AP Investigation: Rio’s 2016 Olympic Waters Highly Contaminated

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Last week, the Associated Press (AP) published the results of an independent investigation for both viruses and bacteria in the waters surrounding the boating and swimming areas.

The results: According to the AP, “the water is so contaminated with human feces that they risk becoming violently ill and unable to compete in the games”

In some instances, some tests show that there is “1.7 million times the level of what would be considered hazardous in a Southern California beach”. It is essentially “raw sewage”.

In fact, not one water venue was found safe for any water sports, swimming, or boating.

 

Forgive me, but President Bach, members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) – We are one year away from the 2016 Olympic Games. Where is your concern for the welfare of athletes? Do athletes need to suffer from massive illness, or even death before the IOC will act and intervene?

These latest results are screaming “move the Olympics”. Brazilian officials are not planning any alternative venues should these venues not be ready. Experts are weighing in that 99% of all athletes who swim in those waters will likely contract something if they ingest just three teaspoons of water.

We are asking for a HUGE black eye for the Olympics where politics and money trump common sense. It will be a massive, huge distraction from the Olympic games should athletes fall ill, or even, die from something that is preventable.

Even Rio Gov. Luiz Fernando Pezao has acknowledged “there’s not going to be time” to finish the cleanup of the bay ahead of the games.

Members of the IOC, it is time to make the judgement call. It is time to put the welfare, and health of athletes ahead of all else. Brazil and Rio has had their chance to be on the global stage. They’ve had more than sufficient chance to prepare for the Olympics.

Now it is time for Rio bow out.

2016 Rio Olympic Games Construction Update

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Thanks to one of our readers, they sent us a link for a construction update on the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio as of June 15, 2015. The Daily Mail, granted, while not the most popular piece of journalism out there, did take quite a few photos and videos.

rio_2016_5_pranchas_formato_a1_pagina_1

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Ideally the Olympic Village should start resembling as proposed above, however, the reality is that after looking at several of the photos and aerial footage taken by the Daily Mail, I’m astounded at how far behind they are.

Alex Riberio for Mail Online. Photo Courtesy of The Daily Mail
Alex Riberio for Mail Online. Photo Courtesy of The Daily Mail.

There are additional photos, videos and details available at The Daily Mail. Construction is in complete disarray. Several buildings are really just concrete foundation. There is a complete lack of urgency that the games are 400 days away, and nothing is completed. This is clearly becoming classic case of “over-promising and under-delivering”. It appears only three of the venues on the map are remotely complete, and that’s just externally.

Even though they have the exteriors of a few facilities complete, they still have to build out each of the stadiums internally. That means plumbing, electrical, heating, ventilation, air and cooling! We are not even factoring in other things such as seating, signage, concessions, and other arena amenities.

According to Wikipedia, there are 34 proposed sporting venues. Of which, 10 of them do not require any permanent work. 8 requires some permanent work. 9 more venues require brand new construction and there are still 7 temporary venues that need to be worked on.

The writing is on the wall, and it is clear as day that Rio is completely far behind. The situation is grave, and the 2016 Olympic Games are at risk. The budget risks are swelling to astronomical proportions, and no doubt the International Olympic Committee is wearing Rose Colored Glasses thinking and believing everything will still be delivered on time. Construction, project, and budget risks are not being managed.

If what the Daily Mail witnessed is true, the Brazilian Government is in complete disarray and disharmony, not able to work together to bring the 2016 Olympic Games to fruition in Rio.

Rio is so far behind it makes the Athens Games look competent. Can they pull off a Hail Mary like Athens? Doubtful in my opinion as Greece has full access to existing infrastructure and technical resources in the European Union that enables them to recover. Remember they barely delivered all venues on time in the July/August 2004 time frame! Literally down to a few days before the Olympic Games. The situation is completely different in Rio and they may not have the resources or existing infrastructure to accomplish what Greece did.

It is time to select and enact Plan B, International Olympic Committee. It is time to rescind the games from Rio and award it to another city.

 

A Case for Moving the 2016 Olympic Games to Los Angeles

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2016 Rio Olympic Games LogoThe 2016 Olympic Games are scheduled to begin in a little over 400 days. That is 400 days to complete venues. 400 days to build infrastructure. 400 to prepare to invite the world to the 2016 Olympic Games. The sad reality is that Rio is not ready.

