Am I the only one annoyed by some people's attitudes that...

Forum software should be basic with mods for each feature? I wonder sometimes whether these people who say every major aspect should be left down to mods ala Vanilla fail to realise that:

1. Forum software changes over time. The coding changes. Old mods become obsolete, don't work or end up getting abandoned by the developers. For example, a lot of popularly requested social networking features like a shoutbox. People request them in vBulletin 4, and the standard argument from a few is that it should be left to a mod. But what if the mod creator quits and those ten thousand people who've used the modification end up losing a feature liked by their memberbase? Official features and modifications have the benefit of not being generally scrapped, abandoned or unsupported in a heartbeat. And losing a feature is a sure way to make your site's memberbase complain loudly. See what happened on vBulletin.com with the missing profile customisation feature in vB 4.0

2. Software when features are limited at first but easy to add are only really popular with programmers and people who know a decent amount tech wise. Seriously, how many millions of installations of software online is pretty much in the default state? About 80% of vBulletin forums only slightly modify the default style, and I'd say about 90% probably don't use any modifications. Similarly, if someone buys a software license and finds the software has limited features by default, they're pretty damn likely to find a different solution, not to head off to vBulletin.org.

Anyone agree on any of this?

 

This comes back to the paid vs free argument too...

I'm of the opinion that the folks at vBSolutions can't do it all. Some mods are specialized and have no use for many sites. Hence there is a modding community that has sprung up to handle those needs. Part of the problem is they pretty much have to give them away for free since there is ready way to market paid mods. Over time the coder gets fed up with the constant requests to add this one little feature for one guy for no compensation so they give up and the mod is left for dead.

There needs to be some sort of actual central clearing house to verifys mods work, that the people that create mods have incentive to keep them going and the end users (forum owners) know they are adding clean, safe code.

Asking vBSolutions to add in all the features that modders create is darn near impossible. Look at photoshop, there a loads of 3rd party tools. Or Windows, there are thousands of companies out there that for years have made all kinds of money "modding" windows.

 

Agreed whole heartedly.

Though, I can't lie, I do enjoy vBulletin's current feature set. And I look forward to more things being added in the future.

However, things I see suggested (like a Points System, Store (ala Lesane's Store hack from vB2), Thanks Mod) have absolutely no use on 75% of the forums I visit.

 

cheat-master30 there's also another viewpoint to consider here. The software developer's viewpoint. For example, I'm part of a small team developing lefora.com forums and we keep our feature set to a minimum. Which has it's own pros and cons for admins (pro - it's super simple to use, con - you dont' have all the mods of traditional forum software).

However, the fact that we keep our feature set minimal allows us to do a number of things:
1. Keep our code efficient and trim, this makes it much easier to manage from a team standpoint
2. Keep our site optimized for speed, less code and features means the whole site runs faster (and cheaper)
3. Allow us to add features much more quickly then traditional forums. We basically listen to feedback and try to implement the features that 85% of admins want. Because our codebase is streamlined, when we add a new feature, it's a quicker process and we don't have to worry about all the down stream dependencies.

The last point is one of our core philosophies. There's people that agree and disagree with that view, but as a team, our personal philosophy is that it's best to develop features for the large majority of users, and although the minority may be unhappy that it doesn't have Feature X, they'll be willing to make that sacrifice because the important Features A, B, & C work so well and do exactly what they need it to do. And sometimes, we even have other features not available elsewhere that they're willing to make a trade-off.

 

For my software, we too develop features that have the most demand. We also develop features that we personally feel would benefit the majority of forum owners.

Currently, we're developing 1.0.x, and we already have a list of about 10 features, that we have come up with ourselves, that will be added in 1.1.x.

However, stuff like Points Systems, Stores, Thanks Mods, Article Managers, Ad Managers, Post Ratings, etc. etc. are still better off as a plugin, even if that plugin gets developed by one of the core developers. Take me for instance, I love Points Systems and Roleplaying Based Shops (buy weapons, armor, etc). Every forum I own uses one. However, I don't want it as a part of the core feature set. So, to coincide with ImperialBB development, I'm also developing several plugins that handle these things.

When Imperial ships, I will also release a plugin for a Points System, RPG-esque Shop, and an Ad Manager alongside it, for those that will need such things.

EDIT: By the way, I think this should be moved to the general Forum Software forum.

 

I looked at your feature list. It's not quite the kind of minimalism I'm talking about that annoys me. The kind I mean are the kind that say a quick reply form, a PM system or a rich text editor are too much bloat in software and should be left to plugins. Or that POLLS should only be an add on. Think punBB and Vanilla type minimal forum software.

That's not quite a minimal feature list you have there, although I would never use free forum hosting out of conveniance and how you can use things like code mods and take backups and switch software.

You seem to be doing fairly well feature wise. Not quite what I meant.

The whole idea of a plugin getting made by the developers actually is quite a clever idea. It guarantees support for one thing, and that it won't just be abandoned at a later date.

But I think people are slightly missing the point here. I'm not saying forums need to have an arcade, point system and built in RPG, just that ultra minimal forums like punBB are just more of a pain than it's worth for the casual forum owner and that having a rich plugin system does not make up for a lack of features. It's more like how forum software types should generally have the features the users want, and enough for a person new to forums to set one up without needing to mess around with modifications and plugins. It's like the advantage of buying a computer with Windows, Office and various other things rather than having to build it yourself and install your own operating system and what not. Bare bones software usually loses a lot of user friendlyness with the 'use a modification for X feature' attitude.

 

Those were just examples, cheat-master. And they just happen to be products I'm coding for multiple platforms (Thanks mod aside), hence why I mentioned them.

But yes, our core developers will be coding add-ons on top of Imperial (I have 3 in the making right now, and I know our Modifications Coordinator has 3 or 4 already completed). They won't be labeled as "official" but we can guarantee the quality will match that of the core product.

On top of that, a few of the ones he has done are actually features we wanted to add, but didn't have time to do so before finalizing the codebase and prepping it for the design phase. Those will be added to the core product come 1.1.x.

 

Free forum software - maybe so. That way the development workload is spread out.

Paid / commercial grade software - no, popular features should be built in. If a modification is popular enough, it should become a built in feature.

 

An interesting model would be a free stripped down core with features as premium. Especially with a core that took this type of approach.

 

I don't think your suggestion is a stripped down core. With your design, it could still have the same features like forums, blogs, social groups and articles, except the same base code and features for each with some changes made depending on what feature is in use. Is that kind of what your suggestion was?

Exactly my point.