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I know that in theory stuff for vBulletin gets developed because people vote for it. When I started with vB3.x what I wanted (and what I'd still really like) is contribution via email. I've never felt that it was rocket science either because there are lots of websites where you can contribute via email; even with the vBulletin ticket support system which will accept contributions via email.
Our view has always been that if we have interesting content people will keep coming back and the more easy it is for users to contribute, the more likely they are to engage, the better our content will be and that would open up other opportunities to generate revenue, e.g. sponsorship or subscription business models. However I understand why many people wouldn't vote for that because lots of people who've run websites historically have had a business model that depended upon advertising measured via page impressions and click throughs. So I get why some would not vote for this...
Rather than continue whining about this we decided to try and make the most of vB4. So we tried all of its features....CMS, blogs, forum and groups. We never had much success with the groups and from what I understand in vB5 the groups are essentially the same as forums. We have had some success with CMS, calendar and blogs.
Previous debates on this site have said that not many people use the calendar, that's why nobody bothered to put it back in vB5 yet. That's a huge disappointment to us as its one of the things that since the introduction of the Navbar feature in vB4 we've found easy to keep populated because the Navbar feature made it easy for us to publicise it.
And here's what I don't understand. Historically software like vBulletin came out of the IT community who were used to working from desktop locations and networking and interacting via computer. But most people who are interested in something aren't just sitting behind a desktop; they interact around events; in business that might be a congress; for a hobby it could be an exhibition. It might be a sports event. Either way they are hooking up with other like-minded people around events. Increasingly with one of the hobbies I pursue the events are showcased on Facebook. You get invited on Facebook, people post about the event on Facebook, they might Tweet about it at the same time and afterwards they might post something about how great it was. For some of the business events I go to they send out pre-reading, after the event there might be proceedings...all content.
Google isn't as popular for social networking as Facebook but people still network around events on Google. Google calendar is also extremely popular and Joe has produced a work-around showing how google calendar can be integrated into vB5 using the Site Builder tool. That's fine, but vbusers can't log in to one portal, post their events and have them appear under one of the channels as they do in vB4. Now you could still post your event somewhere else and comment on it on a vBulletin site but it's not as easy and you are losing content. I'd rather be able to invite people to the event, write about it, blog about it, and maybe share some of the event content in the articles system, or write press releases about it in the articles system. But I can't do it because it's not presently a feature of vB5.
As people move away from desktops to mobiles they are less tied to desktops and desks than they were and increasingly they use mobiles to tweet about stuff or post their pictures to Facebook. That's often because they are out and about at events....events that are easier to publicise if they appear on calendars.
So you would have thought that with an increasingly connected and increasingly mobile global audience that connects directly through physical events there would be a use for a good events calendar in vB5. You can see the evidence for that on Facebook...you can see people tweeting about the events they are at on Twitter...and Google calendar is not exactly unpopular.
Having had a look at vB5, being realistic about the fact there are still a few bugs in it, but if you know where they are then you can still use it, I don't think that for us it's a bad product; except that is for the absence of the calendar, which is a pain.
So is it really just me that wants this? And have Facebook, Twitter and Google got it all wrong?
Our view has always been that if we have interesting content people will keep coming back and the more easy it is for users to contribute, the more likely they are to engage, the better our content will be and that would open up other opportunities to generate revenue, e.g. sponsorship or subscription business models. However I understand why many people wouldn't vote for that because lots of people who've run websites historically have had a business model that depended upon advertising measured via page impressions and click throughs. So I get why some would not vote for this...Rather than continue whining about this we decided to try and make the most of vB4. So we tried all of its features....CMS, blogs, forum and groups. We never had much success with the groups and from what I understand in vB5 the groups are essentially the same as forums. We have had some success with CMS, calendar and blogs.
Previous debates on this site have said that not many people use the calendar, that's why nobody bothered to put it back in vB5 yet. That's a huge disappointment to us as its one of the things that since the introduction of the Navbar feature in vB4 we've found easy to keep populated because the Navbar feature made it easy for us to publicise it.
And here's what I don't understand. Historically software like vBulletin came out of the IT community who were used to working from desktop locations and networking and interacting via computer. But most people who are interested in something aren't just sitting behind a desktop; they interact around events; in business that might be a congress; for a hobby it could be an exhibition. It might be a sports event. Either way they are hooking up with other like-minded people around events. Increasingly with one of the hobbies I pursue the events are showcased on Facebook. You get invited on Facebook, people post about the event on Facebook, they might Tweet about it at the same time and afterwards they might post something about how great it was. For some of the business events I go to they send out pre-reading, after the event there might be proceedings...all content.
Google isn't as popular for social networking as Facebook but people still network around events on Google. Google calendar is also extremely popular and Joe has produced a work-around showing how google calendar can be integrated into vB5 using the Site Builder tool. That's fine, but vbusers can't log in to one portal, post their events and have them appear under one of the channels as they do in vB4. Now you could still post your event somewhere else and comment on it on a vBulletin site but it's not as easy and you are losing content. I'd rather be able to invite people to the event, write about it, blog about it, and maybe share some of the event content in the articles system, or write press releases about it in the articles system. But I can't do it because it's not presently a feature of vB5.
As people move away from desktops to mobiles they are less tied to desktops and desks than they were and increasingly they use mobiles to tweet about stuff or post their pictures to Facebook. That's often because they are out and about at events....events that are easier to publicise if they appear on calendars.
So you would have thought that with an increasingly connected and increasingly mobile global audience that connects directly through physical events there would be a use for a good events calendar in vB5. You can see the evidence for that on Facebook...you can see people tweeting about the events they are at on Twitter...and Google calendar is not exactly unpopular.
Having had a look at vB5, being realistic about the fact there are still a few bugs in it, but if you know where they are then you can still use it, I don't think that for us it's a bad product; except that is for the absence of the calendar, which is a pain.So is it really just me that wants this? And have Facebook, Twitter and Google got it all wrong?
...maybe I'm the only person on vBulletin.com who occasionally goes places.....
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