It took a few days to sort out where everything is located on both the front end and back end of the sites, but the learning curve was very gentle and the people with Invision were also very helpful. The users on all four sites have settled in with the new scripts well and we’re still seeing great search engine traffic numbers.

I had been reluctant to move away from vBulletin because I had been using vBSEO on all four sites with considerable success. Since converting from vBulletin to Invision, I’ve installed MinervaSEO on three of the sites and it seems to be doing its job well. The developer at MinervaSEO claims to be updating the script and I’ve urged him to integrate the IP.Blog into his update. As soon as that happens, I will install the script on the fourth forum.

And whilst I am sitting here feeling very pleased to have all the sites working as well as they are, I have also been watching the pressure build on some of the vBulletin admin forums. The average vBulletin customer seems to be somewhere between absolute rage and homicidal over the so-called ‘Gold’ release of vBulletin 4.

It’s plain to see Internet Brands was trying to rush their latest piggie to market. vB 4 is still chock-a-block with bugs, yet IB saw fit to go ahead and release it to their customer base. No doubt trying to please the bean-counters, since the result has been anything but pleasing to their customers.

And I can’t say I don’t feel sorry for the vB admins that have rushed to embrace vB 4, but there seems to be a very vocal core of these admins that still feel they are going to get some resolve from Internet Brands by continuing to complain about how terrible vB 4 really is. It was easy to see in the very early going that vB 4 was not going to be very popular. I contacted Ray Morgan, who was then a Project Manager for IB, and asked him some direct questions about how vB 4 was going to be marketed to current vB license holders. When he explained we were going to be run back through the turnstiles as little more than new customers, I made IB for what they are and started making plans to leave.

How difficult was that? Yet people are still howling like mashed cats about how much it is going to cost them to upgrade to vB 4. I keep wondering why anyone would ever want to make that alleged ‘upgrade’. vB 4 is an epic failure and everyone knows it. So why give IB any more of your hard-earned money? Particularly when Invision Power Board works so well and is staffed by people who really care about their customers. Unless you just need something to complain about, that is.

People are ranting and railing about how they are being treated on the vBulletin company sales forums. When I was trying to see how well IP.Board would fit my needs, I was carrying on conversations with none other than the creators of Invision Power Services, Matt Mecham and Charles Warner. These two gentlemen were more than willing to take time out from their busy schedules to answer my seemingly endless questions. That was quite impressive to me, as I had never felt like anything other than a number at vBulletin. So why be treated like dirt when you can get red carpet treatment? Unless you just need something to complain about, that is. (Or did I already mention that?)

I’ve heard warnings from the vB proponents that my search engine results would suffer were I to convert to IP.Board, but that just hasn’t happened. One individual warned that I needed to look out for my members and not throw them such a big change. After using vBulletin for four years and nine months, I have seen how easy it was to get used to the Ip.Board front end. I’m still struggling to find things on his vB 4 site. I am keeping my eyes open for some negative aspect to hit me in the nose, but I’m not seeing anything go awry.

In the last week, I’ve seen some rather incredible situations crop up, quite unexpectedly. I’ve seen a couple dyed-in-the-wool, long-time vBulletin customers make the decision to purchase IPB licenses for their very active and successful vBulletin forums. A friend of mine who was a long-time designer of vBulletin styles and themes has also announced she is ready to convert. And not even two weeks after it’s less than stellar release, Invision has already developed a database converter to help customers convert vB 4 sites over to IP.Board.

As I posted on Twitter yesterday – maybe it’s just me, but it seems the longer vB4 is available, the more I see people switching to IPB – with good reason!

But i suppose the vocal minority will still be pointing out their displeasure with vB to anyone who cares to waste the time reading their complaints for weeks to come. As for myself, I’ve decided to avoid these individuals as much as possible. Anyone who continues to complain when a very positive alternative is presented to them is someone who will likely not stop griping any time soon. Because they just need something to complain about.

As for myself, I’m moving forward with Invision Power Board and damned glad of it.

