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*blogging my VB vs. IPB crap for future reference* ________________________________ 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*

vBulletin has updated their vBulletin 5 Connect demo.. Heres a prime example of the horrible crap of vbulletin's sofware and one of the obvious reasons we stopped using their product. vBulletin custom page example: http://www.vbulletin.com/vb5demo/custom_page Yay, I could have put text on a page. Here is an example of a random test page that I made on ipb: http://www.ancientclan.com/test.html I have the ability to put anything from the database onto any page I want and in whatever format I want it to appear in. Huge difference. Sure vb allows custom blocks and html, but if it was anything as advanced as IPB, you would think they would have made a better example.

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.

We may be switching to Invision Power Board within the next couple weeks (maybe even this weekend). If you have never been on an IPB powered forum before, check the following website: http://community.invisionpower.com/index.php? If we switch over to IPB, we'll be using their IPB version 3 (the newest version). Here is their blurb about the new features, etc. about version 3: http://www.invisionpower.com/products/board/features/lookandfeel.php If we switch to this software, we should be able to convert everything over. We'll loose some features but gain many more. Some of the things we'll loose off hand are the following: - Chatbox (they have a different version, but I don't think its available for version 3 yet) - Arcade (The arcade is being converted to the new version. I'm guessing it'll be another couple weeks or a month until its released.) - Post Thanks (Last I heard, it is being converted to a ipb mod at this time.) Other than that, we'll have a new blog system which for some reason doesn't have categories, but features multiple blogs per user. I have to look into this one some more. Also, instead of profile albums, we'll have a full gallery script. All our current album pictures should convert over as well. We're still at a cross-roads about what we'll do. Unless vbulletin pulls some major move in customer service or public relations (which I doubt), we'll end up switching to IPB and probably sell our vbulletin license. I've looked all over the free forum solutions, smf, phpbb, but none of them offer everything we need. Also, burning board and some other paid forums don't have enough features. Gah, damn vb for being sellouts. So, does anyone here like IPB?