Do people hate vBulletin Boards?

FriendStein

Acquaintance
Joined
Mar 6, 2017
Messages
43
Reaction score
11
FP$
116
I run vBulletin 5 and for good reason, okay yeah it was broken right at out of the box, but now a days its really worth it. Its really stabled now, and PM's are now instant messenger on it. Site builder is really cool, make sit really easy to make custom pages, and custom themes can be easily built.

Is there a strong hate for vBulletin boards out there? If so why? vBulletin was one of the pioneering Board softwares out there.
 
Issue with vBulletin it has become more orientated for businesses than communities. vBulletin used to be great but not so much now and no longer offers modernized social communication features.
 
PPl hate the directions which the dev team has taken, no development on their successful vb3, vb4 & vb5 being a total disaster.
 
I used to run VB only until they destroyed it with the direction they took. These days if I see that a forum is running VB I don't even bother looking at it any further.
 
Issue with vBulletin it has become more orientated for businesses than communities. vBulletin used to be great but not so much now and no longer offers modernized social communication features.
I see your point, Mr. President and. Businesses for sure. However, vB5 is actually the most advanced Software to date. ANd you're talking to a guy who has a license in EVERY commercial forum software, IPS, xneForo, and WoltLab. With an integrated Site builder and PM Messages can be sent to each other like a facebook messenger, along with notifications, optional comments in replies in threads, I think they are leading the pack when it comes to features.


PPl hate the directions which the dev team has taken, no development on their successful vb3, vb4 & vb5 being a total disaster.
For the record, vB3 is still being updated and supported. The latest update on vB 3 is vBulletin 3.8.11 Beta 4 and its smooth, also now runs on PHP 7x now. Tested it myself.

As for vB4 and vB5, yes you are correct on the launches, thats because the devs were preasured by their masters: IB, they gave them a impossible deadline. But I can really assure you that all the issues are ironed out and it runs beautifully. I know because I run an test them all.

I used to run VB only until they destroyed it with the direction they took. These days if I see that a forum is running VB I don't even bother looking at it any further.
Devs are making it right, IB gave them more freedom it looks like. It's safe now, features are really modernized and stabled to the tee. I run vB5 on one of my sites and have zero issues, its the most advanced software, and trust me I have all the commercial license to every expensive software out there. vBulletin is coming back, one awesome new feature I like is IM other users.
 
Devs are making it right, IB gave them more freedom it looks like. It's safe now, features are really modernized and stabled to the tee. I run vB5 on one of my sites and have zero issues, its the most advanced software, and trust me I have all the commercial license to every expensive software out there. vBulletin is coming back, one awesome new feature I like is IM other users.

You do know that they have just let more staff go so that in itself should tell you something, for myself I will not go near anything that is VB related 😉
 
I started disliking VB once the rolled out their VB5. It really wasn't a good upgrade from the beginning. At the same time XenForo started spreading and just beat VB on everything, and kind of took over.
 
I actually like the software. If you look at backend coding, security is more stable.
 
Some people are on the "hate vB" train. Personally I think it's okay software. I don't use it much as an admin, but I woudn't not join a site because it was vB. Some people might though.
 
I don't like it to the point of me not being a member of any vBulletin forums. I prefer other platforms like IPB and XF.
 
I might be biased here, but I don't really mind vBulletin forums. Maybe it's because they were the first forum interface I've ever used, and I felt like it was pretty easy for me to pick up when I was younger, but I dunno. As an admin of a board on vBulletin, I'm not sure fond of it, but I don't think it's awful. I feel like I'm still learning stuff about it, but I feel like I can do most things so it's not completely foreign to me either.
 
VB seems to have a problem fighting spam. As I mentioned on another thread, the spam ripped apart a popular math forum - and you'd figure math guys would be smart enough to solve the problem - so it must be the software. Nonetheless, though, if spam is under control, I don't see why it's that much different than other paid platforms. This is from looking at the software on the outside - though I haven't owned the platform.

Oh, note though, VB may have fixed the spam problem.
 
We ran with vBulletin for years, since 2006. The forum was run on one of the free ones for a few years, I think phpBB before being migrated to vB. vBulletin was pretty awesome, even if our coders thought that its source code was a mess. I won't deny that I liked the interface. We updated it as far a vB4, then stopped there.

Then came vBulletin 5. There was no way that we were going to switch to something that was not only as badly coded as vB4, but a nightmare to write custom code for. The vBulletin 4 site had been customised a lot to suit the needs of the site we had at the time. vB5 was created strictly to prevent customisation. It might have improved now, but too late for some of us.

We used to run a vBulletin mod called Spam-o-matic. It was an awesome tool for fighting spam. However, I heard from a friend of mine who owns a large forum in the same niche that it no longer prevents spam and that they have had to add a lot of anti-spam measures to their board that is a nightmare for new signups. Before we got Spam-o-matic, we were getting over 200 bots a day. We had to put a blanket ban on several Asian countries to prevent the site being bombarded as well. It wasn't ideal.

Xenforo has built in anti-spam measures and was built by the same developers that made vBulletin 4 great. That is the reason that we opted for Xenforo when creating the new site. I'm studying software development now, but at the time we were planning the new forum, I wasn't, so I was also looking for something easy to maintain. Another option that we were considering was NodeBB because it looks nice, but it would require some programming knowledge to set up using the open source version.
 
Spammers still hit certain XenForo forums, though, even with the catching mechanism, but fighting them isn't that difficult. As for phpBB and other free software, having them solve questions used to work, but now I think the questions have to be more difficult.
 
The backend is pretty dated, but with vBulletin 5 they changed everything (similar to IPB now as well). It's not just a forum system but it wants to be a EVERYTHING system, from CMS, Forum, Blogging, to even trying to be a mini-social networking platform for the community to buy and use.

I think they went too forward into a specific direction in a one way manner (from just forum to everything now in 4->5) which was too fast, and too shocking to the general vBulletin buyers and license holders.
 
The backend is pretty dated, but with vBulletin 5 they changed everything (similar to IPB now as well). It's not just a forum system but it wants to be a EVERYTHING system, from CMS, Forum, Blogging, to even trying to be a mini-social networking platform for the community to buy and use.

Well, why not? If I ran the company that's what I'd do.
 
Well, why not? If I ran the company that's what I'd do.

Exactly, but when your market is growing from let's say small (just forums) to huge (the whole thing) you will end up making your main market that has kept you around upset, especially if you do this in just a major version change. It's like going from Windows 7 to Windows 8, yeah it's a HUGE improvement software and feature wise but you are killing off your main market (power users, enterprises, commercial usage).
 
Well, why not? If I ran the company that's what I'd do.

Exactly, but when your market is growing from let's say small (just forums) to huge (the whole thing) you will end up making your main market that has kept you around upset, especially if you do this in just a major version change. It's like going from Windows 7 to Windows 8, yeah it's a HUGE improvement software and feature wise but you are killing off your main market (power users, enterprises, commercial usage).

Just cause extra features are included doesn't mean people have to use them. They're optional.
 
If they made it like IPB then still go with IPB then 😛
 
Back
Top Bottom