Regarding vBSEO 3.5 development

Hi.. I have a few questions please.

vBSEO 3.2.0 Gold was released on 5th of July, 2008. Since then (over 6 months now), there had been no announcements or whatsoever regarding future development.

The 3.2.0 announcement also states to "expect 3.5 to touchdown late 2008/early 2009, FlexETA."

Late 2008 is gone, and early 2009 is coming to an end, shouldn't there had been be some news/announcement by now.

I really expect atleast two good gold upgrades in 1 active year of my license. If the speed remains like this, then your 3.5 will take another year to come out of Alpha, beta, gamma, RC etc.

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

vBSEO 3.5 is in development. However, we do have a version set for release in coordination with vBulletin 3.8, which will be a compatibility update but will also include some new features.

Yes, I know it is in development and I know this since 3.2 announcement. Whats NEW??

This is a great great piece of software and everybody knows this. Can't think of starting another forum without this. But personally, I am more disappointed by vBSEO team than vBulletin team. Keeping rest issues aside, I expect/need upgrades and vBulletin does this.

Thank you

Maybe the team is still confused by the vb 4.0 SEO possibilities,
maybe the team is negotiating trough lawyers what parts of the code belongs to vbSEO
or maybe they just do all things "mañana"
Its true that there has been no update since long time and the skin that we are all watiting for has not been released too.

Originally Posted by sensimilla

Maybe the team is still confused by the vb 4.0 SEO possibilities,
maybe the team is negotiating trough lawyers what parts of the code belongs to vbSEO
or maybe they just do all things "mañana"
Its true that there has been no update since long time and the skin that we are all watiting for has not been released too.

Everything we are working on here is development related, I can assure you.

Actually - we have several projects that are all going to be coming to completion in the same general time frame, which (of course) includes vBSEO 3.2.5, and the vBSEO 2.0 style you mentioned you are waiting for.

I mentioned to the team that you guys are interested in finding out more about vBSEO 3.5. I'll talk with the dev team and see what info we can disclose at this time.

Everything we are working on here is development related, I can assure you

And its not vBSEO 3.5 development but your other *several new projects*, which nobody even knows or cares about as of now.

Actually - we have several projects that are all going to be coming to completion in the same general time frame, which (of course) includes vBSEO 3.2.5

WHAT? I can't believe you said 3.2.5 (and not 3.5)
So maintaining vBSEO isn't the priority now, great!!! Is the site name going to be changed?

If you are near to completion of those *several new projects*, this clearly means you haven't been indulged much in development of vBSEO 3.5 which is and you never even cared to tell all this before.

And what kind of policy is this where you DON'T want to give a release date for a compatibility update. Is 3.2.5 another month far? (as you care to *complete several new projects first*) , so should we even expect 3.5 or is it abandoned?

I mentioned to the team that you guys are interested in finding out more about vBSEO 3.5. I'll talk with the dev team and see what info we can disclose at this time.

MORE?? We have never been told anything ever since 6 months, when 3.5 development continued.

And just info?? Where is the FlexETA/BETA etc. Have you delayed 3.5 by an year or what?

I have a really bad feeling now. Because people hardly care to complain about updates/development here at vBSEO (and release all their frustrations at vBulletin team), you are not concerned anymore.

Hello ,

What you are missing is vBulletin released two major products. vB Blog 2.0 and vBulletin 3.8.0 which both requires lots of new rewrite options. This of course delayed the work on vBSEO 3.5.0 . however vBSEO 3.2.5 is also a major version for vBSEO because it contains several new options also. As soon as vBSEO 3.2.5 is out to market vBSEO 3.5.0 work will continue were it was left , which can make it clear that the work was on process but interfered with the upcoming new vBulletin products. Our feature set is ready for vBSEO 3.5.0 however i cannot disclose it yet as still our first priority and focus is targetted to vBSEO 3.2.5.

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

Everything we are working on here is development related, I can assure you.

Actually - we have several projects that are all going to be coming to completion in the same general time frame, which (of course) includes vBSEO 3.2.5, and the vBSEO 2.0 style you mentioned you are waiting for.

I mentioned to the team that you guys are interested in finding out more about vBSEO 3.5. I'll talk with the dev team and see what info we can disclose at this time.

Im fine with your reply, thanks for the info and I keep fingers crossed.

I understand that you are frustrated, and I understand why from my own personal experience. To date, we have not been highly successful with meeting strictly scheduled dates for delivery due to various factors.

To avoid creating unfilled expectations, we have for most of 2008 been operating on "FlexETA" (as referenced in your quote) which basically means that we'll try to give you an estimate, or an indication of status (in dev, in testing, with pre-release, etc), but not a firm date. We still maintain a relentless focus on quality, and in that regard I think we have met our objectives very well.

Please understand that the vBSEO Team wants firm ETAs too, for our own projects. That is going to be something we will continue to actively work on in 2009. Some current developments you should know related to our move towards improvement are:

• We do plan to release an article that gives some insights into the many factors that impact an ETA, and what our approach for improvement will be based on.
• Since we must ensure compatibility with vBulletin, our releases will be impacted by their release dates.
  
