Some answers to important licensing questions - vBulletin Community Forum
With so many vbulletin customers bitching about the possibility of vBulletin charging for an upgrade to the vb 4 code, vbulletin has finally announced that they will not charge for the upgrade... but they will be implementing new license terms.. with their current terms they were obligated to not charge for a new major version upgrade. But my guess is that the new terms will allow them to make as much money as possible by screwing people over on future upgrades.
The f*cking vbulletin suite upgrade better be reasonably priced. *shakes fist at vb*

*blogging my VB vs. IPB crap for future reference*
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vBulletin = FAIL
[ame=http://forums.ancientclan.com/showthread.php?t=9752"]vBulletin = FAIL - Ancient Clan Forums[/ame]
Here is the email I received from vbulletin:
The vbulletin team announced that vBulletin 4.0 would come out by the end of June 2009. It is October 14th today and with an announcement like this and a new website, you would think vbulletin 4.0 has finally been released! But no! It is still in alpha testing, there is no demo available and I have been given the opportunity to purchase the upgrade to the suite for the $130 discount for only 16-17 more days. And they still have not announced when the vb 4.0 version will even come out.
And even though I bought the blog add-on for $50 a year ago, I get the same discount price as someone who only owns just the forum license. wtf.
When my license support renewal is up, which last year would have costed me $40 for updates, will now cost me $195 for the new license if I haven't paid the $130 or more by then to download vbulletin 4.0 which may still not be out by then considering they are 4 months behind schedule with no product.
So. We will probably continue running vb 3.8 until we find another alternative or vbulletin changes their pricing structure (which I'm sure they won't). I wouldn't mind paying for new forum software, we've spent plenty on vb over the years with renewal costs and one time purchases. But I can't justify staying with the company because of the part I have put in bold above.
If we use just the forums and pay the initial upgrade price of $195 or so in january and switch to a free blog system because the version we have won't be compatible with vb 4.0... we'll still be stuck with another issue. Once vb 5.0 comes out (which should be 12-18 months according to a staff member), we'll have to buy a brand new vbulletin license for version 5 at the full price of another $195. And assuming a new major release then comes out every 1 or 2 years, it'll be hundreds of dollars every year or two just to keep using this software that still doesn't do everything I want it to do.
I'm really starting to hate vbulletin. If I want to stay with this forum software, the only way I'll save money is by paying the cheaper upgrade cost of $130 which gives me the entire suite, but I only have 16 days to make my decision or pay $200 in January and only get the forum software.
WTF!
Anyone have any forum or blog recommendations? I was thinking about invision power board, but they're in the process of releasing a new cms like system and I don't know if that will be bundled in with their current suite. But even ipb is $250 for the suite with $60 renewal costs. But even that price is better than the new vbulletin price structure. Apparently, I have to make a decision within 16 days. *kicks vB in the balls*

The improvements they are making to IPB look really great. Some of the highlights for me:
http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-9537-ips-40-editor-part-1-content/
Embeds will always work. Now that is a huge difference.
http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-9538-ips-40-editor-part-2-uploads/
Drag and drop images right into the editor. I've been waiting for this feature. No more having to click attach and then navigate to the right folder where your image is.. just drag it right into the editor.
http://community.invisionpower.com/blog/1174/entry-9539-ips-40-editor-part-3-customisation-and-bbcode/
This is a big change and I hope they pull it off correctly. All our custom bbcodes will be negated. But the only custom bbcode we actually use is the spoiler tag, which will now be a default feature. All other custom bbcodes will now have to be created as CKEditor plugins.. but there are already a lot of ckeditor plugins available. So I could technically add a variety of new editor features.
http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/388306-ips-40-editor-part-4-special-features/
Very very nice. I like this.
Good! No more having to click the load saved content option. Simplifying this will make the auto save much better.
Oh! and the editor will now be fully skin-able! The editor won't have to be glaring white on a dark theme anymore.
Also, the current skins that we use are going to be upgraded for IPB 4.0. We won't have to change the entire look of the site.

I finished an upgrade to the site, which included an editor upgrade and updated skin fixes. So far it looks like everything is fine, but I'm still not caring for this editor. In firefox, the quote feature seems a bit off. After you hit quote, you should hit an arrow button before typing or pasting to make it look correct. I'll have to fill out a bug report for it.
 
Let me know if anyone comes across any errors or problems.

This is a major announcement about our community.. We are finally ditching vBulletin! We will be switching to Invision Power Board software. We should retain all posts, post counts, albums, private messages, etc. Expect major changes with the overall site. We will be turning ancientclan.com into an actual website again. But it will not be anime based. We have had a good run as an anime site, but its time for us to move away from that specific genre and move towards a more general entertainment website focusing more on movies, television series, video games, anime, things that interest us, etc.
How does this affect our current forums?
1) We will no longer have anime themes. We will save some of our current themes for their color layouts and will be implementing them into different color selections for the site.
2) We will be taking all our current forums, setting them as subforums into an Archive category and we will set them for archived so they will get no new posts but will be available for everyone to view.
3) We will only have a handful of forums. No more anime series specific forums, etc.
4) We will have a variety of new features, I'll get a new shoutbox back up, we will have a full functioning gallery, improved blogs, and an article system for the main site.
The conversion process will be in two parts. First, I will need to install the new software. Second, I will run the conversion software to import all our posts, etc, into the new database. There is no timetable yet for when this will happen. But it will happen sometime in the next 2-3 weekends.
If you have any questions, please ask.