In May, Reuters ran a piece on the readiness of Rio:

  • Rio has only 10% of 56 Olympic Construction, overlay and energy projects are finished. This is in contrast with 80% for the 2012 London Olympic games
  • State-run Oil Company Petrobras is embroiled in a corruption scandal, which has implicated several construction firms delivering Olympic Projects, is adding to the possibility of delays.
  • Deodoro – The second largest cluster of Olympic Venues located west of Rio where 11 sports including equestrian, BMX Biking, and kayaking will take place is completely unfinished
  • Deodoro has limited construction going on – mostly scaffolding about two stories high but nothing else.
  • Contracts have yet to be tendered to build the beach volleyball stadium on the sands of Copacabana
  • Guanabara bay – where sailing is suppose to be held – is a complete health hazard. The promises to clean the bay will not be cleaned in time.
  • Temporary venues for rugby and mountain biking have not been selected.
  • Power contracts have not been awarded yet. London awarded them in 20 months before the London games began. There are less than 14 months left before the Rio games begin.

Even Senior International Olympic Committee official John Coates commented that Rio’s readiness for the Olympics are the “worst I have experienced”

It is safe to say Rio is no where near ready, and we’re getting to a point where we’re nearing a level of incompleteness similar to Sochi.

 

The Case for Los Angeles

2024 Los Angeles Olympic Bid
2024 Los Angeles Olympic Bid

Los Angeles last held the Olympics in 1984. Despite the passage of time between 1984 and 2015, much of the venues have since has been refurbished, modernized, maintained, or replaced. Unlike the venues of the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Olympic games, they still exist and are actively being used in one capacity or another.

In fact, Los Angeles may be one of the very few cities that can adequately be ready in the compressed timeframe of a little over a year. With its recent 2024 bid, arguably, 95% of the plans of where sports should be held are complete. There are a few exceptions as some venues proposed in the 2024 plan are not remotely ready (example: Farmer’s Field)

Proposed 2016 Venues (Adapted from the 2024 Plans)

  1. LA Memorial Coliseum – (Opening Ceremonies, Closing Ceremonies, Track and Field)
  2. LA Convention Center – (Badminton, Gym – Rhythmics, Gym – Trampoline, Table Tennis)
  3. Staples Center – (Volleyball Finals – Indoor, Gymnastic Artistic)
  4. Galen Center – (Basketball)
  5. LA River – (Canoe/Kayak Slaom
  6. Uytengsu Swim Stadium – (Diving)
  7. Microsoft Theatre aka Nokia Theatre – (Fencing – Finals)
  8. Aquatics Center – (Swimming, Sync, Swimming)
  9. LA 84 Foundation Swim Stadium – (Water Polo)
  10. Walt Disney Concert Hall – (Taekwondo Finals)
  11. Shrine Auditorium – (Weightlifting)
  12. Drake Stadium – (Archery, Cycling – BMX)
  13. Pauley Pavilion – (Basketball Prelims 2)
  14. Rivieria Golf Club – (Golf)
  15. Corsair Stadium – (Field Hockey)
  16. Santa Monica Beach – (Triathlon, Volleyball – Beach)
  17. Velo Sports Center – (Cycling – Track)
  18. StubHub Track Stadium – (Field Hockey)
  19. StubHub Soccer Stadium – (Rugby, Football)
  20. StubHub Tennis Stadium – (Tennis)
  21. Long Beach Marine Stadium – (Canoe/Kayak Spring, Rowing)
  22. Walter Pyramid – (Handball)
  23. Long Beach Marina/Queen Mary – (Sailing)
  24. Long Beach Arena – (Handball)
  25. Long Beach Convention Center – (Judo, Taekwondo, Wrestling)
  26. Griffith Park – (Cycling – Mountain Bike)
  27. Hollywood Sign – (Cycling – Road)
  28. Santa Anita Park – (Equestrian)
  29. Hollywood Blvd – (Fencing)
  30. Rose Bowl Stadium – (Football Finals and Prelims)
  31. Qualcomm, AT&T, Sam Boyd Stadiums – Football Prelims 3, 4,& 5)
  32. The Forum – (Volleyball – Indoor)
  33. Fairplex Fairgrounds – (Modern Pentathlon, Shooting)
  34. Rodeo Drive – (Triathlon)

