Why fight when you can easily switch?

Since con­vert­ing four of my forum sites over to Invi­sion Power Board in early Novem­ber, I’ve been very pleased with the way IP.Board is work­ing on my sites.

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.

Related posts:

1. Is IPB right for me?
2. It never slows down
3. Deci­sions, decisions…

Tagged as: Internet Brands, Invision Power Services, IP.Board, vBSEO, vBulletin