I Was Around

vBulletin Holds Consumers’ Puppy Hostage

// October 29th, 2009 // Activism

Update 16:08 Oct 30: vBulletin becomes a Case Study of What Not to Do on eConsultancy, MyBB was added to the Article.

Update 12:06, Oct 30: Some people are trying to sell off their licenses, some forums are holding donation drives, Kryptonian forums went to Invision Board, Casual Discourse says “Screw it.“, and I’m being annoying about it on Twitter.

Update: The Register has picked up on this, Dan Cryer also did a Good Article.

On October 13^th, 2009 Jelsoft, now owned by Internet Brands, sent out an email to all vBulletin customers announcing vBulletin 4.0:

Dear [Foo],

[...]Over the last 12 months, we have been building vBulletin 4.0 to be the most powerful forum and social publishing software.  Today, we are proud to introduce the new vBulletin 4.0 Publishing Suite product that includes the power of the vBulletin 4.0 Forums with a seamlessly integrated content management system (CMS) and blogging platform.

As a preferred customer with an active license, we are excited to offer the vBulletin Publishing Suite at a pre-sale discount price of only $130 (over 50% off regular price).  This is a truly limited one-time special offer giving

you $120 off the upgrade price but will expire on Friday October 30, 2009. [...]

Beginning today, we are introducing new a license structure. vBulletin is changing to a one-time owned license fee for each major point release. That means no more annual renewal fees. Once you purchase a major point version, you’ll receive maintenance, security and minor point releases for the life of 4.x.

You have the option to keep your current active license until it expires (according to the 12 month term and conditions). For the remainder of your active license, you will continue to receive support and have access to forum software updates, including vBulletin 4.0 Forums.  Once your license expires you will only be able to access the 4 Series software updates by switching to the new one-time owned license.  [...]

Sincerely,
The vBulletin Team

Essentially customers had about two weeks to purchase an upgrade to their license at a discounted price or practically pay for a new one. Their email even suggests I have an active license, when all three of mine are inactive but owned. vBulletin has confused a lot of customers with the new prices. A majority of threads on their Pre-Sale forum express confusion. Here is a chart that tries to simplify it.

What Jelsoft has just told users is their $240-360 investment in software is now worth a $20 discount, $35 if they decide to go with the vBulletin Suite, and maybe $105 if the stars align.

They’re ignoring new users who purchased vBulletin in the last 30 days asking them to pay the upgrade. And have completely disregarded anyone who purchased the Blog or Project Tools. vBulletin would also like you to forget that your yearly fee went into the development of vBulletin 4.x. This equates to nothing more than a price scheme forcing users basically buy new licenses.

Free*, But not Really

On their homepage, vBulletin says that vBulletin 4.x is a free upgrade to existing customers. They then changed the second page to say it was free only until your license expired. If the license expires in April, you’ll be able to download the current revision until then. Another thread said “owned” licenses would be able to upgrade until 4.2. There is confusion over everything except the fact it isn’t free.

“So, what? I’ll just stick with vBulletin 3.8.x!”

Not according to vBulletin. There is no option for the classic security update subscription. Meaning unless you spend $175 for the vBulletin 4.x upgrade, you no longer have access to those necessary updates. This leaves your vBulletin site vulnerable to a number of attacks known and undiscovered.

Let’s not forget the communities are involved.

Each license of vBulletin is tied to people beyond the owner. There are millions of users behind those licenses. One only has to look at Big Boards to see how many people and posts are affect by vBulletin’s new decisions. We care about our users and especially their experience.

My father and I went on a trip around the East Coast last year. We met many of our forum users. One of them had lost his foot and the ability to work. He found release in being able to instruct others on our forum. Day in and day out, he spoke with people across our forums. We met him in person, and it was instantly emotional. That’s when I realized, our site, our forum… mattered.

Why the title of the Article?

In essence, Jelsoft/Internet Brands has taken our favorite puppy hostage. The ransom is virtually the price of a new puppy. Yet, they’ll cut you a deal and upgrade to the puppy suite and include a red collar. That red collar is vBulletin’s new Content Management System (CMS). This would be a great thing if it weren’t for two things:

1. vBulletin users who needed a CMS already have one. (vBAdvanced, Joomla & jFusion, etc) If they were to switch, it would be a huge and manual migration process.
2. vBulletin’s CMS is untested, unproven, and strictly unreliable.

The upgrade to vBulletin 4 was rushed, and a disaster. I was one of the first ones on the board and it took over 5 minutes for pages to load and almost 12 minutes to navigate and post a thread.

David McHenry

This leads to the next point: vBulletin is preying on their consumer’s trust.

When the email went out on the 13^th, there were no screenshots or demo online. They posted some screenshots a few days later. I at least trust vBulletin enough to claim it wasn’t photoshopped.

