Questions for vBulletin Management

Brandon Regular Member

Joined:: Jun 1, 2009

Messages:: 6,602

Likes Received:: 1,706

Location:: Topeka, Kansas

First Name:: Brandon

These are posted in the hidden "license feedback" section which hides it from anyone who doesn't have an account on vbulletin.com.

Questions for @LawrenceCole

1) You advertised vB5 as the most popular and most successful forum system. Back it up or take it back.
2) As you clearly have zero confidence in the product at this stage (as evidence by you ignoring every single (10+) post about people asking if its gold or not), either put it back into beta, or take it off the market. Come clean with people, without resorting to a load of marketing flannel that we can all see through.
3) Why is there a stupidly high amount of javascript?
4) Why have you decided to kill SEO (bots cant get past page 1 in threads)
5) Why is the query count so high, and why was it not fixed BEFORE releasing the product?
6) Why do you have a QA team when such blatent bugs got through (E.g the images not showing up, links not working, pagination broken, iPad broken, Mobile broken, random error messages when posting, unread posts being marked as read and vice versa, etc.
7) What is your REAL timescale. Not 'soon' not 'in the coming weeks' an actual timescale (e.g by march 31st X Y and Z will be fixed).
8) Why are you marketing vB5 with features that dont exist?
9) Why have you not come clean about the fake reviews you posted on TrustPilot (and yes, you were one of the reviewers), and why you posted them.
10) Why does vB5 even exist? I mean seriously. At this stage, or even a future stage, what benefit does it provide to forum owners over vB4?
11) Why were the most basic of features left out (e.g member list) and pointless features (e.g customising your profile colors) prioritized?
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His answers

1) Some market research on the number of forums supported by each software can validate that claim pretty easy. From a market share standpoint, we have been the leader in paid forums for quite some time. phpBB is the leader in the free space.
2) I do have confidence in our product. I've also said multiple times that we are not calling the software gold at this time (in response to questions about that).
3) Question for dev
4) We have an internal (IB) expert working with dev to straighten any SEO issue posed within vB5 Connect.
5) Question for dev
6) Those issues did not come up when QA was testing the product. The most recent mobile release included a patch that fixed iPad issues for the majority of customers.
7) I'll post real dates (or estimates) when I have then. When I don't, I will post "soon", "no time soon", or whatever else is appropriate for that given query.
8) Which features?
9) My review was not fake. I was a vBulletin customer 6 years prior to working for the company. My review attested to the fact that I ran a forum (on phpBB) that was taken over by a hacker who was able to exploit a security issue (dancing banana on a black screen; remember it like it was yesterday). I bought vBulletin and never had security issue again. It was a true story. Where poor judgement came in was in not reviewing the TOU that stipulated that no current or past employees could post reviews. TrustPilot is dealing with all flagged reviews as they see fit; however, several of the reviews that were flag (about 6-8) were made by customers who have never worked here. Flagging them was blatantly dishonest. There was no dishonesty in my review; not one word. What it was, however, was bad judgement.
10) vBulletin 5 is the next major iteration of vBulletin's software. The value that it holds for an individual customer and the decision on when or even if it is appropriate for that customer to upgrade is totally up to them.
11) Just because a given feature was included does not mean that it was prioritized; it may have just been simple and easy to include.
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more questions

1) What is being done about the mobile apps, android in particular? Basic functions are missions since the upgrade.
2) I purchased the mobile suite just over a year ago and there hasn't been a release since May. I am reluctant to renew my mobile suite. What is going to be done about that?
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The answers

1. The next minor release of The Mobile Suite (1.4) for both iOS and android have been developed. QA needs to vet them of course, but their release is not far off. An announcement will be posted and an email will be sent out as soon as the new release is deemed ready.
2. You no longer need to renew your mobile license. Earlier this year, we chose to give customers access to a particular major release of The Suite for the entire life of that major release without every having to renew. No additional purchase will need to be made until A) a new major release is out and B) you have chosen to upgrade to that new major release. The only caveat to that is if you want to get an additional Mobile Suite. If that is the case, then of course you would need to purchase the latest major version available of that product. Basically, the purchase system will work just like that of vBulletin.
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Another question from icewolf

I'd have to ask, why was the announcement of vBulletin 5 Gold was made in the licensed customers section instead of the official announcement section?
We are testing for bugs on a live environment, I understand this had to be done to squash all the bugs, but the code issues on the server should have been taking care of before going live,

vB5 Demo website was a perfect example of the above, the demo website was slow loading and clearly not up to "gold standard", why did you guys think you would have a different result by releasing the product on the live website when the performance of the product is not optimized yet?

