vBSEO Forum Software

[Webnower]

This idea was mentioned recently, and I'm curious as to what people here think about it.

If vBSEO created their own forum platform, would you use it?

I believe I would, based purely on the staff's ability to answer questions and communicate their intentions. I have never, ever had a problem working with them on support issues, and given the customer-to-staff ratio I'm pretty impressed.

[briansol]

1000000000%.
i'd put up money to invest in the development too.

[nfn]

As long as they remain independent and don't follow vB/JS/IB steps, I'm in!

PS: With the same URL structure, please!

[marco1]

yes good idea
voted Absolutely

[Cromulent]

It would take a significant development effort for them to match the feature set of vBulletin. Quite a few of vBulletins features are pointless but some are essential and are not easy to implement.

On the whole I'm pretty happy with vBulletin. It is the defacto standard forum for people who are serious about their websites. Most people who post on forums on the web know how to use it as well.

That is a significant commercial challenge to overcome. Why would your users want to relearn a new forum system? For the most part web master requests are meaningless in the forum world. So what if it is hard to administer? If your forum users like that piece of forum software better than another product and you move to a different piece of software that is easier to administer you risk loosing members.

[Joe Ward]

Great observations. BTW - There are quite a lot of standard front end features however, and success for "any team" that endeavored to build a new forum software would require consistency with the basic user interface that people know and like/love, combined with understandability/ease of adaptability for any new features.

However, we are still very excited about the vBulletin 4 series and particularly the new CMS.

[Mert Gökçeimam]

It would take a significant development effort for them to match the feature set of vBulletin. Quite a few of vBulletins features are pointless but some are essential and are not easy to implement.

IPB did a complete rewrite of their code base in 8 month. Their features are equilant and some parts way more advanced then vBulletin. They make it clear that it is not that hard to do so

[Cromulent]

IPB did a complete rewrite of their code base in 8 month. Their features are equilant and some parts way more advanced then vBulletin. They make it clear that it is not that hard to do so

Rewriting software from scratch is generally a bad idea. Sure you fix some things in the code and might make a better architecture but you also introduce God knows how many extra bugs.

8 months of development time is hard. That is a significant financial investment. Say you have 3 developers working full time. Most good experienced developers can quite easily earn £40,000+ a year. Then you have marketing expenses, quality control expenses and numerous other expenses.

[Joe Ward]

You're right. It is definitely a very involved, resource intensive process.

[Mert Gökçeimam]

Rewriting software from scratch is generally a bad idea. Sure you fix some things in the code and might make a better architecture but you also introduce God knows how many extra bugs.

8 months of development time is hard. That is a significant financial investment. Say you have 3 developers working full time. Most good experienced developers can quite easily earn £40,000+ a year. Then you have marketing expenses, quality control expenses and numerous other expenses.

I disagree with you on the complete rewrite idea also. There are some cases which a complete rewrite is needed. for instance vBulletin , a complete rewrite is definately needed as the code base is 7 year old and both Php , Mysql have been improved so much.

[Joe Ward]

I was once a member of a team (as an systems analyst) for a company building out a forum software that pre-dated vBulletin and was quite advanced at the time. It powered some high profile sites.

It was developed in ASP, and had all kinds of issues that were preventing it from transitioning to the next generation. So the decision was made to do a full software re-architecture. This next version would be powered by a server running BEA Weblogic, and designed using object oriented Java Servlets (JSP). Again, this was designed for enterprise level customers, not mass market.

The idea was sound, and a great strategic move at face value. However, the project proceeded slow, ran into several issues, and nearly ran the company into the ground as the new development got in the way of business development and the issuing of new licenses, etc. Development was consuming the revenue streams from other projects, and leaving the company in a difficult situation.

This project never reached completion, and the company was acquired after several rounds of staff layoffs. Granted, there was a brilliant team of experienced developers, but yet this re-architecture was the Achilles factor for this company. Fortunately, for the founders, they were able to spin off and use their experience and custom built technologies to move into new sectors.

However, the company, was not as it had been before, i.e. a thriving entrepreneurial start up in Silicon Valley. They suffered a major (financially required) loss of staff, and were compelled to make a transition. Pushing forward with the re-architecture would very likely have completely finished off the company. They were smart enough to realize their error before it became completely irreversible.

The team at Internet Brands and Jelsoft are experienced and are aware of Murphy's law. While they may have disappointed some people by abandoning a full re-architecture for 4.0 in place of iterative re-factoring over multiple releases in the 4.0 series, they likely mitigated some major risks in so doing.

I think by the time we see the fruits of their labors in version 1 and version 2 of the 4 series, we will have a much better sense of how this strategy will work out long term.

The team that created this great software is still in place, so I personally expect great things to continue.

[Cromulent]

I disagree with you on the complete rewrite idea also. There are some cases which a complete rewrite is needed. for instance vBulletin , a complete rewrite is definately needed as the code base is 7 year old and both Php , Mysql have been improved so much.

In no way should any of that require a complete rewrite.

Rewriting software from scratch has killed many successful companies. Netscape for instance lost the ball to Internet Explorer because they decided to rewrite from scratch and they couldn't keep the project running on time.

It is one of the major rules of software development not to rewrite software unneccessarily because often it causes far more problems than it fixes.

Bringing vBulletin up to date does not require a complete rewrite. Sure, I'd love to see vBulletin written in a completely object orientated fashion using the lastest PHP features and to have it take advantage of the latest features of MySQL. But that kind of thing can be done gradually with general refactoring of code rather than just starting again from scratch.

[Mert Gökçeimam]

In no way should any of that require a complete rewrite.

Rewriting software from scratch has killed many successful companies. Netscape for instance lost the ball to Internet Explorer because they decided to rewrite from scratch and they couldn't keep the project running on time.

It is one of the major rules of software development not to rewrite software unneccessarily because often it causes far more problems than it fixes.

Bringing vBulletin up to date does not require a complete rewrite. Sure, I'd love to see vBulletin written in a completely object orientated fashion using the lastest PHP features and to have it take advantage of the latest features of MySQL. But that kind of thing can be done gradually with general refactoring of code rather than just starting again from scratch.

Because Netscape couldnt handle a complete rewrite doesnt mean it is a bad thing.

For your information vBulletin 3 was a complete rewrite and Jelsoft handled it prety good. So we are talking about a company who already have exprience in rewriting the software.

[Cromulent]

Because Netscape couldnt handle a complete rewrite doesnt mean it is a bad thing.

For your information vBulletin was a complete rewrite and Jelsoft handled it prety good. So we are talking about a company who already have exprience in rewriting the software.

Just do a good search on rewriting software from scratch. The general consensus is that it causes more problems than it fixes.

I'm not doubting Jelsoft's ability. I am doubting the business logic of rewriting software from scratch.

[Future]

completely depends on the feature set.
So far vbulletin serves 100% proper platform to run a forum.
If vbseo can get all those features, including something more, we will plan to use it.

Vbulletin is coming up with SEO optmized URIs + CMS in there future releases this year.. this should setup a major competition for VBseo