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I opened my first discussion forum in August of 2004, running phpBB2 software. And while it worked, I was very aware the platform was not exactly secure. On 11 February 2005, I purchased my first vBulletin license from Jelsoft. I went from being more than a bit nervous to even look at the template system to the point of modifying templates to achieve the look I wanted. I modified templates to optimize the site for the search engines. I added scripts to provide more functionality for my members.

In 2006, I added a second vBulletin license. In 2007, I added a third. And earlier this year, I added a fourth. I always paid the annual license renewal fees to maintain download access to the latest version of the forum software, so we would provide the most features and the best security for all four sites.

I’ve not been 100% satisfied with the vBulletin package for the last couple of years, but I figured it was better the devil I know, rather than the one I don’t. So I stuck around, even though the software left far too much on the table.

In 2007, vBulletin was purchased by Internet Brands, a company that owns and operates over 100 forums of its own. Suddenly, the competitor was also the supplier of the software. (Can you see this coming?)

Earlier this year, Internet Brands announced they were going to release a new version of the software. This was going to be a complete and total rewrite of all the code, which was a huge undertaking. But IB announced they would release the software sometime during the second quarter of this year.

A few weeks back, the software was released to a very limited number of vBulletin admins for Alpha testing. An admin I helped on a couple of forums was one of the testers, so I got a very early look at what vBulletin’s future was going to be like. There was a carefully worded Non-Disclosure Agreement to prevent any of the Alpha teams from making any public statements about the software. Which is probably just as good, because I was raised to not say anything if I didn’t have anything good to say.

Internet Brands then decided it was also time to change its customer market focus and effectively priced the upgrades to the new package out of reach of most hobbyist forum admins. If a license expires, the license holder has no option but to pay over 4 times the original renewal fee to upgrade to the new package. Now remember, this is a package only a limited number of people had even seen.

People were griping about having to pay for something sight-unseen and rightfully so. And how were these customer concerns handled on the vBulletin sales forums? Some threads were locked, whilst others were deleted entirely. Customers were warned (!!!) that negative posts were going to be removed. Long-time customers with legitimate concerns were banned from the forums.

For months, Internet Brands has been pointing at some screenshots of a test site, telling everyone how wonderful the new package was going to look. Yet we weren’t seeing the same things in any of the Alpha releases. The visual changes were not improvements, in my not-so-humble opinion. I kept wondering how the new look was going to be received by others, because it looked like an epic fail to me.

But we didn’t have to wait for very long. A day after releasing Alpha 6 to the Alpha teams, someone at Internet Brands made the decision to update the company forums and to call the release Beta 1. The decision was another epic fail situation. The company forums were closed for the upgrade, which they officially claim took only five hours. However the forums were closed for something like 28 hours, because they needed to integrate the sales and technical scripts to the forums. Aye, Right.

When the forums re-opened, the CSS wasn’t loading, so the site was immediately was shut back down. When they got that problem fixed, it became clear that something around 1700 users were stalling their five servers. And when people saw the lousy appearance of the forums, the company line was the coder (who is no longer employed with them, by the way) had a faulty design that could not be used. Tsk, tsk, IB. Some of us know better. And the coder himself has admitted the style was not only completely functional, but was also 100% XHTML compliant.

Remember when I said I have been real happy about vBulletin for a couple of years? I had already made up my mind to not upgrade my sites to the new package. I figured i would just ride the old software as long as I could and then migrate to another script. After seeing the utter fiasco created by Internet Brands, I’ve modified that decision. I want out and I want out now. Internet Brands has made it clear they couldn’t organize a good piss-up in a brewery.

I’ve had some past discussion with some of the people at Invision Power Services, who offer a complete suite of integrated forum products. these people have gone out of their way to provide me with answers to my questions. Today, I mentioned on Twitter that I have decided to migrate my sites to Invision Power Board and I’ve heard from no less than four of their employees, offering to help me make the switch.

I’ve invested a lot of money in my sites. From vBulletin licenses, to blog licenses, to add-on scripts like GARS and vBSEO, I have spent more than I care to admit. And there is no counting the hours I’ve invested in learning how to make vBulletin work better, look better, run faster and be more secure. I hate to walk away from the tremendous investments in both time and dollars. But I’m not going to do business with a company that chooses to openly lie to its customers. That dog ain’t gonna hunt.

