vBulletin 4

[Big Dan]

Howdy Folks,

In the coming months vB 4 will be released in to the wild. It's currently in closed Alpha testing. They've made some pretty interesting changes. The styling will be pretty much all CSS based which means no more table based layouts and thus there is a completely new style. You can see some screenshots here on the vB.com blog: First Look: The vBulletin 4.0 Style - vBulletin Community Forum

Other changes include an "Asset manger" so you can share attachments between the forum, CMS, blog, and photo albums. Build in search engine friendly URLs out of the box like vBSEO's.

I don't see much else changing except for they're releasing a CMS addon. There's going to be two separate products 1 will be vBulletin by itself (just a forum) and the second will be a suite with vBulletin, the Blog, Project tools, and CMS addon.

The licensing structure is also going to change. There was a big hell to do about it in the vB community for a couple months. Basically from 4.0 on they will be charging for version upgrades opposed to the yearly upgrade model we all know and love. No doubt it will be more expensive in the long run. The good news is that active licenses will get the 4.0 upgrade free with it's release (source), so it would behoove you to upgrade those licenses now instead of paying more later.

Other than that a lot of the core vB devs have taken off for other jobs.. I'm not sure what to make of that but they've been replace with IB imports.

Any questions?

-Dan

[grim]

I have no idea what I'm gonna do

[Zap]

Any questions?

-Dan

Yeah! Where the hell ya been, Dude?

Good seein' ya.

[Big Dan]

Yeah! Where the hell ya been, Dude?

Good seein' ya.

Thanks Zap, same here. Just taking a break from the webmaster's stuff. Aside from my board and a couple of general discussion forums I haven't kept up with much lately. I wish I could say I was busy making money but that's not the case I'm going to try and dive right back in here in the next couple of weeks now that the summer is winding down and I'll be inside more. What have you been up to?

[Zap]

Thanks Zap, same here. Just taking a break from the webmaster's stuff. Aside from my board and a couple of general discussion forums I haven't kept up with much lately. I wish I could say I was busy making money but that's not the case I'm going to try and dive right back in here in the next couple of weeks now that the summer is winding down and I'll be inside more. What have you been up to?

Just launched a general chat forum. Had a leak in my basement due to sewer backing up into the house. Dealing with insurance on that. Loads of fun. Went to a wedding in Ohio. Working the IT support thing You know... the usual. LOL!

Good to see you and looking forward to your return to our world.

[grim]

Just launched a general chat forum. Had a leak in my basement due to sewer backing up into the house. Dealing with insurance on that. Loads of fun. Went to a wedding in Ohio. Working the IT support thing You know... the usual. LOL!

Good to see you and looking forward to your return to our world.

You were in Ohio? damn could have gotten together for a beer! Ok so I'm not in Ohio but it's not that far away.

[vikas1234]

okie gr8 ... waiting for their launch

[leftwheel]

i just finished the layout for my existing vBulletin forum. Is it a lot of work to change the style to fit with the new version?

[Big Dan]

Yes it will be Leftwheel.. The new templates are completely CSS based.

[grim]

I hate when scripts do that, change it so the entire theme needs to be recoded into the newer versions!

[Big Dan]

vBulletin's new pricing structure has been released and it sucks.

Right now during the pre-release sale if you 'upgrade' to 4.0 sight unseen (there is no demo) it will be $195. For those of you that have current licenses you will have access to 4.0 which is good BUT once your one year of downloads are over you will have to pay $195 to get access to 4.0 updates.

If you're running the vBulletin blog add-on you can no longer just buy the blog you have to buy the whole CMS suite which includes the blog. The presale upgrade price is $130. After October 30th you will have to pay $235 for a new license in order to upgrade or if your license isn't currently active.

Leased licenses are no longer available for purchase.

There's a couple things to note here:

A) If you buy during the presale which is only two weeks. Your buying 4.0 sight unseen as there is no demo and very few people have had access to the Alpha's, those that did had to sign non-disclosure agreements.

B) You're now buying your license per version as opposed to owned with yearly updates. This means that when vBulletin 5 rolls out, the fact that you owned vB 4 will mean nothing and you will have to pay for a whole new license in order to get new features.

There are two main problems with this licensing scheme from our point of view:

• Historically each vBulletin verison has stayed around for quite a while. Look at how long 3.x has been out. However, I doubt this will be the case with the new licensing scheme. If Jelsoft puts out 2 versions a year your paying full price for two licenses per year.
• With Jelsoft's SOP since Internet Brands bought them over, I can see Jelsoft holding back features for inclusion in the next version just to milk more money out of you and I.

Anyway you look at it current customers are getting screwed over. It sucks that I just bought two second hand licenses figuring they would do long standing customers right, and the free upgrade for currently licenses isn't exactly doing right. It's a nice gesture but not what I expected.

The cost of vBulletin adoption was already high especially for hobby webmasters when compared with free. The increased cost for a license plus the upgrade scheme and lack of leased licenses means only those who are professional webmasters are going to bother with vBulletin. Look for hack authors to start moving to other platforms. By the time 5.0 rolls around Jelsoft will have effectively killed their addon community with this scheme as no longer can people who put on free hacks upgrade virtually for free they will need to pony up at least $195 which means longer wait times in order for modd'ed boards to be upgraded if the hackers even pony up $195 to put out a free hack.

As for me, I'm tied in with vBulletin for my main board but the other 2 licenses I will let expire and Jelsoft can KMA.

[grim]

Can't you try to sell the other 2 in time?

[Big Dan]

I haven't even seen anything about license transfers, I don't think anyone in their right mind would buy them knowing how the licensing is gonna change.

[grim]

Good thing so many are not in their right mind

[Big Dan]

Good thing so many are not in their right mind

You speaking for yourself or me? :goofy:

[bluearrow]

Well I guess people gonna pay more attention to free forums scripts now. Specially new forums.

[grim]

Other scripts may improve as well