Will upgrading to vBulletin 5 Kill your traffic??

While Brandon, will not allow all the truth and facts about various things to be posted, to his credit, he is allowing a lot of free speech. And his question was a reasonable one and was not defamatory. So he received a reasonable answer to the best of my ability.

While it is an admins right to protect a forum from spammers and scammers and those who support them, Paul M has in my opinion abused his position. As such it is not unreasonable for there to be a backlash from those people who have been victims of his arrogance.
Many times I have given him a pat on the back when he has done the right thing, like help members, but when he abuses his powers and takers part in misleading members and customers then he has to accept the inevitable results.

As an employee of IB/Vb, I would have thought that helping members and customers would also extend to helping them with genuine complaints about what has proven to be the biggest fail in the software (V5) history as I see it.

Instead, we see examples of him posting derogatory things and trying to portray those who stand up to him as crazy or somehow inferior.

Sorry Paul, but some of us will NOT be browbeaten just to feed your ego.
And I will post what I see to be the true facts as I can.

Infantile name calling will not alter the facts, nothing can, but we can all go forward from here if you realize and correct the way you treat members (currently with disdain) Up to you. It will probably not affect me, as I have my own path to go.

 

The only think I could have thought of when I read this thread title:

 

To me, possible missing traffic from search engines isn't even the worst part of vB5. Getting people to your site is one thing. Keeping them there and having them come back for more is to me, much, much more important and because vB5 is still so poor in the realms of UX, you have about a snowball's chance in hell to properly acquire, capture and retain users.

Scott

 

Scott hit the nail on the head. A forum admin and staff can bust their balls with quality content and style but if the software that is the back bone and presentation engine of the quality content is not user friendly or appealing what's is the point of having 1000 hits and no returns? None. Peeps will look and click away to another forum wondering "WTF was that all about?"

So for those who do not do due diligence in researching the software they could be mislead to believe "VBulletin 5 is the World's Leading community software". That may have been true years ago but in my opinion today their claims are misleading and misrepresent the quality of the program and are asking way too much money from unsuspecting buyers.

As an analogy would you pay full price for the top of the line automobile only to find out you get the framework now and the rest of the accessories when they become available?

Why they released it as Gold (or released it all at this point) is beyond me. The functionality isn't there yet, and from a users point of view the UI and visual appeal is not there either. Perhaps it never will be any time soon so why are they asking people to renew or buy an inferior product for full price? And I might add there is no quality support because the support staff have no more clue than those devs. They are left giving vague answers to questions, scratching their heads and wondering WTF was that all about?

Will 5 kill your traffic? In my opinion yes and unless they start thinking "customers first" IB/VB reputation along with it.

 

Obviously you cannot understand a simple concept that everyone else gets.

He doesnt need to, he's intelligent enough to understand what it means.

A gratuitous slur would be a random post in the middle of a thread suddenly reminding them what a fool you are.
I dont need to do that, your posts are doing that job quite well.

 

That's the problem with some of you VB guys, no intelligent reply, no informative response that would enlighten, just a slam bam thank you mam derogatory comment designed to intimidate or belittle.

 

Okay guys..lol

Let’s try and remove the personal aspect of the conversation. Everyone will have their own opinions on how things should be developed and how progress should continue. I, as most know, don’t care for the way vB 5 is going along but I don’t want those who are happy with it to feel like they’re just going to get jumped on whenever they make a post even if it is 100% factual. (This goes for both "sides" actually)

I’d rather we try to stick to the facts and remain on topic as far as our ideas as to why an upgrade vBulletin 5 would kill your traffic.

In short.. We can certainly debate without stepping down to the level of name calling and personal attacks.

 

@Brandon. I agree and you will notice that I have not used bad language nor attacked him with any of the methods I have at my disposal when fighting scammers. In fact I have been quite kind to him.

I think it is highly likely that members and potential members will leave a site that is having the problems that VB5 are having.

It all gets down to the attitude of VB/Ib and support staff. I have posted my honest opinions of what is going down and I am attacked for this. No worries, I have been attacked and smeared for over six years by some scammers who I exposed and their lackeys, so all the insults have probably already been said.

Now am I posting the facts, or as Paul says non sensible things? Lets see what others are actually saying now.

I posted all my comments without having seen this, but I think anyone involved with VB and support staff should also read it.

Sounds a lot like what others and myself are saying!

Sounds familiar to me.

http://vbtruth.com/?s=Paul M&submit=Go

For the record, as far as I can remember I have never spoken to this guy and I do not know him .

I think this shows that it is not a mystery why the traffic will slow with VB5.

 

I didn't upgrade to vb5 but i did see a HUGE drop from 3 to 4 and I always wondered why...?

 

And this blog was posted almost a year ago? wow an interesting read of another well put opinion.

 

I don't think you can blame Vbulletin 5 if your forum loses traffic. I still prefer Vbulletin 4, but only because my theme, and mods are designed for VB4.

 

VB5 update is not a cause of your traffic fall, there are many other things involve. You need to review Google updates and analyze your website, I am sure you will have the answer for your traffic fall.

 

I would not be surprised if vb6 will impose another drastic url change and if vb5.X will have more / new SEO sabotage features for your website. Meanwhile IB sites thrive on seemingly unreleased versions of vb3.

 

Huh ??

What IB site is running on an unreleased version of vB3 ?

 

Isn't that called "customization"? and don't all vBulletin users do that to some extent? Isn't that what the plugin system is all about?

 

In general, common sense would dictate wanting a well oiled business running on lots of vBulletin forums means wanting standardized software across the board (haha, pun intended) with, at the most, standardized add-ons. So now you think IB is actually working on 3 or even more vBulletin code sets? Lol..... I guess buying vBulletin wasn't such a good idea after all. I am not one for shoulda, woulda, couldas, but imagine had IB left Jelsoft alone and Kier and Co. would have made vB4 like Xenforo. Think of where IB could be with their forums now. They would have had to pay considerably less than they have over the years and be a lot further than they are now. A lot further.....

Scott

 

Slow down Scott, you are confusing VB staff with lots of facts again!