Does vBulletin just need to start from scratch?

From IcEWoLF at vb.com

I see he's had several "likes" I suggest everyone who cares, stop by and like his post.
Oh, well I see it's in the licensed customer section now.
In that case the 2nd post is pretty good as well by cellarius (both have been members from 2005 and 2008 - in other words, well experienced)

 

BRAVO!!! Such a simple message that has completely been ignored by the VB/IB management and staff.

Instead any who post genuine concerns and suggestions are banned or have their posts removed. Or the thread locked.

It feeds the egos of the high handed mods and admins, but does nothing to fix the problems.

This is why VB will ultimately fail.

 

It's such a shame, really. For a time they had a great product. They just weren't interested in keeping up the quality.

So who wants to manage the death pool?

 

vbulletin death pool

I like it

 

Both IceWolf and cellarius make good points.

But, the first thing that needs to happen before any real positive change or improvement starts is for IB's management to have a major paradigm change. They need to stop thinking they know what they are doing and grasp the reality that they actually don't. They need to stop watching the numbers and start making customer oriented goals. They need to face mistakes, admit to them and learn from them. They need to stop looking at their own bank accounts and start developing a real passion for their own business, their products and their services. They need to stop seeing customers as cows and start dealing with them with honor and respect. (no offense to any cows out there btw). They need to talk to their customers on a much more regular basis. They need to realize great things don't ever really come to fruition overnight, or even in 6 months. They need to drop the arrogance and learn to be more humble. They need to really communicate their leadership direction and not think it happens automatically through osmosis. They need to see their staff as valuable people and pay them accordingly.

Did I forget anything?

Scott

 

Your pick for the death pool?

 

I think if they allowed members to help them develop as well, we'd probably see a much better product. I'm not going to upgrade to vBulletin 5 anytime soon because I'm content with vBulletin 4 and I don't think my members would enjoy all the current bugs that vBulletin 5 has. It needs to be made more stable before I even consider taking the dive and upgrading.

 

Even if vBulletin dropped this vB 5 shenanigans and went back to 4.2.x as it's latest stable release I wouldn't bother purchasing the next version. As Scott, said it's a management problem. Even if the coders are incompetent, management could fix it buy owning up to the issue and hiring new people or retraining the ones they have.

Look at the release of 4. Aside from the license change that everyone was in an uproar over, 4.0 was easily the worst software released with the vBulletin name at the time. The old guard at Jelsoft wouldn't release something like that as stable.

The release of 5 (still on going) is even worse. Instead of learning from their mistakes and doing right by their customers, IB's decided to for another money grab.

If you look at it, Xenforo is the real vBulletin 4. That's what vBulletin 4 should have and would have been if IB didn't take over.

 

While it would probably be the best thing to do I just can't see vB financially deciding to take that route. Money money money.... and doing something like that would cost exactly that.

 

Completely unrealistic. IB won't be abandoning vB5. They might be abandoning vB4. Or they might just be looking for a buyer for the vBulletin brand. What they won't be doing is spending any considerable time developing a product that doesn't make them any revenue.

 

Yea, you forgot they need to lose Bob Brisco and Joe Fortenbaugh and perhaps a few other people at the top who clearly and convincingly know [****][****][****][****] all nothing about how to deliver a product or a revenue stream.

 

I agree. I predicted IB will sell the vBulletin brand in a thread in the Licensed Customer Feedback forum. I've yet to see a single reply from anyone indicating I'm wrong.

 

I see one of the paying customers missed reporting this bug, rather embarrassing for vBulletin to have obvious bugs in their demo videos if you ask me..lol






You can see the error above at 20 seconds in, I didn't watch the rest of the video so there may have been a few more as well.

Slacker customers!

 

Lots of very valid points in the posts above. It is telling to see that everyone can see what is going down except the owners of VB.

My take on the launch of VB5, is that it was rushed through to try to counter the launch of XF and in conjunction with the lawsuit, to try to take out a competitor that has the capability to produce a far better product.

Unfortunately for IB their tactics failed on all fronts. The launch of such a totally different "upmarket" VB5 that is not backwards compatible with VB4 etc was not a wise move.

What the people whose idea it was did not understand is that many of the webmasters (especially new ones) are like me and are NOT technicians, coders or programmers.
We need a SIMPLE system that is easy to use and install, NOT one that has lots of bells and whistles that we just cannot hope to understand.

The people responsible for VB5, totally disregarded what their customers wanted and needed, in an attempt to take out their competition, a move that has proven to be one of the biggest mistakes ever seen.

An admission that VB5 is a flop is the introduction of being forced to buy it if you want say VB4. if you want a VB system then you are forced to pay for the "upmarket" version.
It is akin to saying that if you want to buy a new car, then you have to pay for the top of the range model to be able to get a standard model.

Crazy way to run a business.

 

I'm not sure to be honest. On the one hand, vBulletin 5 is an awful product partly due to how it's bad code on top of years old code that's filled to the brim with bugs. On the other hand... perhaps the last semblance of 'quality' in the product comes from that 'old' code, since IB's coders are absolutely terrible.

Do we trust them to code a new product from scratch and do a good job? I'm not sure to be honest. Indeed, I fear that if they did, we'd get something that'd make vBulletin 5 look like a work of art by comparison.

A completely rewritten vBulletin would be good if they hired good programmers and listened to customers. A completely rewritten vBulletin under IB's current management would be a car crash waiting to happen.

 

I agree. Here is where one of the main problems is. They are NOT listening to their customers and so the future looks bleak for them.

 

If IB did hire new developers and code entirely from scratch would anyone who already left believe it? Would any of them return, even out of morbid curiosity? Would anyone who just paid to leave vBulletin pay to return? There's only so much that can be done with the forum aspect of forum software.

