vBulletin and UBB Comparison

Discussion in 'Community Forum Software' started by AWS, Jan 31, 2014.

  1. AWS

    AWS Administrator

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    I seen it mentioned a few times in many of the vbulletin threads how what is happening at vbulletin now resembles what happened to UBB back in the day. As someone who was there during it all I think I can offer some similarities and maybe give us a look at the future of vbulletin if all things remain the same.

    UBB was the standard for forums. There really wasn't any competition. All you had was wwwboard and Phorum. Phorum wasn't popular because many hosts at the time didn't support or even install PHP. Perl was the standard. Matt Wrights wwwboard was supplied by most hosts so everyone used it. When UBB was born it was an instant hit. Had a huge modding community, think vbulletins only 10 time the size, at Script Keepers.

    As forums grew UBB would die under the load which left many wanting a mysql backend. Infopop told us not to worry they felt our pain. In the mean time someone created a hack that used mysql as the backend and some of us that ran large forums used it as a stop gap for when InfoPop unveiled there offering.

    It was taking a long time for this new version of UBB with mysql backend to show up and we were being told soon. During this time John started to develop a PHP/mysql forum script. The discussion about it on Script Keepers was closed and John moved it to EzBoard. Keep in mind at the time PHP wasn't still installed on many hosts so many including InfoPop thought this new software would never be a competitor. Even so much as thumbing their nose at John when he offered to sell it to them. vbulletin was born and released to the masses in April 2000. It was an instant success. Users that grew tired of hearing soon migrated in droves.

    Shortly after UBB unveiled there mysql product, Open Topic, a hosted only solution. There were hints that this might happen since InfoPop wanted to get in the enterprise field but we were always told there would still be a downloadable product. This was the beginning of the end of InfoPop.

    After realizing that they had underestimated what the user wanted they bought the only real competitor that vbulletin had, wwwthreads, put a new name on it, UBBThreads in the hopes of keeping the few remaining users they had. This failed miserably and that was the end of InfoPop. What happened to the once fine wwwthreads is a discussion for another thread.

    After reading all that can you see where InfoPop made it's mistakes and do you think the writing is on the wall and that vbulletin will suffer the same fate?
     
    AWS, Jan 31, 2014
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  2. jmurrayhead

    jmurrayhead Regular Member

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    I don't see how vBulletin could possibly last much longer without drastic changes, but it's probably too late for that, anyway.
     
    jmurrayhead, Jan 31, 2014
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  3. Dan Hutter

    Dan Hutter aka Big Dan

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    What's the old saying "Those that don't learn from history are bound to repeat?" or something like that. vBulletin once the cream of the crop is now bottom of the barrel seems pretty similar to the UBB situation.
     
    Dan Hutter, Jan 31, 2014
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  4. CM30

    CM30 Regular Member

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    I think there's a good chance vBulletin could suffer the same fate. Indeed, to a degree, it already did the minute XenForo came out.

    I can't wait for IB to go under though. They've ruined enough websites and fields with their ignorance and terrible management. It's almost like karma for them...
     
    CM30, Jan 31, 2014
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  5. AWS

    AWS Administrator

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    I just realized I put this in the wrong forum. Error corrected.
     
    AWS, Jan 31, 2014
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  6. s.molinari

    s.molinari Regular Member

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    Wasn't the PHP version actually purchased by Infopop at the time? I came into the scene around when all this happened and it seemed you missed that similarity too. wwwthreads was purchased by Infopop and it was named UBB.threads and should have been their competition against vB, as their PHP /MySql version. Due to the purchase and poor management after that though, it actually lost popularity. It never gained any real respect, mainly because vBulletin, with John's very good leadership i.e. honest communication and hard work ethic, was a breath of fresh air in the online community world.

    Where the similarity breaks (to the Xenforo story) is John or James weren't any part of Infopop, before they started with vBulletin. They used UBB.classic, the flat-file version of Infopop's software, for their VB-Script forum and were having serious issues with its performance too. So they decided to write their own software in PHP with a MySql back-end and vBulletin was born.

    Scott
     
    s.molinari, Feb 1, 2014
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  7. AWS

    AWS Administrator

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    InfoPop bought wwwthreads a couple years after. UBB users went to vbulletin and wwwthreads. vbulletin got most, but, wwwthreads got a fair amount also. The majority of the UBB hackers went to wwwthreads while the casual owners went to vbulletin. InfoPop thought that buying wwwthreads would kick start them and get them back in the game as a viable option. The opposite happened. No one wanted anything to do with InfoPop so the majority of the users that went to wwwthreads instead of vbulletin jumped ship and left.
     
    AWS, Feb 1, 2014
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