As many skeptics pointed out, it looks eerily like Joomla 1.5.

vBulletin didn’t even upgrade their own forum until October 23^nd leaving consumers 8 days to make their decision. There is still no vBulletin Suite demo out in the wild, two days before the pre-sale ends. “THE END IS NIGH!” Jelsoft/Internet Brands has preached. “Trust us. Buy now, before it’s too late.”

The vBulletin Disaster and Controversy:

Sing out, be banned. Sing Loud, license revocation.

In essence, they banned me because I said I was not going to be spending any more money on their software. They also banned me from vb.org which effectively ends my license…

Consumers quickly noticed threads being “closed” and more often than not, “deleted”. Among the Chosen, several were banned and some even had their license status revoked on vBulletin.org – their community site for plug-ins and modifications. There has been an exodus to third-party forums:

Admin Addict Threads:

• vBulletin Nightmare
• Advice on What to Do Next?
• State of vBulletin Today
• Jelsoft Little Stuck in Themselves

Invision Board Refugees Threads:

• Yep, You Guessed It
• A Couple of Questions (From a vBulletin Refugee)
• My vBulletin Experience, Buyer Beware.
• Moving Away from vBulletin

There are more…

I was being silent until I did more research – deciding if was worth loosing my licenses. I read each tale of woe from anonymous users who felt if they spoke out, they’d loose all their investment in vBulletin too. The question is now, where do we go from here?

Where do we go from here? Jump Ship.

In my eyes there are two choices. Three if you like going rogue.
You can find a detailed comparison of Internet Forum Software here.

Oh, phpBB. I forgive you for Gaia Online. Things were great back in the day. Then you let yourself go and let Invision and vBulletin sweep the market with nifty features. I left you. It was me, not you. I swear.Will you forgive me?

PhpBB 3.0 reclaimed some of the market when it actually added features. The 3.0.6 release is adding features instead of general bug fixes. One can only hope the developers keep that pace this time. Otherwise, PhpBB is a solid package. It’s free and open source. The community is great. It’s beyond reliable. Go for it, you won’t be disappointed.

Hi there. How are you? Wait… What’s that? You like communities and music too? I love communities and music. You heard I lost my girlfriend? It’s very sad.  You broke into my house to “get to know me better”? But you flood me with compliments… Thanks. I don’t know where you came from. It’s kinda creepy. I guess we could give it a go.

Many administrators on Twitter and in the comments have referenced MyBB. Oddly, I haven’t had any experience with it. It says it will do everything I need. It looks refined. Most importantly, it has the GPLv3 License. According to the Wikipedia article, MyBB replaced DevBB which was forked from XMB. Woah. They’re also looking at version 1.5 coming up. It may be worth the try.

You had once been so giving. I remember when I could hardly take a drive on the super highway without seeing your mark everywhere. No one blames you for InvisionFree, but we did miss you when you started charging and doing those Vegas shows.

Invision Board swept the Internet when 1.x was free. I switched from PhpBB to it. Then they started charging, and that’s where my relationship with vBulletin started. Both were virtually the same. With version 3.0 Invision Board has pulled ahead, say my administrative friends. They’re diligent too. They’ve been watching this entire thing play out and offered their community suite at a discounted price of $250. (Gallery, Blogs, Forum). Even if I just want the forum, it’s only $150 $125 until November 2nd. They also have been a pretty consistent company.

Yum. SEO, Reliability, and probably the best vBulletin transition out there.

I would instantly convert my main license to Invision Board if I didn’t need a Nikon SB-800. Maybe next month.

Content Management System

Joomla may not be perfect, Drupal may be on its heels, but with jFusion, it’s an amazing CMS that hooks seamlessly into vBulletin, PhpBB, or Invision Board. It’s flexible, solid, and the core developers are passionate. For God loved us so much he gave his only son… For they loved it so much they forked from the Mambo project it became a commercial mess.

This is a community I like to be in. They care. They listen. Any complaints I had were addressed in Joomla 1.6. They know Open Source Matters. Software, like culture, has a ripple effect. What we create with it spreads like wildfire. Give it a try. Also remember to grab JFusion.

Flags of Our Nations

vBulletin has claimed, “An overwhelming response” to the pre-sale. Many users mention, “Like we had a choice.”

Another great comment from Dan Cryer’s article:

The upgrade to vBulletin 4 was rushed, and a disaster. I was one of the first ones on the board and it took over 5 minutes for pages to load and almost 12 minutes to navigate and post a thread.

David McHenry

Invision Board has also claimed, “An overwhelming response” for the sale they launched for ’switchers’.
It’s a funny thing, I trust Invision Power more at this point.

Feel free to comment.