I’m sure life will go on as before at Internet Brands. They say a sucker is born every minute and with the exorbitant pricing of the new licenses, they’ll make up what they are going to lose on me in a New York minute. But I’m really pleased to see the staff at Invision be so eager to welcome a new customer. They make me want to do business with them. And that is exactly what i intend to do.

If anyone is interested, I will soon have four vBSEO licenses available. And vBSEO is playing fair, in that a license is a license. So if anyone is interested in these licenses, they will be able to upgrade to vBSEO 3.5, when the new vBulletin software finally becomes available.

So long, vBulletin. Invision Power Board, here I come!

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Thanks for telling us the truth, Officer Cheeks. We’ve suspected it for years and you’ve made it clear.

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As I mentioned earlier, I now have a Dell PC dual-booting Windows XP and Ubuntu 9.10, aka Karmic Koala. Karmic is still in Beta, however I have found the Beta release to be steady as a rock and I’m not seeing constant update. That leaves me to believe the Gold Release is just a matter of waiting until 29 October.

If you’re nervous about running a Beta operating system, then it is a simple enough matter to download Ubuntu 9.04, aka Jaunty Jackalope. After the 29th, you will then be able to upgrade to Karmic via the Update Manager.

I’ve now updated the dual boot on my iMac to Karmic Koala, as well. I’m still looking for ways to get Airport and sound working properly, but everything else is working 100%.

This morning, I decided to install another flavor of Linux on an old Sony VAIO that refuses to die. I really like the Ubuntu foundation, but I went with Linux Mint 7, aka Gloria, on this system. If you are a Windows user wanting to make the switch, I recommend Mint to you. Mint is based on Ubuntu, with Mint 7 actually being Ubuntu 9.04, albeit with a very pretty face. Mint has a ‘feel’ much like Windows, with the task bar located at the bottom of the screen. The Windows Start Button is more intuitively called Menu in Mint. Once you learn that trick, you will feel right at home.

Remember, both Ubuntu and Mint are free for you to use and you can download Mint right here. Burn the LiveCD ISO to a CD and then boot your computer up from the CD drive. You can explore either operating system from the CD to see if you can get online, use your printer, etc.

If you want to use Linux, there are two different ways to go about doing it. You can simply use the Installer on the CD to install Linux right over the top of the Windows install. If you have a lot of Windows programs you don’t want to lose, then use step number two and set up Linux as a dual boot. The LiveCD has a partition editor on it that makes the dual-boot a snap.

The procedure is simple. Close Linux and remove the CD from your machine. Boot into Windows and run the Windows Defrag tool. Or better yet, download a copy of Defraggler and run it. If you’ve been running a defrag on a regular basis, the process won’t take too long. Once you’ve defragged the drive, visit the Ubuntu Screencasts site and watch two videos -- Ubuntu Partitioning and Ubuntu Dual Boot Install.

Here’s a secret to dual-booting. You need a minimum of 5 gig for Ubuntu’s files (use 10 gig if you have the room). You want a Swap partition that is about twice the size of your machine’s installed memory. If you have a gig of RAM, then set up a 2 gig swap partition. Then use all the free space to set up a /home partition. That is where all your files (documents, pictures, etc.) are going to go.

On this VAIO system, I split the drive in half. I let the Windows XP installation have half of the drive. With the remaining 50 gig, I allocated it like this -

10 gig formatted as ext3 for the / partition (the root partition is known as simply /)
38 gig formatted as ext3 for the /home partition (where all my personal files are located)
2 gig formatted as swap

So, it’s time to plop that LiveCD back in the CD drive and restart the machine. Press F12 or whatever it takes to boot from the CD drive and let your flavor of Linux load up. Click on install. Select your language choice, select your time zone and your keyboard layout. Now the Partitioning Editor will open and you can set up the partitioning for your new Linux install. Then fill in the details about your install (username and password). Tell the installer to import your Windows files, click on Forward and relax for a while. It may take some time, as the partitioning tool has to scoot the Windows partition into it’s tighter quarters and install some filesystem files on your new partitions. Just let it do it’s thing.