Possible other venues that could be used that was not proposed for 2024:

  • Dodgers Stadium
  • Angels Stadium of Anaheim
  • Honda Center for Basketball or Boxing
  • Anaheim Convention Center (Used in 1984 Olympics)
  • Ontario Convention Center
  • Mount San Antonio College
  • California State Polytechnic University Pomona
  • California State Dominguez Hills (Used in 1984 Olympics)
  • California State Fullerton (Used in 1984 Olympics)
  • East Los Angeles College (Used in 1984 Olympics)

Despite not having Farmer’s Field to host basketball, Los Angeles has a huge amount of additional venues capable of hosting any number of additional sporting events. All these facilities are actively being maintained and used.

If anything, the possibilities of being ready in a short amount of time is realistic. The money being invested into Rio could be invested into Los Angeles in building out mass transit for the residents of Los Angeles as a thank you for saving the games.

 

Let’s face it. Los Angeles is more ready than Rio, and it isn’t even trying. International Olympic Committee, it is time to face the reality that Rio isn’t ready. No amount of money we throw at it will have it ready in time. Let’s save face for the Olympic Games. Let’s move the games to Los Angeles.

Athlete’s health and safety are in jeopardy. The reputation of the Olympic Games are at risk. It is time to accept the fact that we need to execute Plan B, and Los Angeles may be the only real city that wants the Olympics and is ready for the 2016 Olympics.

What’s Next for Rio and us

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2016 Rio Olympic Games LogoChronos and I have been spending a lot of time, talking offline enjoying the wonders and taking in life. Since 2009, we have been authoring the disasters of Internet Brands and vBulletin. Here we are six years later, and it is safe to say things have gone from bad to worse. Needless to say, our voices fell on deaf ears at Internet Brands, and the outcome was less that spectactular (unless you count the spectactular blunder that is called vBulletin 5).

We both have been talking as of late what to do with this blog. We both agreed that walking away from it is not in the best interest as we have a unique opportunity to share our thoughts and some very blunt truths.

We are still intending to blog about vBulletin and how Internet Brands is more like “imitation brands” but we’re taking the unique opportunity to occasionally talk about other upcoming disasters.

We will be blogging in the coming weeks about multiple upcoming disasters, and one of them comes to mind: the Journey to Rio – as in the 2016 Summer Games.

Both Chronos and I are avid sports enthusiasts and we have been appalled at the fact the International Olympic Committee and the host country has been mismanaging the project. In fact, both of us are once again in a similar spot to where we were six years ago: Frustrated at a management team who is completely disconnected from what is happening at the front lines. Both Chronos and I felt it’s time to voice our opinion as there is something more at stake.

 

The issues and problems facing the Rio games are so bleak, my heart becomes heavy thinking about all the friends and families of athletes to have to endure and suffer through the 2016 Games due to potentially inadequate or shoddyly, and hasily constructed facilities.

In fact, the official word from the International Olympic Committee is that there is no backup for Rio. In fact, the only solution they have at this point in time is to throw more money at the Rio games in an effort to get things complete by 2016.

The reality is that money can fix many things, but it won’t fix cultural issues and continously gross mismanagement. Sochi was a clear indicator for that, and it was a massive spectacle as athletes that the 2014 Winter Games started trending on social media as #sochifails.

As we head into the 2016 Summer Games, it appears the sheer volume of #riofail are growing, and tensions are rising. The safety and welfare of atheletes, coaches, and guests from around the world are in jeopardy. The reputation of the Olympic Games are at stake.

Hard Decisions need to be made. These are no ordinary times. It is time for extraordinary actions and steps to be taken. Politics be damned, there is more at stake than simply the pride of a country. It is the pride of the entire world.
It is time for the International Olympic Committee to recind the games from Rio and move it to a city that has facilities that can support the summer games. Move the games to Beijing. Move it to Atlanta. Move it to Sydney. Move it to Los Angeles.