Generally when a new product is released, users should feel very excited, I feel that with this release, I am not feeling excited at all.

What are the upper management saying about the current state of vB5?

Thank you for your time.
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answer from @LawrenceCole

Hello IcEWoLF, its good to see you here. In general, we try to alert licensed customers first about big updates such as this. You are right that users should feel excited by a release; and when we saw very quickly that this was not the case, we decided to hold the rest of our marketing push to allow the development team to address the explicit product quality concerns that were expressed here. It is always easier to iterate a software that has been out and gotten a chance to be used in large scale production than it is to put something out that has not had that experience. The development team has been tasked with that difficult mission, and they are working quickly to provide some fast quality iterations that will hopefully give customers some things to be excited about. Upper management is aware of the current state and is working with the development team to ensure they have the support and resources they need to get things up to snuff.
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another question

Management is Bob Brisco and Joe Rosenblum, right?

So far as I know Bob was never seen in this forum, nor does he even answers emails from his former business partners.
Joe can be seen here often, but he rarely post anything. He should know what's going on now and what happens in the past very well.
Nevertheless he seems to think it's all cool and great according to statements like this:
“Community is the heart of this product,” said Joe Rosenblum, CTO of Internet Brands (which owns vBulletin Solutions). “To create this version of vBulletin, we combined our experience operating over 150 forum sites with extensive market research and interviews with our customers. We think this is the best-ever platform for building and sustaining strong community-driven websites.”
So, this thread seems to me blatant pointless, we all know the answers coming from them: not any one

Ok, don't want to be a buzz killer, so one question from me to Joe, when do we see the contest promised nearly 4 years ago?
"vB 4 Plugin Prize
Starting soon, we'll kick off a contest with a cash prize for the best vB 4 hack or plugin."
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Reply from Lawrence

Management is much larger than Bob and Joe. They are the CEO and CTO of Internet Brands. We also have a COO, a General manager, a VP of Tech, several directors (which would include someone like Allen Lin), multiple project managers (would include folks like Mark Jean and Omid Majdi) and me as marketing and ops manager. All decisions from "management" come from that entire group as a whole. We also all take some share in the responsibility of anything that comes from this group. Joe reads the forums regularly, but it is my job as marketing & ops manager to be the most active management person on the forums since the support groups that fall under me (sales and tech support) deal directly with vBulletin customers. Joe is the CTO of all of Internet Brands, which is comprised of well over 150/200 websites; thus his responsibilities are all over the place where mine are focused on vBulletin.

Regarding the vBulletin Plugin Prize, there are a few things happening in that arena. One is that Lynne from the support team has been campaigning hard for that for quite some time. Back in December, I held a focus group with the development teams of some of the more popular mods and got feedback from them on what were their biggest blocks in being able to code to vB5 Connect's API. Several of those bugs have been resolved ( ) by Mark's team and several more are in the queue.

Once we have one or two more small product quality iterations, I have planned to re-institute the old mod-of-the-month recognition. As it comes to prizes, Mark Jean recently led an internal hack-a-thon where our devs were given a short period of time to come up with some innovations for the product to create a better and more relevant user experience. We got some pretty fantastic ideas out of that, several of which will be implemented in some of the next few minor releases since they have already been coded. Mark has taken the lead in suggesting that the community be given more of an opportunity to contribute directly to the product beyond JIRAs from a mod and/or development perspective. There is general agreement around that concept but nothing has been set in stone yet as product quality is currently our top priority. Please hold us accountable and you will see more engagement with mods and the community to help develop the future of vBulletin.
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question

Why should we hear repeatedly from the frustrated staff: soon?
vB5 is not ready, take off from here because it makes the customers frustrated and then they make the support staff frustrated.
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his reply

I take personal responsibility for this. We have outstanding support staff and need to do a better job in making sure that the concerns that relay to management from the customers are elevated faster and that more of them are implemented. We are working on making this better as we speak.
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another question

My question is what is happening with vb 4.2x? And please give us a straight answer and not the vague nonsense answers you have been feeding us till now. I do not understand, when things were getting great with vb 4.2.x you go and pull a major fiasco with vb 5 and totally abandon 4.2x.
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reply from Lawrence