Once the install is done, you will need to reboot the computer. Follow the instructions and remove the CD when prompted. And then watch the magic. Your computer will start to boot up, but you will then see a GRUB window appear, asking you what operating system you want to use. Use your cursor keys to highlight the new Linux install and hit Enter. Things will happen much faster this time, since you are using the hard drive to load Linux. Enter your username and password when prompted and welcome to Linux.

See how easy that was? And you were worried, weren’t you? ‘S OK, so was I, the first time I tried it.

It will depend on what Linux distro you installed, but play around with things until you find you Home folder. (Look in Menu >> Home Folder in Mint or Places >> Home Folder in Ubuntu.) There you will find all of your pictures and documents from the Windows side of things. If you have Word documents, don’t fret. Open up the Open Office Word Processor and your Word documents are right there for you. The Firefox Web browser is there, which should be familiar to you. Mozilla Thunderbird is my e-mail client of choice and you can install it with a single click of the mouse. Before long, you will realize things really do seem familiar to you.

Ubuntu doesn’t open any incoming ports on your machine, so there is no need for a firewall. If you decide to set up a server, you will then need to start setting up rules for a firewall, but if this is just a personal computer installation, forget about firewalls. There are no Linux viruses in the wild, so you don’t need an anti-virus running. Set your browser up wisely and you’ll never end up with any malicious scripts on your machine. Even if you do get a virus transmitted to your machine, it won’t hurt your machine at all. You could easily transfer the virus to one of your Windows-based friends, but your machine is safe. I run a virus scanner on my machines about once a week, to make sure I don’t have any malicious files on board that could be passed on.

If you want to learn about how to use your Linux install more efficiently, there is a great resource known as the Ubuntu Forums. If you have a question, hit the forums and do a quick search. You will probably discover someone has already asked your question.

Let me leave you alone with your new toy. We’ll look at some other Linux tips and tricks in subsequent posts. Enjoy the freedom of Linux!

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After missing a couple pieces of Windows software, I reinstalled XP and set up a Wubi installation of Ubuntu 8.04, a.k.a. Hardy Heron, to still get the Ubuntu experience. And life got busy, so I strayed away from using Ubuntu almost entirely.

I purchased an iMac a couple years back and I must be the exception to the rule, because I really didn’t care for it at all. It sat here in the office next to my production PC, but it was rarely used. When Apple released Snow Leopard, I figured I would risk $29 to see if it would spark my interest in the iMac. What’s the old line about a fool and his money?

As I was sitting here grumbling about wasting money on an operating system, I decided to look in on the Ubuntu community forums. And within the hour, I was burning a copy of Ubuntu 9.04, a.k.a. Jaunty Jackalope onto a CD for a quick LiveCD test-drive. That’s a slick trick with most (if not all) Linux distros – being able to boot the computer up from a CD-ROM based operating system. Anyway, the PC and Jaunty seemed to play well together, so I set up a dual boot installation with Windows XP.

And I liked it well enough that I decided to dual boot the iMac, as well. And you know, the iMac has become my primary system, as a result. This is what I was hoping to find when I bought this computer. A sleek, well-built piece of hardware with an operating system anyone could love.

But I wasn’t ready to quit tinkering around, so I went back to the PC today and upgraded the Ubuntu install from Jaunty Jackalope to Ubuntu 9.10, a.k.a. Karmic Koala. that was a bit of a stretch for me, as Karmic is still a Beta developmental release and won’t be officially released until 29 October. But it upgraded nicely and runs even better.

If you’re like me and you’re tired of spending money to upgrade operating systems, let me recommend Ubuntu Linux to you. A totally free and extremely stable operating system that works incredibly well and has thousands of free programs available for it. And when your friend forwards that e-mail with the malicious Windows virus in it, you won’t have to worry because it won’t have any effect on your Linux system.

If you’ve got a spirit of adventure and want to use a solid operating system, take a look into Ubuntu. They have a really huge support forum and the community is always willing to lend a hand if a problem crops up. Just download one of the ISOs and burn it to a CD, to test how well it works. Before you know it, you’ll be converting to Linux too!

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