Big news at vBulletin.com...

The whole vBCloud thing does seem a little silly, but maybe it's just me...

To *me*, it seems like someone was like, "Let's brainstorm why vB5 sales are low...", and someone came up with, "Because it's too confusing to set up hosting for it...". So the obvious solution would be to throw resources at developing a cloud platform that (let's be honest here) sucks. Can't run addons, can't even install a style, can't upload or download data, etc.

It's the only thing I can think of that happened, because even if they had a 100% adoption rate of people using vB5 now, it wouldn't even cover development costs. vBulletin 5 hasn't exactly had the best adoption rate. Still under 1% (0.98% to be exact) of vBulletin powered sites using it after about a year.



Clearly they aren't trying to sell it to existing vB5 sites... there's just no money in that (since vB5 sites are far and few between). So it must be purely someone's crazy solution to drive new sales. And if that *is* the case, I suspect it might backfire... Let's say I was a new user wanting to run vBulletin 5... I decide to not plunk down the $249, and instead opt for the $14.99 hosted option... how many months am I going to run it before I decide vB5 isn't for me. If it takes me less than 17 months to conclude I don't want to run vB5 on my site any longer, they made less money from me and had more overhead (hosting costs). Great idea. lol

 

So VB gets bashed for "forcing" people to buy VB5 for $249 and not giving refunds if they download it... AND also gets bashed for offering what is essentially a 30 day demo for only $20.

Bashed if you do, bashed if you don't... Tells me people just want to bash.

Also, FYI, the mods/styles thing aren't set in stone- we're investigating ways to get users add-ons and style access.

Importing/exporting will be even sooner.

 

Did you forget that you recently stated that you were ignoring valid statements because you found it useless to respond to arguments you can't win?
It seems like your latest post applies to yourself.

 

From a commercial standpoint, there seems little point in 'the cloud thing'. It runs vb5 and vb5 is not attractive at all. Maybe with a little cloud shizzle added to it, it will attract another 0.9% but thats it.
The cloud buzzword combined with Adobe Creative Cloud envy may cause some excitement behind a management desk, but a manager with half a brain would trip on the sales projections for this plan.

I suspect they would have to start giving a year free vbCloud to lure webmasters in.
Or make it totally free and add their own advertising.
Or make it free and add all member data to their IB network.

 

Not sure if that was directed at me or not, but I'm not bashing vBulletin. I was just pointing out that the logic behind it seems a little odd from a business standpoint. But then again, I'm not in management, so I'm sure whoever chose to go down the path of being a cloud hosting provider has their reasons.

As a potential end user of something like vBCloud, I *do* think it's feature incomplete at this point, which makes it a non-option for most people (and I suspect people at vBulletin would disagree).

As a $14.99 one-month demo of vB5, it could be useful... but still not sure it's the right business decision for vBulletin.

Personally, I'm hoping vB6 is something amazing...

 

I don't know about the forcing part -- not sure where that comes from. However, there were people who bought it assuming it would be a decent product, and found it to be terribly buggy and incomplete. ie.. linustechtips.com
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noVu8BXkCsw
(go to 1:10)

 

yeah... Linus is quite respected in the PC build world and on youtube. 650,000 subscribers on his youtube channel. I can see why someone would think he is a 'basher'.

 

To be fair, the guy was pretty idiotic to upgrade a forum with more than a million posts blindly.

 

Agreed... But he's not a software guy either. We cant all be you Shawn

 

Oh... then not that idiotic.

 

Ignorant? I'm well aware of the market. I'm aware that there are barely any modifications/styles created for vBulletin 5. I'm aware that Internet Brands is desperate for money by introducing this cloud solution. Why would you not allow the customers on this cloud to be able to install stuff?

I'm aware that many people from vBulletin (Including a lot of big boards) are converting to what could be considered more stable and viable platforms (hopefully you can work out which) to rid themselves of the bad customer support, software which has proven to have security problems in the past and start fresh.

Hopefully you can wake up and make yourself aware of vBulletin's failures.

 

Well said very true. I think they know but have selective sight.

 

The point >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>[a country mile]>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> BirdOPrey5

The point is that vB5 is crap, putting it in the cloud, where the heads of vB's management and those of many of their staff reside, doesn't alter that fact.

 

Then admit you're bashing vBulletin because it's vBulletin- don't make up reasons like you're bashing them for coming out with cloud or you're bashing them for not having a low cost demo option because you look foolish when you bash them for doing both at the same time.

At least be honest and say you hate the company and the brand and even if they saved a school bus full of orphans from a fire you'd bash them for not saving the orphan's parents to begin with.

 

but "cloud" is just another reason we hate vBulletin simply because it's a desperate grasp for more cash from another ill-conceived product. It's the very embodiment of what IB does - milk something for what it's worth and then move on.

The school bus full of orphans example is just pathetic. Only evil people would hate on anyone for doing that.

 

Putting it in the cloud does alter it it even more crap, when you did everything your self you could do more then you are doing now in the cloud.