  • For instance, if it takes longer than expected for 3.8 to be released, or new features are added in their RC (release candidate phase), we experience the same bottleneck.
  • In cases where new features are added, our quality process requires that we do a "complete re-analysis".
  • Some of the questions answered are during QA include:
    
    • (1) Do we need to upgrade anything else for compatibility?
    • (2) Does everything that worked up until now still work?
    • (3) Does everything still work as expected after we add new compatibility features?
    • (4) Did we minimize & optimize queries and ensure maximum performance?
    • (5) Is everything we've done with user interaction actually "user friendly"? These are just some of the main examples.
• We recently setup a new project management system (3rd party). We have been migrating to this new platform for all project work. The main development team has been getting ramped up on its use, and now all other team members will be introduced and trained on how to use it to maximum efficiency/effectiveness.

Therefore, we expect in the future to be able to give everyone (including ourselves) better estimates of ETA for any project that we are working on the future, and it is possible that within 2009, we may be able to to start posting more specific dates and hitting those targets.

The success in doing this depends largely on our success with the new project management platform, ramping all team members up quickly, and making whatever team process changes that are necessary to do so. Process changes can be difficult, but it's a challenge we are up to.

Re: vBSEO 3.2.5

This is our compatibility update for vBulletin 3.8. It's been in development for quite some time now, and includes several new features as well as updates and bug fixes. We needed to wait for the vBulletin 3.8 GOLD release before we could finalize the QA/testing and release it officially.

In keeping with the concept of FlexETA, as noted above, I cannot give a precise release date. I can tell you that it's been undergoing internal testing for several weeks, and that a couple of small fixes were detected within the past 3 days that had to be corrected. As soon as we have these corrected, we are certain there are no more issues to be found, and we get the thumbs up from the pre-release team, vBSEO 3.2.5 will be in your hands.

This does not mean that vBSEO 3.5 has not been branched! We had prototypes already in progress in early 2008 for our new vBSEO Control Panel, etc. But as I said in my earlier post, I need to get confirmation from the dev team to see what we can disclose now, perhaps collecting a feature list and getting a status indication out there to you guys.

Re: Our other projects

The other projects I mentioned are almost all exclusively vBSEO related. The notable exception is the undisclosed project also in dev.

Re: Our concerns

We are definitely concerned about the need for improvement in our release cycle and communication of accurate timelines. I thank-you for your feedback, and the opportunity to provide you with a more detailed perspective on how we recognize this problem too, how we share your concerns and desires, and what steps we are taking that we hope will move us in the right direction.

Thanks for your reply Joe sir, and I appreciate it.

Its been 9 months since I got my first vBulletin. I have seen vBulletin going from 3.6.7 to 3.8.0 in this period (and I loved every bit of it).

Its been 6 months since I got my first vBSEO, but vBSEO remains where it was.

I run 2 forums as a hobby, timepass, fun and learning. vBulletin and vBSEO are the ONLY softwares in this world that I have paid for and I expect a lot out of both. vBulletin has really satisfied me.

The main and the only thing is that, if you keep members updated with NEWS/DEVELOPMENT INFO etc. via your Announcements forum, it really makes us feel that something is happening on your side. But giving not even a single bit of INFORMATION (for such a long period), makes me really uncomfortable and I am sure you can understand that.

Imagine what will happen if vBulletin gives no upgrades or simply any kind of news/info for such a long period.

And that is all what my frustration was about. Nothing else!

One small suggestion is that:-

Instead of adding more and more features ALL in one release and extending the time period due to that, why not add them in stages, just like vBulletin does so that we get an upgrade timely and see few new features in every 2-3 months. This would really make people feel more confident about vBSEO. And upgrading vbseo takes not more than 4-5 minutes, so nobody can complain saying "oh no, another upgrade" like in vbulletin due to templates.

For example, I and many others are not at all a fan of current vbseocp. Instead of adding everythingggg in 3.5 including new admin panel, lot of new features and delaying more, why don't you just introduce the new admin panel in, say 3.4.

Thank you

Originally Posted by webwizzy

The main and the only thing is that, if you keep members updated with NEWS/DEVELOPMENT INFO etc. via your Announcements forum, it really makes us feel that something is happening on your side. But giving not even a single bit of INFORMATION (for such a long period), makes me really uncomfortable and I am sure you can understand that.

I absolutely understand what you are saying, and you are 100% correct. We do need to do more timely updates and announcements.

We are preparing an announcement to start 2009 off with some insights into what we'll be doing.

With our 3.2.5 release, we were stuck in a period of repeated updates when the vBulletin beta releases came out, and then we had to wait for vBulletin 3.8 Gold to launch before it was green light for us (as it is now).

In the future, we would like to be compatible and actually ship our update release on the same day as vBulletin. And that may be possible.

Re: vBSEO 3.4.0

It could be possible that we could separate 3.5.0 into 2 releases instead of one. That is something I will discuss with the dev team.

I've seen vB developing from version 3.6 beta to 3.8 gold ... and I'm with vBSEO for 2 years now ... I've got only 2 or 3 updates from vBSEO, but what should I say ... vBSEO works pretty good with my 3.7.5 and I'm just testing 3.8 in a closed system to get it ready once vBSEO 3.2.5 is done ... but hey I don't care if it is available today, tomorrow or later that month - as long as it is good and I don't need to upgrade to vBSEO 3.2.5.1 pl2 just a week later ... I'm pretty sure that vBSEO 3.2.5 will be released to the public once everything is done and working.