Twas the day before Christmas
and all through the net
vBulletin admins banging their heads
Installation’s has started for vBulletin 4
In hopes that it will succeed, once and for all
Once installed, the admins sighed in relief
and begins to tinker, then much to his disbelief
not one, but hundreds of bugs did appear
and it’s wrecked their Christmas cheer.
Then with a fury he curses at once
he runs for support just to fix the matter
To his surprise he’s not alone
that this bug was found long, long ago.
The poem’s a bit overly dramatic, but it’s rather fitting based on the struggles Chronos and I have seen this week. It’s been four days since vBulletin 4 came out, and it appears it has been a miserable four days. Bugs galor, customers crying foul, requirements not met (which is the biggest concern as any excellent systems developer would know you must achieve a good percentage of them). And the there’s the occasional cheer, and celebration saying vBulletin 4 is rather golden.
vBulletin is a marvelous product. vBulletin 4, however, leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. There are far too many mis-use cases that were not accounted for, thus breaking the entire information system.
I will be the first to say that we as customers should have held Internet Brands accountable. Clearly Internet Brands dropped the ball, and now we’re dealing with an incomplete, half-baked, second rate, forum and CMS.
I’m going to pose the question to everyone out there: What do you think of vBulletin 4? The blunt, brutal hard truth. Is it worth the price, time, and energy in buying, installing, and/or upgrading to? What would you tell to future investors? Or what would you tell to future customers?
Comment away.
You can see my thoughts on vb4 at my blog. As a long time vbulletin user I have lost all trust in the company.
Thank you AWS. For those looking for those thoughts, here’s the link
http://bobschwarz.com/vbulletin-4-gold-review-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly
I lost my trust the day day banned me from the forums for asking why the customers like me who paid for blogs and tracker were not being answered. after that it wasnt down hill but rather a sharp drop into a bottomless pit for IB/VB as far as im concerned.
Personally, I think vBulletin 4 is the ground work for something revolutionary, but the gold version recently released is far from satisfactory in any respects. Too many bugs. Too many browser incompatibilities. Less features than the original 3.8 in some respects, which is just plain bad. It has potential, and the blogs and forum are quite good, but the CMS is just poor right now.
Honestly it’s a flop. I don’t take software as being ground work for future releases, or as a building block, it is what it is right now since they slapped the vB 4 Gold Tag on it, and in many aspects it’s a complete failure (more failures, than successes).
The styling is one of the few positive changes, not the default style though (by any stretch of the imagination), but the CSS driven layout thats easily customizable and easier to obtain advanced looks and stlying than in previous vBulletin versions. However thats as far as it goes as positives for the styling.
The variables they’re using and how it’s coded is hugely inefficent. The graphics are like something that was designed in a matter of minutes and exported on the lowest possible settings, (While still not being properly optimized).
The CSS and HTML isn’t valid, and they don’t care, there is virtually no support for older browsers other than “We’re working on it” which by the time they’ve figured it out will probably warrant another point release.
The SEO (if you can call it that) is a travesty to even get that label. The friendly URL’s are hideous, and while they maybe human readable, they are far, far from being good at search engine optimized.
They’ve released 4.0, and since then over a thousand new bugs have been introduced, and more continue getting reported daily. Many of which they have no fix for, or are labeling for a maintainence release like 4.0.1 or 4.0.2, one of those probably should have been the gold version.
Honestly, vB 4 is that train wreck a former developer mentioned. The company behind vBulletin isn’t there for any other reason than to milk the cash cow, and trust me soon as they milk it dry they’ll leave thousands out in the cold. Just look at how they’ve ran the majority of their communities into the ground, many of which would be considered to be inactive.
This is a company that has pulled up the drawbridge and retreated behind the ramparts as more and more customer’s voice concerns. Their view is that vb3 licence holders do not exist; there is no avenue for legal remedy in the UK as Wayne told me the other day, no office, nothing. They state that be buying vb4 at the discount price you have in effect nulled your vb3 licence, which is absolute nonsense. An owned licence is just that, you can run one instance for life; vb4 is a separate product and licence. It is obvious from Wayne and Steve that much of the so called rules are being made up on the hoof.
[quote]
Honestly it’s a flop. I don’t take software as being ground work for future releases, or as a building block, it is what it is right now since they slapped the vB 4 Gold Tag on it, and in many aspects it’s a complete failure (more failures, than successes).
The styling is one of the few positive changes, not the default style though (by any stretch of the imagination), but the CSS driven layout thats easily customizable and easier to obtain advanced looks and stlying than in previous vBulletin versions. However thats as far as it goes as positives for the styling.
The variables they’re using and how it’s coded is hugely inefficent. The graphics are like something that was designed in a matter of minutes and exported on the lowest possible settings, (While still not being properly optimized).
The CSS and HTML isn’t valid, and they don’t care, there is virtually no support for older browsers other than “We’re working on it” which by the time they’ve figured it out will probably warrant another point release.
The SEO (if you can call it that) is a travesty to even get that label. The friendly URL’s are hideous, and while they maybe human readable, they are far, far from being good at search engine optimized.
They’ve released 4.0, and since then over a thousand new bugs have been introduced, and more continue getting reported daily. Many of which they have no fix for, or are labeling for a maintainence release like 4.0.1 or 4.0.2, one of those probably should have been the gold version.
Honestly, vB 4 is that train wreck a former developer mentioned. The company behind vBulletin isn’t there for any other reason than to milk the cash cow, and trust me soon as they milk it dry they’ll leave thousands out in the cold. Just look at how they’ve ran the majority of their communities into the ground, many of which would be considered to be inactive.
[/quote]
Very well said indeed and I agree with everything you’ve said. I do think looking back at how I used to feel about vBulletin before, that it’s very sad really how much both mine and other peoples views have now changed about them.
A day never used to go by that I wasn’t on the site posted stuff, keeping involved with what was happening there. Now I hadrly ever go there at all, and have lost total interest in the forum, software, and company.
All a bit sad to be honest. But what you said above sums-up my same feelings.