if you don't want to buy XenForo you go to IPB, which is light years ahead of vBulletin. Thanks to what was done to me here I took an even better look at IPB and decided to also invest there. For $150 (and there are discounts) you can run a super nice forum that even standing still will rival anything they can do here for at least a year and probably more. And that's the bottom line. Why would I pay $210 to give up an existing license for VB 5? I can always throw the VB 4 licenses on some experiment domains and use $150 to buy IPB and have $60 more to spend on something else.

I think pricing here was ridiculous. You already have early adopters complaining and understandably as they realize that their discount was just a cheap ploy of pressure sales like the vBulletin 4 presale was without the guarantee. They will probably go ballistic if they see sub $200 price points going forward as early adopters who foolishly spent months of their life putting bugs in the Jira for no compensation at all. Why would you agree to buy a product and donate all this time for free?

Anyways - even if I didn't factor in the company's foolish actions regarding what it did with my other licenses, the pricing here just makes no sense if you're a current customer. As I said, all sites get upgraded to IPB or XF for less money than this upgrade and my existing VB licenses go on fledgling sites as extras. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts if you can see another way that makes sense.

[AlexanderT]

User management is terrible (can you merge 2 users on XF?)

I have run a forum for almost a century, and do you know how many times I had to merge two users? Not a single time.

[acwatts]

Really, I don't think it's fair to say that vB5 is behind XF when clearly it's not.

Are you having a laugh. VB5 is not even usable yet, I cant even log in to the demo, what a great way to advertise a new product, software that does not work and runs like a dog with no legs.


Welcome to VB5 you have been Disconnected.

[OhioDave]

Xenforo lacks the features that even vBulletin 5 has.

Spam management is awful on XenForo (just look at their forums)
User management is terrible (can you merge 2 users on XF?)

Really, I don't think it's fair to say that vB5 is behind XF when clearly it's not. It might not perform as fast right now due to being in early beta stages, but wait for the final version before passing judgement on performance.