Poor vbSEO Support

This is a message I plan on posting to All Website Admin Forums I visit as I am REALLY aggravated now due to the lack of support (which I PAY for from vbSEO.)

Here is the issue.

My support contract is coming up at the end of September. I installed vbSEO a number of years again and since installing it I have never quite been happy with it.

First off it was / is a huge resource hog. In order to keep running my forum I needed to buy a new server, with vbSEO turned off the old server worked fine but then none of the links on the search engines would work.

When we moved to our new server we moved from Apache to NGINX. Before I moved to NGINX I asked if it was supported by vbSEO and was told yes and to just use the NGINX install instructions when I made the move. So we made the move however some functions in vBulletin were not working correctly because of vbSEO. I submitted a ticket and Mert Gökçeimam quickly took care of things. He reinstalled vbSEO and he kept fine tuning my NGINX configuration until all was working properly. I was happy Mert did good!

Second in my years in using vbSEO I don't think it ever helped my site with SEO, before installing vbSEO I was a PR5 on Google after installing vbSEO I dropped down to a PR4.

And now for me and many people in the vbSEO forum there seems to be many questions about vbSEO and the future of vbSEO. There has not been a major release in quite awhile and a number of the big vbSEO employees have left the company. With no solid signs that there will be an upgraded version or new version in the future other then the the new staff saying their will be I am concerned about the future of vbSEO. If I were on the outside looking in I would NOT purchase a vbSEO license at this time.

Anyways with those issues and concerns I posted the following to the vbSEO support forum.
http://www.vbseo.com/f9/uninstalling-vbseo-nginx-54293/

To which I quickly got a reply from one of the vbSEO staff without a solution but wanting to know my reasons for looking at moving off vbSEO.

I replied back with my honest answers.

I woke up this morning to find another reply to my message this one from Mert Gökçeimam which I felt blasted me about my honest feeling about vbSEO. (I wasn't mean at all in my comments) Yet in blasting me he didn't answer my question. So I replied back to him asking him for his help and he quickly replied back to me...

Non standard webserver? Bullshit! I asked before I moved and they told me it was supported and besides that it was Mert himself who installed and configured vbSEO on my NGINX server for me! If NGINX is a non standard unsupported servers why does vbSEO include instructions and sample configuration files for NGINX?

In another replay back from Mert he says ...

So let me get this correct...

Mert no longer has NGINX installed so he is not longer going to support it. Does that mean if Mert uninstalls Apache that vbSEO will no longer support Apache? Again it was Mert who installed and configured our vbSEO for us on NGINX origionally.

I am not asking for anythig out of the ordinary here, they already have documentation on how to uninstall vbSEO and keep your links for other platforms. I am PAYING for support and I should get it!

I was on the fence about uninstalling vbSEO before but I wanted to get a solution for uninstallation for my platform before my support contract ran out. But with this type of support I am getting today I don't see myself staying and renewing my license / supprt contract for another year.

If you are thinking about getting vbSEO I would advise you to stop and take a look around and take a look at the current state of vbSEO and also take a look at the issues that others have had since installing vbSEO. Please use your best judgement before investing your money in this product.

I don't think I am asking for anything special or out of bounds here. NGINX was supported before and it should be supported now. I am just asking for the support I am PAYING for.

Thanks for reading!

 

This is what I posted at the org.

and your reply

As I was saying at the other thread like this at vb.org, I understand the frustration, I really do!
I removed vbseo from my general forums site about 2 years ago because it was killing our server and wasn't really beneficial in my mind at the time.
I was able to setup redirects to save all old links and indexed pages, I'm sure we can help you out here if you do want to remove vbseo.

 

I've always known vBseo was a resource-hog. So many webmasters were hyped about it years ago, I stuck with what vBulletin has to offer and I hope vBulletin 5 shocks the world - in terms of knocking vBseo off the market, so to say. If you know what I mean.

 

I just hope the whole vbulletin 5 suite works as it should when released...

 

Thats what I want to do, setup redirects to save all the linked and indexed pages. They provide this info for other platforms but not NGINX. (yet they include install instructions and files for NGINX in the vbSEO file you download from them.)

I am just REALLY upset that they say I am on an unsupported platform when they are the ones who installed it and configured it for me!

Thanks Brandon I do appreciate it.

 

You and me both brother, I hate to say it but I am putting all my faith into vBulletin 5.

It has to get better and I don't think it can get / will get worse. I think the origional vbullet 4 opened a lot of eyes and it appears IB has their team back and focused on their core product again which to me was a big part of the issue. There were too focused by making and selling add ons (which I purchased and none of my users used) instead of keeping focus on the core product.

If vBulletin 5 is no good then I may have no opetion then to move to the Huddler platform, which I don't want to do because I ENJOY running my site.