Either way, a disaster beyond our imagination is growing in Rio.

vBulletin 5 – Years Later…

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Chronos and I have been busy with real life. Sadly, we both gave up on vBulletin. The once iconic forum platform is now a smoldering piece of dung. No one loves being told their baby is ugly. Sadly, ugly is putting it politely.

We cracked open the mailbag curious to see what’s left of the ashes, and we found no phoenix. Only more scathing letters. We’re adding another one from Will this week.

 

Sharing my Story
By Will D.

So nearly a decade ago I logged into my first vBulletin and helped a friend run a forum.  It was slick, it did it’s job exceptionally well.  Around the time vBulletin 4 came out I purchased and configured my first vBulletin forum and ran it for several years without problems.  Regular updates went smoothly, bugs were few and far between and in general the product was simply excellent. I’ve since moved in from that community and shut it down, but it was an exceptional experience.

When I started seeing vBulletin 5 Connect advertisements hit my mailbox I checked out the Beta and saw what I expected to be a huge leap forward in the CMS/Forum software.  Recently I found myself needing to setup a CMS and Forums for a non profit and wanted something I was relatively familiar with and would be rock solid.  Without a thought I advised we purchase vBulletin 5 Connect assuming it would be vBulletin 4’s feature set improved/expanded…
The product having been released for nearly a year, with the current version of 5.0.5, I assumed most of the early adoption pains would be absent, and that I’d be dealing with a rock solid product that was going to make my life easy.
Imagine my disappointment when I find out that two key features, Calendar and CMS were simply left out of the release.  The CMS was expected for 5.1.0… which had a very loose ETA of ‘End of 2013’.  The Calendar isn’t even planned at this point!  I was stunned.
I took a good look and realized I could limp along with their existing features until 5.1.0 released and went ahead setting up my forums.  What I didn’t know is the number of ‘bugs’ I’d run into that would qualify as ‘major’ in my mind that vBulletin support simply accepts as facts of life.
Images have no configuration options in posts… they are supposed to, but it will be fixed in 5.1.1… maybe…
Insert a table and it ignores settings you configure in the UI… it looks fine in the WYSIWYG editor and when you click post goes to the most basic table without any options.  vBulletin support’s answer to this?  They simply say it’s the way CSS and HTML interact and I need to advise users to use the advanced tab and apply formatting that way… yea, good answer.
At present my forums just went live with a small community of users and I’m frankly looking for an alternative that will give me CMS options with a solid Forum backend… once I find this I’ll be buying it out of my own pocket and migrating away from vBulletin forever.

 

vBulletin: Exploits, Bugs, Exposed Customer Data – We’ve got it all!

Chronos 1 Comment

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” ― Albert Einstein

Perhaps Internet Brands (IB) could learn a thing or two from this quote by Einstein. In their eyes, things were looking up for them. For a period of nearly three years, IB was in the news for the lawsuit they filed against XenForo. This lawsuit happened to coincide first public beta release of XenForo as IB announced the lawsuit one day prior to XF beta launch and claimed it was a mere coincidence. IB was also accused of bullying XF and its developers Kier Darby and Mike Sullivan so they received some negative attention for it. After the lawsuit was finally settled in February 2013, IB was hopeful to put this behind them and move on, and was hoping people would essentially forget about the previous events that took place in fear that it would continue to “tarnish” their reputation.  In the mean time in the private license holder forum at vBulletin we have vB staff members openly bashing customers, disrespecting them and showing absolutely no professionalism at all towards customers.

The reality is, the great reputation vB once had only came due to the strong community and quality development of the old team before Jelsoft was acquired by Internet Brands, and this is when things started to go downhill (in 2009 Kier Darby, Mike Sullivan and Scott MacVicar all left vB/IB)

IB was merely riding the wave of the old development team and the older quality versions of vB and as expected once the original core team left, the quality of the product suffered as a result: This brings us to vBulletin 5 Connect. Not only was vB5 released as “gold” lacking many basic features that vB4 had but the forum software is considered to be a joke by many forum administrators and even some of the largest forum sites that were previously using vBulletin made the switch to XenForo ditching vB all together.

