I’ve used vBulletin software for about 4 1/2 years now and have always been pleased with it, for the biggest part. It has its shortcomings, to be sure, but it has still been a solid platform for me over the years.
In the last couple of years, Jelsoft realized the social networking sites were getting huge, so they started trying add in half-assed features to the vBulletin platform. The new features have been absolute losers on all four of my sites. A couple years ago, I installed a now-dead blog script on a couple of my sites. The script was vBlogetin and it really worked quite well in its beta releases. Jelsoft came along a few months later with their ‘official’ blog add-on, which still comes up lame against the old vBlogetin platform. But my users made it pretty clear – if they wanted a FaceBook-type profile page, they would set it up on their FaceBook accounts.
vBulletin has now also released a development tool that is completely worthless for any forum site I have ever visited.
Jelsoft, the company behind vBulletin sold to Internet Brands some time back and I’m not real pleased with the direction IB is steering the ship. IB announced a complete rewrite of the vBulletin platform (currently at release number 3.8.3) was going to take place and be offered as vBulletin 4.0.
As time has progressed, the ‘complete rewrite’ has been reduced to a rewrite of the templating for the forums. The long-awaited Admin control panel has been pushed back for a later release of the software. The long-awaited Content Management System is going to be part of vBulletin 4.0, but it will apparently only be available as part of a suite offering – the forum script, the blog script, the project tools script and the CMS script.
I can only guess this is a failed attempt of IB to actually sell their project tools licenses. I have used a vBadvanced portal script for years and wasn’t overly excited about having to pay for the vBulletin CMS script. After hearing it is being bundled with the project tools and blogs scripts, I’ve given up on ever using the CMS at all. I’ll either stick to the vBadvanced portal or work on a bridge between the forums and a WordPress front page.
There has been a lot of cussing and discussing over some allegedly ‘leaked’ information from what is a staff-only forum section at vBulletin.com. It sounds as if IB is going to change their licensing structures when vBulletin 4.0 is released. Instead of a license owner paying $40 to renew a license, which gave the owner access to download the latest and greatest vBulletin version, it sounds as if IB now wants to sell everyone a new license in order to use vBulletin 4.0.
Nothing is cast in stone yet, but many vBulletin license holders are shopping for alternative software packages. Invision Power Board just released their new offering, IPB 3, and it is a pretty sporty script. I know several vBulletin admins have already ported over to IPB 3 and I am giving it serious consideration myself.
I have had good luck with the addition of vBSEO to my forum sites and have not been real excited about leaving it behind, if I do decide to use another forum platform. I had some conversation with the people at Invision today and they assure me we can at least redirect all of my vBSEO’ed URL’s over to the IPB 3 URL’s, so that is a plus. I still am reluctant to leave behind all the features of vBSEO, but I am not going to be held over a barrel by the people at IB when it comes time to renew my vBulletin licenses. I already have a significant amount of money invested in my forum software licenses and paying much more is not going to be an option for me.
Now it comes down to a point of seeing how much IB wants to bend everyone over for their new licensing structure. And weighing that against trying to learn an entirely new forum platform, if I should decide to switch to IPB.
Until today, if anyone had asked what I felt was the best forum script available (short of the enterprise solutions), I would have said vBulletin without a second’s hesitation. After spending time playing around with an IPB 3 demonstration forum today, I’m starting to feel like vBulletin is a distant second-place.
There are times I wish I had never bothered trying to set up a forum in the first place. And today is one of those times.