 

Mind if I ask why you would go to huddler and not another script?
Would you be happy if vbulletin 5 came out but it wasn't really in a quote "gold" condition, like how vBulletin 4 wasn't when it first came out?

It was a good year to 18 months before I felt vbulletin 4 was in the shape to go public on my sites.

I bet, I would be as well

 

I haven't found another script which can handle a site the size of mine, that is as good as vBulletin (even in its current state, which as of today is a hell of a lot better then when it was first released!)

We are closing in on 3 million posts and 200,000 members.

As far as vBulletin 5 goes, I wouldn't jump upon release, but would like to move over within 6 months if I find it to be acceptable.

 

I agree with what Scott has said about vBSEO. I always thought it was kind of pointless it's biggest claim to fame in my book is content relevant URLs which is now included in vBulletin core. As soon as 4 came out I figured vBSEO would be going by the wayside and it appears it is.

How stuck are you on NGINX? What about going back to Apache and using the relevant uninstall rewrite rules not to lose your link backs?

 

Hey Dan,

I am really stuck on NGINX, it runs so much better for me then Apache ever has. In fact it runs SO GOOD that I am now run my entire site on one box instead of two! (And to be honest I can't wait to see how much better it runs with vbSEO removed!)

I now have my system automatically rsync all updates and changes to one of the other servers (and then backed up in .tar format to another server) so if my server were to crash with a hardware issue with just a couple of changes of IP's on the secondary box I could be back online in minutes.

I am running NGINX and am using PHP-FPM as my php processor. With 2000+ people online my server load is 0.72 or lower. Imagine what it will be without vbSEO.

 

Wow those stats are nothing to sneeze at.

Have you thought about LiteSpeed? The only reason I ask is LiteSpeed is compatible with Apache's rewrite rules. I run Litespeed on my VPS and find it to be very light on resource usage. I've been using LiteSpeed so long I don't have any comparison stats offhand.

Short of that what about hiring a NGINX developer to convert vBSEO's uninstall rewrite rules over to NGINX? It'll cost you a little bit but be worth it in the long run.

 

I did actually try it before going with NGINX and I had some issues with in. In talking with George (EVA2000 ad VB.COM) he asked me if I looked at NGINX yet so I tried that next and was hooked.

I have a NGINX admin help me set everything up but unfortunately he knows nothing of rewrite rules.

Unfortunately that may be what I have to do, but I shouldn't have to do that since thats what I am paying vbSEO for.

 

It's not right but you need to do what you have to for your board. You can vote on vBSEO's lack of support by never giving them another dime of your money.

 

Since I paid for vbSEO on my American Express card I am considering filing a charge back since they are not providing the service they are supposed to.

I work at a very large law firm (well we are not just a law firm, we (the bosses not me) do areal estate and own radio and tv stations as well. One of the lawyers tells me I should sue them here in Connecticut and then after I win if they don't pay I can seize their domain of vbseo.com. (Sounded crazy to me at first, but he says he has done it twice. And this guy is considered a real good lawyer here so I guess I got to believe him.)

Anyways here is my complete NGINX configuration file. You can see what Mert added. Looking at it I can see how it does a rewrite for the sitemap, but for the life of me can not see how its rewriting the threads and other urls.

You will notice this varies greatly from the NGINX config file that comes with vbSEO.

 

You're not the only one.

@SatGuyScott It wouldn't hurt to try. Anything is possible these days.

 

I have some GOOD NEWS to report.

Another vbSEO staff member Andres stepped in and helped me out and gave me what I need to remove vbSEO.

So I guess they DO support vbSEO after all.

Why did that have to be so aggravating?

Guess what I will be removing this weekend.

Thanks guys!

 

Glad to hear Scott! Thumbs up to Andres for stepping up.

 

We some updates...

First of I got a note from Mert and said he misunderstood what I wanted, he thought I wanted him to convery my system from NGINX to Apache. He didn't undertand that I just wanted uninstall instructions for vbSEO for NGINX.

Secondly on Friday night I removed vbSEO from my site. the re-write instructions I was given didn't work correctly, but for me they were a good starting point and I was able to modify them so that they worked on my system. All links on Google, bing and other search engines all still work.

I was kind of shocked when I woke up on Saturday morning to find that Google had already reindexed most of my site already.

As far as server load goes, as I mentioned before when I had 2000 people online my load was around 0.77, with vbSEO gone with that same amount on the load is no 0.33. While the site does not load faster it feels "snappier" so I think thats a good thing. The thing that scared me was my ad revenue dropped on Saturday by 40% but on Sunday it returned to normal levels again. Of course its all something I am keeping a close eye on.

 

@SatGuyScott Glad to hear your site is loading faster and revenue is doing fine.