This takes us back to the quote above and the lack of change IB is doing with their thinking. Internet Brands continues to treat their customers so poorly and with such disrespect. The heads at IB made a terrible move by essentially forcing out the old, extremely qualified developers. They followed this bad move by filing a frivolous lawsuit against XF which only lead to increased negative attention and uproar from the community. They ignored any feedback from the community (i.e., their customers) and made a bad situation even worse by releasing the joke of a software that is vBulletin 5…But wait there’s more! In the latest fiasco which Veritas covered earlier – a recent breach on vBulletin.com which resulted in vBulletin sending out emails urging users to change their passwords because of this hack. The hacker group claimed they used a zero-day exploit, an exploit for a previously unknown vulnerability in order to compromise the vBulletin.com server and download the user database. In sum, vBulletin was using a copy of the live database on a test system and “forgot” to patch it to fix this bug. In doing this, they left the door open to these hackers and risked (and exposed) the personal details of us, the customers.
How’s that for quality?

Some free advice for you Internet Brands: change your thinking, stop disrespecting and ignoring your customers and learn from the mistakes you have made from the past if you want any chance to succeed. Doing otherwise will result you being a mere footnote in Wikipedia when people are reading about vB vs. XF since most people will have migrated to XenForo by then.

vBulletin – Not fit for purpose (or use) – By TheDevil666

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vbulletin-5-homepageAs a vBulletin user for many many years I just wanted to take the time to say how disappointed and cheated I feel with my recent purchase of vB5.

I run many forums and use vBulletin 4.x, IP Board and Xenforo, for my latest forum which I have invested a lot of time and money into I wanted the latest forum software and decided on vB5. I had not read any reviews which is obviously a mistake on my part and solely went on the fact that up until now vBulletin have been by far the market leader, I was comfortable using it and to be honest vB4 was pretty good, surely vB5 would be an improvement?

So I paid the $399!!! …within a week or so I could see that there were lots of changes and that lots (and I mean lots) of functions literally didn’t work. Now this was a fresh install of vB5 so not an upgrade so the optimal conditions really.

I decided pretty quickly that this software was not fit for purpose and asked for a refund, where I was told that as I had downloaded the software this was not possible and that I could sell the licence to someone else if I wanted, but obviously I wouldn’t get my full money back and who in their right mind would buy it?

As I didn’t have much choice I decided to persevere as I thought the next update would fix a lot of the problems I was having, in all honesty the latest update caused more problems than the initial version and this time when I tried to contact technical support I was literally a few days out of the ‘free month of support’ and told to post on the forum or pay for additional support.

Now to be honest I don’t have much spare time and didn’t want to create multiple threads on the problems I was now having so paid for an extra months support where I could detail all the issues in 1 email, hoping they would be fixed. This was a complete waste of money and time as all they do is direct you to JIRA!!! …and rarely actually fix any of the problems there and then.

My issue with JIRA is I have to spend the time either searching for someone else with the same problem and vote for the issue to be fixed or take the time to explain the problem I am having in multiple new posts hoping someone will also have this issue in order for it to actually be fixed. There is never a quick solution and no guarantee that my problems will ever be fixed.

Wait a minute didn’t I just pay $399 for this software and an additional $40 odd dollars for support? Why the hell am I having to spend time pointing out all these problems in the hope that someday they will be fixed? Wasn’t this software extensively tested before being released or is that now my job after spending a fortune on it? vBulletin know of all these problmes yet the product is still for sale.

One day when all the bugs are ironed out Vbulletin will have a great platform once again and reap the rewards, but it is at our cost as we are the people having to point all these problems out and struggle by with software that doesn’t work at the moment.

In my opinion this software was released waaaaaay before it should have been, it is nowhere near as good as vB4, IP Board or Xenforo which would have been a start and has endless bugs and issues that should have been fixed before release. Some of the issues literally stop users from using my forum so in my opinion it is not fit for purpose.

Just simple things that should just work, MARK CHANNELS READ button not working, seriously how hard can that be to fix? Site Maps not working, not that that’s an important function, it’s not like Google ask for a Site Map or anything. Errors when members post. No RSS feed, lots of forums like to post out to their twitter feed, not with vB5!!!!

vBulletin should be ashamed of the whole situation and the position they have left myself and many many other people in, I literally feel like I have been ripped off!

