Big news at vBulletin.com...

No one said they were good at math in the first place. Otherwise they would have known not to piss off the core 10% of their customer base.

 

So far nothing they have done seems to add up!

 

If you take Wayne's word for it, that each customer will get their own VM, then you would be absolutely right. (Unless they are virtualizing the virtualization, which would be totally absurd.LOL!)The math doesn't make any sense. I would venture to say though, Wayne is wrong, because it simply isn't possible, as you point out. Each customer won't get their own VM, but rather will be sharing a VM or possibly even a cluster of VMs (which I actually doubt is the case though, as that means much more work and thought would need to be put into the service as a whole and a software that can support it too, but I can't deny it either).

So, if they are putting a number of customers on a single VM, it certainly could be profitable. What is then questionable is the level of service. But each customer would have to find that out for themselves, since nothing is mentioned on what level of service a customer can expect and a lot is mentioned on when the service isn't working right. IB isn't liable.

I would also venture to say, in terms of money, IB did do a lot on the math (while rubbing their hands). It is, as I mentioned though, a question of, if they did the right math, when it comes to serving the sites properly.

Scott

 

Would make sense that its a shared VM that can also explain why add-ons and direct php execution is not permitted if configured wrong you should be able to see other VM's.

 

Well, the fear being hacked in any way in any service is present no matter what you do. It is a matter of what precautions are taken to avoid security risks for the customer. In a self-hosted situation, the owner of the site is responsible for their own security above the hardware level of the hosting. With a hosted software service like vB Cloud, usually the service provider is responsible in some form for security to a higher level within the platform, the database and software.

However, if you read IB's service agreement, they are not liable or responsible for basically anything, but particularly, not liable for security, which is incredible.

Edit: the only thing that might get your foot in a legal door are the words "outside of the control of vBulletin". I'd say security is very much in their control. However, I still wouldn't be comfortable with such a clear avoidance of responsibility towards security.

This is what a professional company has in their agreement about data security.

Scott

 

LINK to the entire agreement of said "responsible company" please? When I googled it I found the exact words in numerous agreements indicating it is boiler-plate terminology. You'll understand if I want to see the entire agreement for myself.

 

http://www.salesforce.com/assets/pdf/misc/salesforce_MSA.pdf

And no, I don't understand why you want to see the agreement. Are you going to try and find something that makes what IB has in their agreement look better? I highly doubt you'll find anything.

Scott

 

Could have guessed that i was SalesForce that the quote came from.

 

OK so a service absolutely nothing like vBulletin or vBCloud other than having the word cloud in the product name.

Oreo Cookies don't even have a license agreement therefore Oreo Cookies are better than Salesforce.com!

 

Woot?

Salesforce is a leader in SaaS and thus, is a "proper" software as a service, which is what vB Cloud is attempting to be, so there is quite a similarity.

Scott

 

The man does have a gift of twisting things so they appear to be relevant.

Ninja'd by @BirdOPrey5 himself............... This man makes it all to easy to prove others points LMAO

 

You two should get married.

 

Joe your last 3 months actions can allow any writer to write a great book

Path to Destruction
How you can turn into a liar and scammer in 3 months

 

How ironic when your recent behavior is the sole reason why people doesn't respect you like they used to. All I can see is that you are filling in the niche left by both Paul and Mark, arguing semantics but with zero substances. I'm hesitant to call you a liar since technically, through sheer semantic dances, you didn't lie but all honest observers and even substantiated further by Trevor knows that vB4 is in a state of either being neglected or abandoned.

As for your proud cloud offering, not only that it is more than reasonable to believe Joe CTO was literally speaking nonsenses, behold the victim;

See how far your semantic dances can sooth his agony.

 

Sorry the person wasn't happy with vBCloud, a lot of it is being worked on and there are work-around for the rest. It will take some time to strike a good balance between security and customization ability.

A decent trick for using custom CSS (that you would put in your additional.css usually) is to add the CSS code to either a notice or a static HTML module you put on each page. (Kudos to Mark for thinking of this BTW)

In fact I do this myself on cyberpolice to do the customization of the background. The images for the background are uploaded as attachments in vBulletin itself- so no FTP was necessary.

As for custom smiles if you can host them off site (like an image host) you can still add them. You can alao upload them as attachments to a post an add the URL as the URL to the attachment- that works as well.

I created a topic in the vB Cloud Account Management forum with these tips & tricks.

That said- again- vBCloud is NOT for "power" users. People who want to customize and use modifications are not the target audience of vBCloud- frankly- no one who would visit an Admin forum is the target audience. The target audience are those happy they don't have to customize anything- they just want a default forum with a custom logo and maybe change a few colors. Yes, these people do exist- enough to make it worthwhile to have a Cloud solution. No one is trying to get all existing customers onto the cloud- no one is claiming it is the best option for everyone.

 

Joe, it is clear to us what vB Cloud isn't. Why though, does the marketing for vB Cloud speak a different language possibly raising incorrect expectations?

There is no language lost on "vB Cloud is NOT for power users" or there is nothing saying anything like, "Those who want to extensively customize and use modifications should purchase the self-hosted version."

Don't you think maybe that is exactly the cause of the customer rant above? The marketing language isn't saying what it should?

Edit- And I am back to my old point about IB not understanding what it means to control customer expectations. They shoot themselves proverbially in the foot constantly, because there is a serious disconnect between what they are selling and what they are saying they are selling. This is one of, if not the biggest, sources of customer aggravation. I know you aren't in any position to point this out to IB's leaders, but until they realize there is this disconnect and start using marketing language that actually meets the product and build proper expectations, this unhappiness and even worse, vB's piss poor sales, will continue.

Scott

 

Here is the thing Joe....

Your entitled to your opinion, but you have to respect all of ours also. I think its clear vBulletin is a mess, and vb5 in particular is a failure on a PR and sales level.

By in large, people just plain don't like vb5. They don't like how it has been developed, released or supported.

That's not my opinion, that's the opinion of many in the admin community as reflected by these many threads. All these people didn't become "vB haters" out of the blue, they did so with good reason.

EVERY customer at Xenforo is there putting money into that company because of what IB has done to the vBulletin brand and its customers.

Put on your business hat Joe. What you (and the others at vb) think of the vb products doesn't matter when compared to the opinion of the customer base. That customer base is who will decide to buy or not buy. Its not a small number of customers that don't believe in vb5, its the vast majority.

Now you can choose to argue semantics with me and the others if you like, but your not helping vb or yourself in doing so.

Just because you believe "with every fiber of your being", doesn't mean your right.