 

Edit: Puh, this got really long. It isn't because I still have a passion for vBulletin. No, this goes more along the lines of my passion for good business. I see in a lot of what IB does as business mistakes. My writing them down like this and also in public in such a forum is only my way to make sure my thinking is correct. You could say, I am actually not self-confident enough about my views, even though I've gotten a lot of praise for my posts in such direction. (I've even been banned on vB.com for them.) So, I apologize for my long winded posts. That is just me, making sure I am thinking the right way.......

What two or three of the last posts propose is that IB purposely made bad software to either simply hurt and/or to overtake their competition by cheaply buying them out after a poor vB software weakened them. It that correct? Although I will agree with you all that IB's management are incompetent when it comes delivering quality. However, I don't think they are that stupid AND that insidious.

For one thing, you don't acquire "weak competition" as a means to strengthen your business. You acquire companies with the intention of strengthening your company and getting a good bit of ROI from your investment. Would you buy stock in a company or project you know is flailing? Acquisitions are no different.

Also from what I am reading, some people think it was IB's plan to just milk out the vB brand for what it is worth. Nope, I don't think so. Not in the sense of, milk it completely dry. Why did they invest in making a vB4 with a completely new CMS? In mobile applications? In the Facebook apps? And in an almost completely rebuilt vB5? All of these things have cost IB a significant amount of money, not to forget the investment for vBulletin itself. ($17.5 million!). If IB were really out to just milk vB and hurt competitive customers, why put in all this effort? Although the "staff list" isn't stickied any more, I'd say they still have the biggest staff of any forum software company out there. So, no. There is no milking dry there. They are trying to make a profitable business out of vB and are simply failing at it miserably.

What IB is guilty of is.......

1. Cash grabbing - yes, they think only very short term. Kier said it in his lawsuit deposition and he mentioned it to me personally, when he came back from LA. He said, Bob believes a project should be done (and most likely also making money) within 6 months or it isn't worth doing. Any good business leader knows, proper innovation, you know, the thing that really brings in good returns and business growth, takes a good bit of time. It takes a minimum of 2-3 years. What I think Bob is getting mixed up is the cycle of innovation. If you don't have an innovation process in place that can bring out new stuff at least every 6 months, then you also have a real problem. Hmm....how long has vB5 been "out" and how long has it taken for something really new to come out? So that is actually my point 2.

2. A missing innovation process.

Since IB doesn't understand how to innovate properly and doesn't have an innovation process in place, they fail to be innovative. This also goes in line with points 4 and 5.

3. Paying too little and expecting value from it - The saying is only a saying because it is true. You get what you pay for. IB is known for underpaying their staff (well, at least lower level staff for sure). We at vB-Germany got "fired", because we were too expensive. But, I know we were good at what we did! Very good.

I am also not one to say good pay always means good work. But there is a point where poor pay gets you less quality staff. Getting people up to snuff costs time and even more money. So it is saving money in the wrong way.

Good people know their value and also deliver for it. Well, at least you can expect it from them. With IB's turnover rate, they must constantly look for new people and when you aren't willing to pay well, then you probably end up turning away a lot of the better people and end up with "less qualified" people. I don't want to say they are all bad. They are just not as good as the people you might get, when you pay well. And if you end up with lesser quality staff, to then expect greatness from them (and within 6 months) is simply idiotic. A high turnover rate works totally against being and running a professional company!

4. Poor customer oriented decision making - IB simply does not know its customers or even its products and services very well. They have a very poor view of what a customer is. They have a skewed view of what their products and services are and how to make them very successful and they even have a skewed perspective about their own company. This all then causes a very strong friction between "senior management" and employees, who actually do have a proper view of the situation they are in and because they are closer to the customers, they understand them better too. This wrong impression about the "IB world" within senior management drives a poor corporate culture and thus drives, most likely, a poor business.

5. Not understanding what quality means to customers and what customers understand under quality - yeah, this goes hand in hand with #4. IB has no real passion or sagacity for what they are doing. I bet you any of senior management will say to any of their wrong doings, "but it is JUST business". Well, I am of the opinion, if someone is working on something just for "the business" or even "the money", then they are doing the wrong thing and will never light up any passionate fires under customer asses (not in a positive sense). Only when a product or a service is a utility can you even come close to thinking like that and even then, if you want to run the best utility, you'd better love working on it down to the last detail, or you will just be like all the other utilities. High quality and extraordinary innovation comes from passion for the customer's experience. You must want to give all of your customers something fantastic and unique as often as you possibly can. If you don't have that passion or this understanding, you simply won't be different, you won't be better then the rest. You won't be even good. You'll most likely suck.

Some have predicted an end to vBulletin and I agree. I'll actually give IB until 2019, 2020. We can come back here and talk about it then and we'll see, most likely, a defaulting company, if not even sooner. That is my opinion. The reasons for my prediction are listed above. What IB is guilty of is a prescription for running a mediocre business at best and at worst, a failing one.

So getting back on track to the topic. Even if IB did decide to start from scratch, it won't help them at all. Some major changes in management's thinking, the way they think about their jobs and about how they run their business must change first. Until then, IB could do back flips and somersaults with vB, the result will still always be sub-optimal at best.

Scott

 

The current licensing model dictates that they couldn't possibly write anything from scratch. Lifetime licensing forces the company to knock out new versions quickly and release them before they are ready. It is of course by design, putting short term profit before long term sustainability.

The problem they have now is that sales based on their former reputation are going to dry up so they need to find a way selling vBulletin 6 - The Final Chapter while it's still on the drawing board. Don't laugh, they may well be able to pull it off. vBulletin 5 Connect was after all initially sold to beta testers.