I am sure if this post is allowed to stay that I will get the obligatory ‘I am sorry you feel this way’ but that doesn’t fix any of the problems I have had and currently have.

vBulletin 5 – The World’s Most Disappointing Forum Software by BUSA

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vbulletin-5-homepageI made the biggest mistake ever to trust vBulletin. I was using VB 4 with minor issues but having faith in the company, I upgraded to VB 5. It’s been down the road since then. Been a big fan of VBulletin since 2004, but really disappointed with the latest VB 5. I have upgraded to all latest versions of the software (VB5) and all are having some error or the other. So many issues, it’s baffling. If you can’t make a trouble free software, why launch it in the first place?

Even after using the latest version of VB 5, I have following problems –

  1. In-line image addition does not work.
  2. User gets pop up when posting a reply -“You did not answer the question correctly”.
  3. Upload more than 3 images, they won’t show in the post.
  4. Start a new thread and the title changes to the title of the last picture uploaded.
  5. Open (not start but open in a browser) multiple posts and some posts won’t have the comment box below.
  6. and many more..

So thanks to VB5, I have spent so much time, energy and money on it. Needless to say, my web designer has given up after having spend hours (for which I had to pay). I will make sure others don’t face this issue but telling them not to buy VB 5, at least not till the issues are resolved.

Potential vBulletin Exploit (vBulletin 4.1+, vBulletin 5+)

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Are you surprised? I’m not. There are more bugs in vBulletin than a roach motel. Can someone please call the exterminator?

It’s rather amusing Internet Brands does not even know where the vulnerability is in THEIR OWN software. If they can’t even find it when it is pointed out to someone, how do you expect Internet Brands to deliver a bug-free product?

Here is the initial security advisory.

A potential exploit vector has been found in the vBulletin 4.1+ and 5+ installation directories. Our developers are investigating this issue at this time. If deemed necessary we will release the necessary patches. In order to prevent this issue on your vBulletin sites, it is recommended that you delete the install directory for your installation. The directories that should be deleted are:

4.X – /install/
5.X – /core/install

After deleting these directories your sites can not be affected by the issues that we’re currently investigating.

vBulletin 3.X and pre-4.1 would not be affected by these issues. However if you want the best security precautions, you can delete your install directory as well.

Source: vBulletin

Why I Left vBulletin & Haven’t Looked Back

Veritas 3 Comments

vbulletin-5-homepagevBulletin is a sinking ship at this point. There is nothing that can save it. @BobBrisco has managed to take an industry leader (and I am talking by a huge margin) and royally fuck it up in a spectacular fashion.

I’ve seen a lot of people move from vBulletin to xenForo but they have also gone on to other software such as Invision Power Board. So all I want from you is to reply in the comments below and tell me why you left vBulletin. You can be as detailed as you want. The more information the better. It would be nice if you could tell us when you left to give us a bit of a time line to see when the acceleration really started. It doesn’t even have to be about the current state of the company. If you left during the good ole days, I’d love to hear why you left and where you ended up.

I am mainly looking for people that have converted from vBulletin to another software and not those that just decided to stop hanging out at vBulletin.com.

My Story

I have been around the forum world since May of 2003. I bought my first hosting package for less than 100 dollars for a year. I don’t even remember the company I bought it from but it was a shared hosting package. There my journey started with phpBB. Fast forward a year or two down the road and I knew I had something good going with my forum. I had a decent member base and we were having fun. phpBB was suffering greatly from security issues. So bad to the point that when a security exploit was revealed it was so easy to exploit it that I was able to do so using the exploit release details. We aren’t talking about complicated exploits but simply appending an SQL statement to a filename in a URL. On top of that I was wanting something a little more professional where updates with new features were happening.

My research lead me to only one solution and that was vBulletin. Everyone was using it. It was the talk of the forum town at the time. If you weren’t using vBulletin, you weren’t cool. You know, peer pressure and all that shit. Well I took the bite at the time. I bought a leased license at the time because it was all I could afford. I was in college and working at Dominos part time to pay what bills I had. Still living at home. The typical still growing up phase of life.