4.2.1 has been coded, is in the queue and is planned for release in the not-too-distant future. More details/specifics will be announce closer to the time of actual release, which is not yet in stone.
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follow up to the question about from a user

Lawrence here we go again though with what is now "not too distant future". If I told my customers that their product was in the shop and they would be getting it in the not too distant future, all hell would break lose. Honestly and not meaning disrespect but why in the world after many months can we not get a better answer than not too distant future on a release on vb4? This just blows my mind.
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and from Lawrence again

I hear you Robbie, but I cannot give you a date for 4.2.1 until there is one; and even then, I would be careful to announce it until it was literally coming down the pipes to ensure that I had allowed enough time for QA to bless it and clear it for release. Right now, there is no date in stone for the 4.2.1 release. I only know that it will occur soon. That is the best that I can offer at the moment. I apologize for that being a disappointment.
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That's just the first page, I'll copy the other 2 pages over if people are interested in reading it.

Brandon, Mar 7, 2013

#1

Dan Hutter and cpvr like this.

fattony69 Regular Member

Joined:: Jun 14, 2009

Messages:: 521

Likes Received:: 145

I absolutely loathe these nonsense answers. I know you're just sharing info, but there is NOTHING here that screams news to me. First, some of the questions are repetitive and stupid (aka no meat to the questions such as "8) Why are you marketing vB5 with features that dont exist?"). He is literally just being a spokesperson giving vague answers. vBulletin 5 is a joke of a product and I am quite sad the path they have taken since 3.8.

fattony69, Mar 7, 2013

#2

z3r010, Martin W and Dan Hutter like this.

John Regular Member

Joined:: May 23, 2009

Messages:: 757

Likes Received:: 87

Location:: Tennessee

He has always reminded me of the old saying, "if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS".

John, Mar 7, 2013

#3

Brandon, Martin W, fattony69 and 1 other person like this.

Martin W Regular Member

Joined:: Oct 31, 2012

Messages:: 144

Likes Received:: 38

Location:: England, UK

I think someone should go an ask the following question:

You mad bro?

But in all seriousness. This does not really answer much at all does it. It simply washes over the question.

Martin W, Mar 10, 2013

#4

sukagwe Regular Member

Joined:: Apr 1, 2013

Messages:: 60

Likes Received:: 17

Location:: behind your mind

first at all: don't ask why & when to the staff of vb.com
because all you get is:
soon.
it'll released when it ready.
we're working on it.
and when you keep asking them, you'll get banned.

sukagwe, Apr 1, 2013

#5

Alfa1 Regular Member

Joined:: Jul 24, 2009

Messages:: 303

Likes Received:: 196

I really wonder why anyone still takes vBS serious. They should drop the ´v´ from vBS. I really can´t take vb5 serious as a platform, nor can I take the company serious in terms of honesty and reliability. It seems to me that they do not do so either.

Alfa1, Apr 2, 2013

#6

ragtek Regular Member

Joined:: Dec 25, 2009

Messages:: 238

Likes Received:: 134

Did the people get a official reply to their questions?

ragtek, Apr 2, 2013

#7

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Questions for vBulletin Management

Brandon Regular Member

fattony69 Regular Member

John Regular Member

Martin W Regular Member

sukagwe Regular Member

Alfa1 Regular Member

ragtek Regular Member

vBulletin.com utilizing vBulletin Android app V1.0.3 and vBulletin iPhone app V1.0.1

vBulletin 4.1.12 FULL has been released. (vBulletin.com upgraded)

vBulletin Mobile Apps 1.3 have been released for vBulletin.com

vBulletin 4.2 FULL has been released. (vBulletin.com upgraded)

Setting a new forum, vbulletin 3, vbulletin 4 or vbulletin 5?

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Questions for vBulletin Management

Brandon Regular Member

fattony69 Regular Member

John Regular Member

Martin W Regular Member

sukagwe Regular Member

Alfa1 Regular Member

ragtek Regular Member

vBulletin.com utilizing vBulletin Android app V1.0.3 and vBulletin iPhone app V1.0.1

vBulletin 4.1.12 FULL has been released. (vBulletin.com upgraded)

vBulletin Mobile Apps 1.3 have been released for vBulletin.com

vBulletin 4.2 FULL has been released. (vBulletin.com upgraded)

Setting a new forum, vbulletin 3, vbulletin 4 or vbulletin 5?

Share This Page