I loved it. It was cutting edge at the time. The developers were having fun and the community was vibrant. I happily continued down the vBulletin path until July 4, 2007. What was significant about that date? That was the date that vBulletin went from a software company developing for their customers first to a software company developing for their newly acquired parent company, Internet Brands. Internet Brands, even back in 2007, was a gigantic company. A huge player in the forum world. They owned high value forums such as MustangForums.com.  They were just beginning their massive spending spree to acquire forums in some of the most lucrative niches available.

I’m not here to tell you that is when I bailed on vBulletin because it isn’t. I was skeptical about the sale but not completely aware of the end goal that Internet Brands was after. I was also 21 at the time and was not really looking toward the future in any aspect of my life. Reading my comments on vBulletin.com now make me cringe. That’s another story though… back to the topic.

Once the takeover was announced the next major release of vBulletin was 3.7. This was not heavily influenced by IB staff but still had some touches of their influence in it. I thought this was a decent release but it was sloppy. It tried to do too much at once with Social Networking and it failed at making it all play together nicely. Concerns were brought up in the forums and we all waited until 3.8 to see if this was fixed so everyone could go on loving vBulletin again.

Then 3.8 came out. This release was 100% Internet Brands influenced as far as features go. This release introduced more social features with Social Groups. It didn’t fix any of the issues of all the other previous social features introduced. User albums? Good luck browsing them. New social group posts? Good luck finding them. New profile posts? Good luck finding them.

It was clear that they weren’t listening to their user base. At the same time it was also becoming clear to me what Internet Brands was doing. At the time I was running my Ford Mustang website, MustangEvolution.com. The site was becoming larger and larger and I was now making decent money with it. In 2008 I also became a member of a pretty awesome group that now resides at BigBoardAdmin.com. What I started out doing as fun and for a hobby was now making me money. I was amazed that this could be possible. So the journey started to see what all there was to this new money I was finding. Could I really do this for a living? Was that possible?

I had to look no further than the very company that owned the software I was using to realize just how much money was now being invested in forums.

To go back a bit, MustangForums.com used to use an ASP based software. I had always wanted the domain name because it was so appealing. A top level domain for its niche. Well one day I woke up and opened up MustangForums.com and noticed something different at the bottom. The Internet Brands logo. Then I noticed it was no longer an ASP based board but was running vBulletin now! I was confused and started digging. It took me a few minutes to process that. Then things just started firing in my head. Internet Brands is now the owner of a website that directly competes with me for members. That sucks. They have a pile of money. Wait… oh shit. Internet Brands also happens to own vBulletin software. Fuck. Now this site was running the same software as me and the company had complete control over that software.

That is when things started unraveling for me. I started to realize long before Internet Brands actually fucked up the vBulletin software that Internet Brands was not looking out for my best interest when coding vBulletin. Their entire intention was to buy up the top branded forum software in the world and keep it in their grasp while they built their forum empire.

Bob Brisco is a smart business man. A completely shitty software company owner but a smart man. He won big at the sake of all the vBulletin customers. He used the money he had with Internet Brands to make smart web property purchases via online forums. He did fail magnificently at running a software company though. He managed to destroy a trusted brand. The sad part is he won’t ever feel the pain of doing that. Only the customers will. Bob will still be floating high in a year or two when the hedge fund that took IB from a public company to a private company breaks apart IB into smaller sections and has a fire sale. So it was at that time I started making plans to move away from vBulletin. I sold my Ford Mustang site to a friend of mine at Social Knowledge last year and along with it went the last site I ever messed with vBulletin with. Any other sites I buy with vBulletin software immediately start the process of being converted to xenForo. Most of the time I don’t even want the licenses. I actually try to sell the licenses to other people before they transfer them to me due to their one transfer policy.

So that is my story and reasoning. I don’t expect you to go into that detail, though I will be kind of impressed to see if Disqus will even allow it!

So if you see me on an admin forum and I don’t have anything nice to say about vBulletin, now you have a little background on why. I prefer to look toward the future now though and that simply doesn’t exist with vBulletin and hasn’t for many years now.

So, what is your story or reasoning?

 

Originally Posted on BamaStangGuy.com